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…
Culture Outlasts Compliance: Building Claims Teams That Do Right When No One Is Watching
Every claims organization has a handbook. Procedures are documented. Protocols are established. Best practices are laminated and posted in break rooms. From a compliance standpoint, most operations have their bases covered. And yet, if you pulled ten random claim files from ten different organizations – all following the same state statutes, all subject to the…
Reform Fatigue: Why the Next Wave Has to Start With People, Not Process
If you’ve been in workers’ compensation long enough, you’ve developed a particular twitch. It activates whenever someone announces that comprehensive reform is coming to your state. Your eye starts to flutter. Your blood pressure ticks up. You begin mentally cataloging all the systems, forms, and procedures you’re about to relearn. Welcome to reform fatigue. It’s…
The Injured Worker Behind the Claim Number
There’s a moment in every workers’ compensation claim where a human being becomes a file number. It happens almost imperceptibly – somewhere between the first report of injury and the assignment to an adjuster’s caseload. One minute, Maria is a shipping clerk who slipped on a wet floor and is scared about how she’s going…