ADJUSTED

Adjusting with Empathy with Natalie, Hope, & Kate

November 08, 2021 Season 2 Episode 25
ADJUSTED
Adjusting with Empathy with Natalie, Hope, & Kate
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes 3 special guests to the sound booth! Natalie Dangles, Hope Remetta, and Kate Schottlekotte are members of the Berkley Industrial Comp RESOLUTION Team who are leading the way in adjusting with empathy.

Season 2 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.

Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com

Greg Hamlin:

Welcome, everybody to Adjusted. I'm your host Greg Hamlin coming at you from Berkeley Industrial Comp. and Sweet Home Alabama and with me is my co host for the day.

Matthew Yehling:

Hello, everyone. This is Matthew Yehlg from St. Louis, Missouri along the banks of the Big Muddy Mississippi.

Greg Hamlin:

Excellent. So glad to have you. Matt is with an MEC. Midwest Employers Casualty did I get it right Matt

Matthew Yehling:

got it right this time. Thanks, Greg.

Greg Hamlin:

I'm one for two. So if you if you heard a previous episode, I didn't quite get that. Right. So this is my chance at redemption. So well, we have a group of three special guests with us today. And I was joking before we started the recording that I'm used to juggling with three balls. And now I'm moving up to six. So we'll see how this goes. But I'm excited to have all three of them with us today. We have Kate Schottlekotte, a resolution specialist out of our Lexington, Kentucky Office. Kate, can you say hi everybody.

Kate Schottlekotte:

Hi, guys. Glad to be here today and talk with everyone.

Greg Hamlin:

Excellent. That's Kate. We have Natalie Dangles, who is a regional resolution manager for our company as well as our resident blogger for the podcast. So Natalie, could you say hi to everybody.

Natalie Dangles:

Hello, everyone. Hi.

Greg Hamlin:

She is from beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. Where we have a little little office there. And then finally, we have hope Ramada a senior catastrophic manager from also beautiful Lexington, Kentucky. Hope. Could you say hi to everybody.

Hope Remetta:

Hi, everybody Thanks for having me on today.

Greg Hamlin:

So we are excited to have these three with us today. And we're covering a topic that is actually really near and dear to my heart. Because it's something that I've been thinking about for probably five years now. And it was just in the thinking stage for most, most of those five years. But it's something that we call our empathetic resolution model. And so before we get into that, though, I would like each of you guys to talk about how you got into the industry. And what your current role here is at Berkley industrial comp. So let's start with you. Okay, how did you get into the industry? I know that was your dream job, right? A claims adjuster doing worker's

Kate Schottlekotte:

Ever since I was little it was my dream. So I compensation? kind of honestly just fell into the industry. I graduated college with a business management degree, honestly, not really knowing what I wanted to do. And I'm sure like a lot of people I graduated college and was like, oh, gosh, I'm in the real world now. So my first experience with insurance, I managed a chiropractic office, out of college for a little bit over four years. And not only did I do a lot of you know, office work there, but I handled a lot of their insurance. So I dealt a lot with the billing side of it, and also trying to make sure that we were paid properly. We did deal with a lot of workers comp then. So that was my first experience in the industry of just insurance itself. And I was there ended up leaving the chiropractic office. And I was actually a flight attendant for about three years. And at the end of that I had decided it was time for me to come home. And I needed to really decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I actually had a lot of our clients that came in to the chiropractic office actually worked for Kemi a workers comp company here in Kentucky. And just well, nice group of people. Well, I always knew them, because I worked there for so long. And we really got to know our patients. Well, when I came back from Denver from being the flight attendant. I had, my mom had a friend that actually worked at Kemi and I kind of forgot my connections there honestly. And she had talked about how much she liked working for the company and said, hey, you know, Kate should really just interview you know, send in a resume. Well, I sent in my resume, and sure enough, I got a call from the HR department who I actually already knew and did my interview and got the job and that's how my insurance or workers comp insurance career started.

Greg Hamlin:

That's awesome. I always brag on Kate for those who don't know, she handles some of our most high more high profile accounts because her customer service is amazing. So and I there's got to be something to the flight attendant piece because I don't know I've seen more people who are tired and obnoxious on airplanes than maybe anywhere else? So, I gotta know what was that like a when you were flying and dealing with difficult customers?

