Timing Your Communication With an Angry Injured Worker

Workers’ compensation is a highly emotional experience for the injured worker. Hello, my name is Michael Stack and I’m CEO of Amaxx. And in this video, I’m going to give you a very effective tip to avoid that claim or help avoid that claim, blow up in your face. And it’s in regards to managing the timing of your response to an angry, injured worker. So the timing of your response to an angry, upset, highly emotional, highly frustrated injured worker. And this happens as you know, in our industry quite a bit. So how do we handle these things? How do we prevent these claims from going off the tracks with that highly frustrated, highly emotional, angry, fired up injured worker, which we know happens regularly. I’ll give you a real quick tip, real simple tip in regards to communication in regards to timing of your response. So let’s just role play this for a second.

 

Role Play

You’re talking to this injured worker, whether it’s over email or phone or, or in person, and they’re just hired, they’re fired up. They’re emotional. They’re I got this and I’ve got on this and I’m going through this and I’m going to this. And I had this doctor and it didn’t work out and this and blah, blah, blah. You know the story they’re fired up and they’re angry and they’re just going after they’re going after it. They’re going after it. And they’re just spewing a lot of this in motion at you, atypical response from the person that is hearing. This is going to be a fire and emotional response back. Because if someone’s emotional at you, you’re tending it kind of fires up the insides of you and you get a little bit fired up yourself. And then you can say, well, did you think of this?

Empathetic Listening

And as we know, that’s not going to help. That’s not going to go anywhere. And so what you need to know is that as long as the person is highly emotional, they will not hear a word that you say. They need to come to some sort of resolution in their own head and in their own process before anything that you say resonates, they need to some sort of resolution in their own head, in their own process for anything that you say will resonate. So the tip here is to let them finish what it is that you’re saying. Engage in empathetic listening. Oh, I hear you. Oh, I bet that must have been hard. I bet that if you don’t, that happened to me, I could see and understand how and why you’re feeling the way that you do. Let them finish, engage in empathetic listening. And now you have the potential to respond and make the conversation productive.

Productive Conversation

Now you have the potential to make the conversation productive. If you let them finish. And I will tell you, this is going to take longer than you want it to. A lot of times, it will take longer than you want it to. It’s going to have, it’s going to cause you a lot of tents, some frustration you’re like, Holy smokes. How long is this person going to be yapping a Jabbering on and I’ve got other stuff to do? I don’t need to listen to your whole life story, but if you want that productive conversation to be productive, let them finish, engage in empathetic, listening time, your response appropriately be intentional about this or that situation is only going to get a lot worse. It’s going to get a lot more costly. It’s going to increase the duration of that claim is only going to increase the likelihood of litigation. Add on 10, 15, 20 minutes, right In this little time frame, it’s going to save you weeks and months and thousands of dollars on that claim cost. And again, my name is Michael Stack. I’m the CEO of Amaxx. Remember your work today in workers’ compensation can have a dramatic impact on your company’s bottom line, but it will have a dramatic impact on someone’s life.So be great.

Author Michael Stack, CEO Amaxx LLC. He is an expert in workers’ compensation cost containment systems and helps employers reduce their workers’ comp costs by 20% to 50%. He works as a consultant to large and mid-market clients, is a co-author of Your Ultimate Guide To Mastering Workers Comp Costs, a comprehensive step-by-step manual of cost containment strategies based on hands-on field experience, and is the founder & lead trainer of Amaxx Workers’ Comp Training Center, which offers the Certified Master of Workers’ Compensation national designation.

Contact: mstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.

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