To date, I have yet to meet anyone that planned on being a claims adjuster. Think about that for a moment. Not one person, over the course of years in this industry, has told me their main goal in life is to handle and investigate claims. Sure some have wanted to be in marketing or sales, or management of a large company, but none have stated specifically that they wanted to be in claims. Even those in the industry are dumbfounded as to why they are still there.
The biggest factor is those staying in employment as an adjuster is usually salary; at least in my casual conversations with claims examiners over the years. Second to salary is probably just general job security. Those in the know state that even new hires to the industry usually exit within a year, so it is good job security to be experienced in claims since there will always be an open desk somewhere at some carrier or TPA.
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“How Do I Get My Adjusters To Follow My Account Handling Instructions?”
The Job of Claims Adjusting Is Too Difficult For Many
So why exactly does this happen? Sadly there is no one good answer. But there are a ton of general answers as to why so many people leave the industry. For example, the massive amount of phone work can be daunting to those without experience. Couple that up with insane claim loads, confrontations with angry claimants, numerous levels of management, frustration with the lack of authority and accountability with the claims you actually do handle, incompetent supervisors, and the list goes on.
In my humble opinion, the lack of effective training and mentoring is the biggest key factor in the revolving door. Having a structured program for green adjusters new to the industry would decrease those leaving the industry. Also to be successful you have to pair that on-the-job education with a real claims mentor that actually cares about the outcome and professional growth of the new adjuster. This is the problem—the training program may be there, but the actual mentoring and follow-through is not. On paper it is present and accounted for—meaning that some adjuster/supervisor is assigned to watch over the new guy—but the incentives to have them succeed is not. This is because the mentoring adjuster/supervisor is swamped with their own work and auditing demands and just doesn’t have the time to babysit the newbie.
Resources Are Stretched And Training Is Often Inadequate
Many organizations face the competing dilemma of a limited pool of experienced adjusters handling important high-exposure files versus the cost of their time and commitment of training the newbies. It is not that the spots are open and can’t be filled—you can always find someone looking for work that is willing to give claims a try. The problem is keeping them employed after you have run them through whatever you call your claims training program.
Even when companies raised the educational standard to accepting only new hires with college degrees, it doesn’t matter. The claims world is so niche that no real college classes focus on just doing claims. There are no labs or pretend claims office. No matter what the degree, new hires will always come in expecting the unknown. The mentor is the one that is supposed to bridge the gap between book-training about claims adjusting and actual execution of claims adjusting. If that caring mentor is absent in your organization, your new hire is doomed from the get-go.
A structured formal training program by itself is costly and complex, and most carrier/TPA companies have something in place that they think will be good enough to get the newbie off and running. But the decision of how much time, money, effort, and resources to invest into the claims newbie training program is where most executives face this crucial question: How much of their resources should they spend on someone that more than likely will exit the company within 4-6-12 months from their hire date?
This is where the vicious circle begins. Companies do not want to spend a lot of time and money on people that will not stay employed with them, and new hires say they leave the industry because they were not adequately trained or mentored.
More Organizations Need to Make Expensive Investment in Human Capital
How is this problem repaired? In a perfect world, organizations will finally realize that the more investment they make in their own human capital from the very start the more they will get out of it in the long run. New hires need to be trained, mentored, and assisted along the way to their own professional growth. This is not a cheap thing to execute. You simply cannot take a new hire totally green to this industry and magically transform them into a perfectly running claims machine in 6 months. This process takes years, and it is one of continued training and growth even after 10 years of being in the industry.
But this is not a perfect world. The reality is that the resources are not there, the mentors are not there, and the time is not there. Without those three keys working in harmony, the new adjuster you just hired could be out of your company before the ink dries on their newly updated resume.
Author Michael B. Stack, CPA, Principal, Amaxx Risk Solutions, Inc. is an expert in employer communication systems and part of the Amaxx team helping companies reduce their workers compensation costs by 20% to 50%. He is a writer, speaker, and website publisher. www.reduceyourworkerscomp.com. Contact: [email protected].
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