Kate Schottlekotte:

Lots of different personalities, like you were saying great again, the thing about that is, is you're stuck in a plane with him for a certain amount of hours, so you're not going anywhere. So you've got to prepare the situation pretty quickly and keep it under control. Just like any job, you know, depending on what you were working with, sometimes working first class was either a little bit easier, because you know, you pretty much just served in the food and their drinks, they were happy. And then other times it was it was a, it was a challenge, they were a little bit more demanding, I would say sometimes, some of them felt a little bit more entitled, because their status. So you had to really learn how to deal with each individual person, just because everyone was really different on the planes, you know, you have people that are traveling to vacation. So typically, those people were in a great mood, you know, you'd also have people that were sad, they were traveling, you know, because of deaths in the family or things like that, or you have people that were terrified, because they were scared of flying. So it really was just dealing with a lot of different people, different personalities, you know, not only with the people on the plane, but also with your co workers. Because you don't know these people, you switch your you know, your crews, very often. So you know, you may never even have met this person, and you may never see them again. So it really does teach you a lot with how to how to work with co-workers, and how to keep situations with cars with customers or, you know, passengers, however you want to say it, just how to keep it under control and how to try to talk somebody down.

Greg Hamlin:

That's awesome. Okay, so now my secret's out for all those carriers who are like, I need adjusters and I don't know where to look.

Matthew Yehling:

Natalie, you want to give us your background and how you got into workers compensation?

Natalie Dangles:

Yes. Previously, I had worked in banking and prior customer service, and I had gone back to college after my son was born. And I got a criminal justice major. Well, when I graduated, it was 2008, which as everyone knows, there was a big housing crisis. And, you know, a lot of not a lot of job opportunities upon graduation, especially living in Las Vegas. But I was looking at the job ads, and there was an insurance company that said medical majors and criminal justice majors, welcome. And of course, I'm very curious. So I was like, Oh, I'll apply for that. And, you know, I went through the phone interview, and they called me back for another interview. And they explained what workers comp was, I didn't have a clue at the time. You know, when I've been, I was just curious, like, why do you want criminal justice majors? And they thought I'd be a great fit. And, you know, so I was like, Yeah, this is great, you know, right out of graduation, great benefits, great hours. And I remember the first phone call, because they were very short staffed. The day that I started. The first phone call I took I still remember it. It was very exciting, you know, had to do with spiders, and which I'm terrified of, like, really terrified. And it's never been a boring day since and I've been in it for now. 13 going on 14 years, so. I love it.

Matthew Yehling:

Yeah, so spoiler alert, right? You were in the banking industry, another customer centric environment before you got that criminal justice degree. So by tapping into something here aren't we?

Greg Hamlin:

I think we are. Justice major, too. And also our next our next guest hope is I'm going to spoil a secret. She's a criminal justice major as well, if I'm right, right.

Hope Remetta:

That is right. You know,

Greg Hamlin:

I know the answer this question, but I want to help to tell it. So how did you enter the worker's compensation space?

Hope Remetta:

So I initially went to college for to become a speech language pathologist. I was raised by a nurse. So the medical field was of interest to me. And during that timeframe that my first two years I also bought art and volunteer, I worked as a physical therapy aide assistant. And I quickly learned that hands on medical field was not my thing. I didn't have the stomach for it. So I quickly had to shift and shift into criminal I was a double criminal justice and psych with business certificate. And I decided I wanted to go to law school and had the GPA quickly realized my LSAT were terrible after taking it twice, and that I was not going to get in any place that I wanted to be in and may This realization my last semester of my senior year of college and a friend told me Hey, you should probably go go to this job fair at the Union tomorrow. Like I'm having to face it, right. So okay, so I went out, bought a suit and went and met Terrance at Liberty Mutual dear friend, and she introduced me to the insurance world. And here I am listening to her tell me that you get to wear the legal hat, the medical hat and the investigative hat. And it seems like the perfect mix of all the worlds right. So I started with them. Week after I graduated college, I was with them for 15 years, and moved over to Berkeley Industrial Comp over a year ago, just over a year ago. So a little over 16 years.

Greg Hamlin:

Awesome.

Matthew Yehling:

Congrats, then the newest member to the team here, I think. So I also took the LSAT and my dad still asked me 20 years later in the industry, what am I going to go back and go to law school. I haven't figured out what I want to do when I grow up either Kate.

Greg Hamlin:

So spoiler alert, hope and I, we didn't know each other. But we went to the same university, actually Indiana University and we actually were at the same career fair. And we actually both met Liberty Mutual that same day. And I still had a little bit more school to do because I wanted I ended up taking 12 credit hours in in suffer summer semester. So we both accepted the job. But she got a head start on me by about two months. So we were actually trained out of the same office. And were adjusters at one point sit next to each other. So yeah.

Kate Schottlekotte:

Greg, I knew that you guys both we know work together. But I didn't realize that about the the career fair, the job fair. That's Oh, yeah.

