From Bob's Cluttered Desk

Are you an “essential worker?” Am I? Does the contribution you make to the economy and society in general through the course of your work make any difference? Are we essential, or not? Doesn’t every position hold some value to the greater good?  In the era of COVID-19, there has been a great deal of…

Civil discourse in the workers’ compensation industry can at times be a challenge. The adversarial and sometimes acrimonious nature of the work we do doesn’t always bring the best out of people. Still, many people in the industry toil daily to provide necessary services while keeping communications professional and respectful. Understanding and respecting those with…

The state of Florida is gradually reopening after weeks of self-isolation and stay at home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, I will return to my office today, following two months of commandeering the family room and generally annoying my wife. The goal here, of course, is to return to some sense…

It almost feels like the second in a series, what with this article’s title being so similar to the last one posted in this blog. In that article, we asked, “We Don’t Pay for Viruses, Do We?” (Short answer: Now we do). Today, however, we discuss a completely unrelated topic. Wherein a virus can represent…

As COVID-19 continues to challenge the nation, the workers’ compensation industry is busy grappling with its own questions regarding the impact and responsibilities surround the virus. Compensability for employees who claim they contracted the illness on the job remains a very big question. We have already seen a push in numerous states to extend presumptive…

Note from Bob: This article first appeared on our site July 12, 2010, before the advent of this blog. It is a prediction of what the workplace would look like in the year 2020. Since it was written 10 years ago, I wanted to go back and see how my prognostications fared. While I clearly…

This is normally the type of article, tongue in cheek and not so serious, that may appear in this blog on a Friday. And for all I know, it is Friday. I have lost track of what day this actually is. All I do know is that the date of our self-isolation has been announced.…

As the COVID-19 pandemic response prepares to move into yet another month, many of us are beginning to ask, are we saving lives? Or are we hurting them? The answer is becoming increasingly obvious. It is “yes” to both. But how do we balance the solution? Like most people around the country, I shifted to…

We don’t like to do anything halfway. When we commit to something, we are usually all in. So, when a scheduled webinar encountered problems yesterday, it wasn’t just a tiny meaningless glitch. It wasn’t just a fender bender. No, that webinar bus crashed and burned in a spectacular and fiery fashion. There were 620 souls…

It was highly apropos. The regulators were speaking in a virtual room and telling the audience that it was interesting that a pandemic could cause such a rapid adoption of new technologies, policies and procedures. They were right. Just a few weeks ago we would never have been able to pull off the meeting we…