Category: From Bob’s Cluttered Desk

Every so often a statistic wanders through our industry that sounds too good to be true. Usually, it is. Someone shows a slide promising a 70 percent reduction in something, the room nods, and six months later we learn that the study involved eleven claims at a single bakery in 2009. So I approached this one with my customary skepticism. According to claims data, communication grounded in empathy is associated…

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Let me begin by disappointing a portion of the audience. This is not that kind of culture war. Nobody here is going to yell about a beer can, a coffee cup, or a cartoon character. If that is what you came for, the exit is on your left, right next to the cable news channels. The culture warrior I am talking about is a rarer and far more useful creature.…

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We have a great little secret here in Sarasota/Bradenton. Well, it’s not the great secret it used to be, as people have discovered it, but its still pretty cool. It is the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, code named SRQ. Now honestly, this is an article about customer service, not an airport. But I do love to fly out of this place, and it is relevant to the tale.  The airfield…

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I heard from a friend last week in response to my last column, and the conversation was some version of the following: “Fine, Bob. Great article. We tell them the noble story, they show up excited, and then what?” It is a fair question, and it is asked in a tone I have come to recognize. It is the tone of someone who has actually hired a young person into a…

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There is a moment at every social gathering that those of us in this industry have learned to dread. Someone asks what you do. Now, regarding that question I normally provide the answer that is my stock in trade: As little as possible. But then you have to get serious. You have to say it. And you watch yourself do the thing. You start with “insurance,” which is already a…

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Dr. John F. Burton, Jr. died on August 12th at the age of 91. If that name does not immediately register with you, and you work in this industry, I would gently suggest that is a gap worth closing. Give me a few hundred words and I will try to close it. Let me start with the part of the story I own, because it is the only part where…

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We measure everything in this industry. We measure lag time, closure ratios, average duration, medical spend per claim, litigation rates, attorney involvement, reserve accuracy, and the number of days between the injury and the first indemnity payment. We have dashboards. We have benchmarking studies. We have entire conference tracks devoted to measuring things, and then a networking reception afterward where we talk about what we measured. Every one of those…

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Every organization in workers' compensation has a succession plan. I know this because I have asked. Repeatedly. At conferences, on panels, in the hallway outside the ballroom where the coffee is somehow both burnt and cold. And to their credit, people always have an answer for me. The answer is usually a name. Somewhere in your organization there is a woman named Diane. She may be named Patti, or Sharon,…

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People sometimes ask me why we called it WorkCompCollege. It’s a fair question. The word “college” carries certain expectations like ivy-covered buildings, tenured professors, four-year degrees. We don’t have any of those things. What we do have is a belief that stuck with me for years before it finally became an organization: the workers’ compensation industry had an education problem, and until we solve it, nothing else we try will…

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