Say It Again, Teddy

By: Dr. Gary Anderberg

July 28, 2022 — Let's start with a line from Theodore Roosevelt: "Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care." Now let's ask ourselves — does this have any application to comp claim adjusting? According to a recent article in workerscompensation.com, the answer is a resounding Yes.

Obviously, we are all concerned about how much our adjusters know. After all, comp is a wonderland of intricate laws, regulations, procedures, and forms, often overlaid with new ideas during past years and varying in challenging ways from state to state. But what about the caring part? The author, Dr. Claire Muselman, opens her essay with a challenge:

Empathy is a concept so needed in the workers' compensation space and yet we have not invested the time, talent, and resources to further examine and develop this concept. Empathy: a core fundamental to build connection and trust.

She goes on to note that the social critic and philosopher Jon Gordon once said, "The story you tell yourself depicts the life you live and the actions you will take." In other words, if we bring distrust and cynicism to a new comp claim, our experience in administering that claim will appear to validate our attitude, possibly regardless of the actions of the claimant.

Now is an especially important time to be exploring the role of empathy in claims handling. Across the insurance industry, the long-time "crusty claim professionals" are retiring in droves and being replaced by new adjusters, just learning the ropes. If empathy for the injured person can improve the claim process, now is the time to inculcate that idea before attitudes become hardened. Every claims organization has a culture. Dr. Muselman urges us to be brave enough to ask questions about the impact of the injury on the person's life and to have the courage to listen to the answers. Connect the injured person's emotions to the work injury. What transpired? What relationships have been stressed, strained, or broken as a result of this injury?

Perhaps the most important qualification for understanding the comp claim process at a human level is to have had a life-changing work injury of one's own, to have been on the "other end" of the process*. Failing that, how can we introduce a proper quality of empathy into claims handling, letting the injured person know that they are neither the enemy nor merely an object to be manipulated?

Teddy may have been right about caring. Just maybe it is important. Speaking of "teddy", at GB we have our own Gentle Bear**. We got rid of the harsh sounding old term "claim adjuster" and replaced it with "Resolution Manager" which gives a much better idea of what the job really entails. Adjusting is the province of chiropractors; the job at GB is finding the right resolution. That's the difference between talk and a real culture of empathy and cooperation.

Finally, think about this:

We have to teach empathy as we do literacy. It is a learned skill. If everyone had it at birth, we would live in a different world.

*Been there. Your faithful correspondent was scheduled to be permanent and total back in 1989 after a work-related airline accident.

**Go to our Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion page to learn more about Gentle Bear and our other CSR initiatives.