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 work as well as it should.
That’s why we built this. Not to add another training vendor to an already crowded market, but to fill a gap that nobody else seemed to recognize as the gap – the missing foundation beneath all the other problems we keep trying to solve.
Workers’ compensation is one of the most fragmented industries I’ve ever encountered. Fifty-plus different state systems. Thousands of employers with wildly varying approaches. Carriers, TPAs, and self-insured operations all doing things their own way. Medical providers who interact with comp sporadically and often reluctantly. Attorneys on all sides with competing incentives. Regulators trying to oversee a system that looks different in every jurisdiction.
Into this fragmented landscape, we drop new adjusters with minimal preparation and expect them to figure it out. We hire claims professionals and give them a procedure manual instead of an education. We sometimes promote supervisors based on their individual performance without developing their leadership capabilities. We assume that experience alone will somehow transform task processors into skilled professionals.
And then we wonder why outcomes vary so dramatically. Why some adjusters connect with injured workers while others alienate them. Why some organizations build great cultures while others churn through staff. Why the industry struggles to attract and retain talent.
The answer isn’t complicated: we never built the educational infrastructure that a mature profession requires.
Consider virtually any other profession that deals with consequential decisions affecting people’s lives. Medicine has medical schools, residencies, board certifications, and continuing education requirements. Law has law schools, bar exams, and mandatory CLE. Accounting has degree requirements, CPA exams, and professional standards bodies. Engineering has accredited programs, licensing exams, and professional ethics requirements.
These professions invested in education not because they enjoy bureaucracy, but because they recognized that competent practice requires more than on-the-job training. They built systems to ensure that practitioners understand not just the mechanics of their work, but the principles underlying it.
Frankly, with the exception of a few limited licensing requirements, workers’ compensation never built that system.
We have some excellent training programs, to be fair. Many individual carriers and TPAs invest in their people. Industry associations offer valuable conferences and seminars. Specialty certifications exist in various niches. But there’s no coherent educational pathway for someone entering this industry. No common body of knowledge. No shared standards for what a competent claims professional should know and be able to do.
The result is exactly what you’d expect: highly variable quality, reinvention of wheels across organizations, and an industry that has trouble articulating its own professional identity.
When we started thinking about WorkCompCollege, we weren’t thinking about courses and certifications. We were thinking about infrastructure.
What if the industry had a common foundation – a shared understanding of what workers’ compensation is actually trying to accomplish and how competent professionals achieve it? Not just the procedural knowledge of how to process a claim, but the deeper understanding of why we do what we do and how to do it well?
What if adjusters entered the field with a genuine education in the biopsychosocial nature of injury and recovery, rather than learning it – if they learn it at all – years into their careers? What if supervisors were developed as leaders before they were promoted, rather than being left to figure it out through trial and error? What if the industry had clear professional standards that meant something – that signaled to employers, injured workers, and the public that certified professionals had demonstrated real competence?
This isn’t idealistic dreaming. It’s what every other serious profession has done. We’re just late to the realization that we need to do it too.
The Missing Link
Over the past month, I’ve written about restoring the human element to workers’ compensation. About why legislative reform keeps falling short. About how culture and leadership determine outcomes more than policies and procedures.
All of those pieces connect here.
You can’t restore humanity to a system staffed by people who were never taught why humanity matters. You can’t achieve meaningful reform by changing statutes while leaving unchanged the professionals who implement them. You can’t build great cultures without developing the people who comprise them.
Education is the missing link. It’s the intervention that makes all the other interventions work. Without it, we’re trying to build a house without a foundation – and then wondering why the walls keep cracking.
This is what WorkCompCollege exists to provide. Not just training, but education. Not just skills, but understanding. Not just compliance, but competence.
When I say we’re on a mission, I mean it literally. WorkCompCollege isn’t a business strategy dressed up in inspirational language. It’s an actual mission – a commitment to transforming this industry through education because we believe the industry is worth transforming.
That mission asks something of all of us.
It asks adjusters to see themselves as professionals worthy of genuine education, not just task workers who need enough training to follow procedures. It asks them to invest in their own development, to pursue credentials that mean something, to embrace the identity of a skilled professional rather than accepting the limitations of a claims processor.
It asks employers to invest in their people; really invest, not just check the training box. To recognize that education compounds over time, that developing professionals pays dividends for years, that the best adjusters will stay where they’re valued and leave where they’re not.
It asks industry leaders to think beyond their own organizations. To contribute to building the shared infrastructure that benefits everyone. To support the development of professional standards that elevate the entire field rather than just competing for a slice of the existing pie.
It asks all of us to believe that workers’ compensation can be better than it is. That injured workers deserve a system staffed by genuine professionals who understand what they’re doing and why it matters. That this fragmented, inconsistent, often frustrating industry can become something we’re all proud to be part of.
I’ve been in workers’ compensation for a long time. Long enough to have seen fads come and go (big data, anyone?). Long enough to be skeptical of anyone claiming to have all the answers. Long enough to know that real change happens slowly, through sustained effort, one professional at a time.
That’s what we’re building at WorkCompCollege, a community of professionals committed to their own development and to improving this industry. People who believe that education matters. Who invest in becoming better at what they do. Who understand that how we treat injured workers reflects who we are as professionals and as people.
We’re building this community one student at a time. One certification at a time. One organization at a time. It’s not fast. It’s not flashy. But it’s real, and it’s growing.
The Workers’ Recovery Professional certification. The MSP College programs. The AI programs focused on workers’ comp. The partnerships we’re developing with organizations that share our vision. The content we create to push the industry’s thinking forward. All of it serves the same mission: building the educational infrastructure this industry has always needed but never had.
I don’t know what brought you to this article. Maybe you’re an adjuster looking for something more than another compliance training. Maybe you’re a leader trying to figure out how to develop your team. Maybe you’re just curious about what this WorkCompCollege thing is all about. Or you just stumbled in looking for the bathroom (down the hall and to your right).
Whatever brought you here, I want to extend an invitation.
Join us.
Not because we have all the answers. We don’t. Not because transformation happens overnight – it doesn’t. But because you believe, as we do, that this industry can be better. That injured workers deserve better. That the professionals who serve them deserve better. That education is how we get there.
We built a college for workers’ comp because we believed the industry needed one. What we’re learning is that the industry was ready for one. Professionals across the country are hungry for a better way, not just knowledge, but purpose. Not just credentials, but community. Not just training, but transformation.
That’s the mission. And it has room for you.
If you’re ready to be part of building something different in workers’ compensation, we’d love to have you. Explore what we offer at WorkCompCollege.com, connect with our community, and join the mission of transforming this industry through education – one professional at a time.