From Bob's Cluttered Desk

There is nothing like an excellent outdoor team-building experience to bolster morale and improve performance. Unless, of course, your team abandons one member of your crew on a mountain and leaves them to die. That could potentially negate the very positive effects intended by the exercise. Last August, co-workers left a Colorado man alone atop Mount…

Poor Gen Z. Everybody seems to pick on them. It is, I suppose, a rite of passage of some sort. Every generation is generally critical of the ones that follow it. And as I wrote last week, Gen Z has four other opinionated and domineering generations before it in the workplace. And one of those generations,…

It has been said that, at times, life imitates art. I don’t know if that is wholly true, but there are stark examples that indicate it can happen. In 2008, the movie Wall-E depicted a human population immersed in technology, where morbidly obese residents spent their day gliding around in floating chairs talking to people…

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.  And in some cases, the stupid. Really stupid. It’s a shame I can’t change my own name, as it would have protected me on numerous occasions of idiocy. But that is a different story, I suppose. I…

Much has changed since the innocent days of my youth. At the risk of sounding like my grandparents, I am old enough to remember when phones were connected through wires to the wall, and it took about three minutes to dial a number. God help you if you got one of the digits wrong and…

There are only a limited number of ways that a company can show its support for the workers’ compensation industry at a national level. Supporting Kids’ Chance is certainly one of them. Kids’ Chance, as almost everyone in the industry is aware, is an organization that provides scholarships and educational opportunities for children of workers…

The healthcare landscape is undergoing significant changes, with a notable trend being the vertical integration of medical providers. This phenomenon, where hospitals or health systems acquire physician practices, has led to a shift in how medical care is delivered and billed. The presentation at the WCRI Conference in Boston, MA, by Bogdan Savych and Eric…

In the “Day Two Keynote” presentation at the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) Annual Issues and Research Conference, Dr. Constance (Connie) Noonan Hadley, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, addressed the critical issue of loneliness in the workplace. Her talk highlighted the significant impact of loneliness on both workplace health and productivity,…

In the realm of workers’ compensation, the impact of psychosocial factors on claim outcomes has been a topic of considerable interest and debate. At the WCRI Conference in Boston, MA, a presentation titled “Psychological Risk Factors and Functional Recovery” shed light on this issue. The presenters, Vennela Thumula, a Policy Analyst with WCRI, and Dr.…

In a keynote presentation at the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) Annual Issues and Research Conference, David Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University, discussed the current state of healthcare in the United States and his predictions for the future. Cutler highlighted the uncertainty in the healthcare environment, citing factors such as…