Greg Hamlin:

And most people don't know this. So I'll share this little secret. We both apply. We both also applied at the time Liberty about Watsa. And we both applied there, and we were both rejected. And then we were both hired by Liberty at the national market. And I was so confused at the time, because I interviewed with Wasa which is now gone. So I can say that, and I and they told me I didn't get the job. And then the next day Liberty called me and said, We're we'd like you to come in for an interview. You just call me yesterday and said I didn't have a job. They're like, Oh, that was our other office.

Hope Remetta:

It worked out in our favor

Matthew Yehling:

It work out, that's right.

Greg Hamlin:

That's right. So the tea has been spilled, but I think it's safe at this point. And I think we both all appreciate coming up through Liberty, they did a fantastic job with their training. So nothing but good things to say. Well, so the big idea today that I wanted to get these three on to talk and have Matt and I kind of chat about is empathetic resolution model. And just to give some framework on this, this is something I've been thinking about for a number of years, dating back, at least to some of the beginning of the time, I was at the state funding Kentucky. And it was the concept. You know, there's a lot of talk about claims advocacy. And that word sort of scares me a little bit. Because when I think about an adjusters role, they're representing so many different people, right? When we think about it, they're representing the insured who's paying premium. They're trying to help the injured worker, obviously get back to health and hopefully work. They're an employee of the carrier. So and there's an agent sometimes involved. And so there's a lot of moving parts. But the thought process was what if we treat people better? And then by treating people better and showing empathy and everything we do? Will we not end up with better outcomes. Because in the end, we're in an outcome driven business. And then how do we get there? Which is the million dollar question why it's something that had only remained in my brain as a thought for a long time, until we got some of these people involved that are here today to talk about how do we take this and actually find ways to implement this into workers' compensation, while honoring the statutes that are there while being keeping our promise to our insurance? How do we do that? And so the idea was the big idea, and we're still working on this is by developing a comprehensive empathetic resolution model, we can achieve better outcomes with our injured workers, strengthen relationships with our insureds, and improve our employee engagement and retention, and that the model will lead to better results and increased trust with our insurance and improve results for Berkley and help us find meaning and purpose in our work, decreasing litigation and and thinking about more more cooperation with our injured workers. So it's a really big idea. And so one of the things that we have done with this is we really have brainstormed as a team. Well, what do we do? How do we do this? Because there's not a playbook on how to create an empathetic resolution model. So I wanted to start and I would say, we're still at the beginning of this journey, as a team. But I wanted to have the opportunity to have Natalie, Hope, and Kate tell the story of where we started and where we're at and some of the ideas that we're vetting that support this idea of trying to show empathy in our work. So with that, I'll pose the question to you hope. Why do you think empathy is critical in workers compensation insurance?

Hope Remetta:

You know, when you think about, for example, the work or the injured workers that we experience and the insurers that we insure, you know, we're looking at injured workers that work in really high risk jobs. So when injuries occur, oftentimes, they're catastrophic in nature, right. So this is just a really big example to make it really clear why empathy is so important. But think about that being life changing. Everybody has different things going on in their lives, right, or socio economic backgrounds, different family dynamics, all of these things. And then you've got this catastrophic, potentially catastrophic injury that occurs. And you've got this insurance company that comes in and depending upon the state starts telling you where you need to be going and what you need to be doing in order to get your treatment. And if we can show them that we are here and that we are here to help them. Sure, we are a business, right, we have insureds, but at the end of the day, we're all humans, right, we want to help each other. And if we can show them that our interest is to help them get better. And ultimately, if they get better, we have a better outcome. Right? Think about when you have anybody that if somebody wants you to do something, anytime that you're approached from a place of caring and compassion and a place of empathy, you're more likely to want to do good, right want to do better, your attitude is better, you have a more positive outlook on on the situation. And that's ultimately the goal, right is to show them support, show them that, you know, that that we want the best for them. And hopefully, in result, we will see that they want the best for themselves too. And we'll see them do what they need to do to get better.

Matthew Yehling:

Yeah, I think that's a great example, I, you know, when we think about empathy, you know, when I think about it, I don't think it just relates to the injured employee, but also to the insured, right, you're, you have a an insured, and I don't often know the situation. But a lot of times those employees, we gave a couple examples of a friend or you knew somebody that that you worked with that got you the job, there have been a lot of times I've seen this example of that injured employee is a cousin or a nephew or a niece or a brother, sister, uncle, you know, they're not a claimant, you know, we use that word claimant pretty loosely in the insurance and insurance industry. And, you know, it's really, you know, kind of almost derogatory sounding. So, you know, when you were talking with the insureds right, you were, you know, you want to mention the injured employee, or you want to mention, you know, Mr. Smith, or, you know, you humanize the situation. But I think that's a big piece. Like I talked with my staff all the time. I'm like, you know, they're not claimants, they're, they're people they're injured employees, or somebody's spouse or significant other brother, aunt, uncle, whatever. So, you know, it's to me, it's not just empathy with the injured employee. I think that's a little bit of our focus today. But I know Natalie has an example. Maybe you can talk to you about an example that you're doing from an empathetic standpoint.

Natalie Dangles:

Yes. So right now, Hope, Kate, and I, we started sending cookies to injured workers, when they're had when either they've had a catastrophic injury, or they're having surgery or a setback and recovery. And so that's something that you know, we've started, it's it in the test stage. how that came about. It was there was a couple of things that had happened. Hope had, has really been pushing for the empathy mindset, which is wonderful. And you know, that's been a big focus. And at the same time, I had gotten a gift basket from my mother-in-law. It was around my birthday and as you know, with Covid birthdays look a lot different? They especially back in the early stages, the COVID, birthdays, you know, were a lot different back then you didn't celebrate how you would usually do that. And I was just feeling about that birthday kind of blah. And out of the blue, this beautiful gift basket comes. And I remember it was it was just so I was so touched, you know, it just really lifted my spirits. And at the same time, Greg was talking about one of our sister companies that sends handwritten cards and flowers to injured workers. So um, I was like, What about some gift baskets? That might, they might like that. So I was sitting with Kate, and hope. And we were talking because this is why collaboration is so important. You know, what kind of basket though? What would we, you know, would it be cheese, would it what can we send? And Kate says, Well, what about these cookie cards that we just got from home office, because our home office had sent some cookie cards to all of us for employee appreciation. And I was like, genius cookies. But that's it. That's what we need to send cookies. So that's another reason why collaboration is so important, because you can think of one idea, but then, you know, you expand on it, and it gets better.

Greg Hamlin:

I think that's great now, and we, you know, when you mentioned the flowers, we're thinking about flowers in the beginning. And then we're thinking about our injured workers. They're like cell phone tower workers. Right? And they're like, Well, maybe they would give them to the wife and we were like, trying to figure out well, how, you know, we want it to be meaningful, we want them to know that, that we care, but at the same time, it seems a little weird. So we're trying to find like, for our customer base, what would make sense. And we came across these cookie cards, like Natalie said that, that they have a message like get well, or congratulations if they're back to work, or something like that. And then inside or two cookies inside of the card for us. And so we've we've just started out, we're just moving out of the pilot phase of this, where we've been trying it out and tracking it, to see how it would work. And I know Hope I had an experience with one of her injured workers that I want her to talk about. And it was a little scary at first because this gentleman was diabetic. Probably not cookies, right? So how that came about and what you ended up doing and how that experience was. Yeah.

Hope Remetta:

So so this gentleman had been recommended for surgery, but could not undergo surgery until he got his diabetes under control. And this ended up going on for he worked really hard for good six, six to eight months, I think it was and did a phenomenal job. He did everything he was supposed to be doing. He worked really hard, and ultimately was able to undergo his surgery. And of course we want I wanted to send something to him because wow, one you just had surgery. But two, you just had this. I mean, you overcame a huge mountain, right? Like you should. That's huge. And you clearly want to get better. You clearly want to move forward in life and and you should be congratulated for that. So I wanted to send him cookies, but it didn't seem maybe like the best idea. Just send him a box of cookies right to consider he has worked so hard to get his diabetes under control. So Natalie and I scoured the website and came up with lots of different ideas. We ended up sending him sugar free cookies. And I got a phone call from him. And he is you know, our traditional injured worker, right? He works for a blasting company for 30 plus years. He's gruff, he's burly. He's, you know, not as super booked snowman, but super kind. And he calls me and he goes hope he knows. My wife just told me that, that you sent me cookies. And he goes, well. I said to my wife, you know, she doesn't even know me. Why would she send me cookies. And she he goes, I've never been I've never been sent anything by anybody in my life. And that meant everything to me. And this, you know, this big burly man that like doesn't show his emotion is it was just unbelievably kind and couldn't almost couldn't conceptualize somebody being nice to him. Right. Like, not nice to him, but especially the insurance company, right? Like, that's not the typical role that society puts insurance companies in right and so you know, we had a good laugh about it and, you know, told him and made sure he knew that they were sugar free. So that was good that was one of the first cookies we sent out and it was a really neat response because he was floored and shocked. And he's he's been doing great in his recovery process, not quite back to work yet, but we're getting there.

Greg Hamlin:

That's awesome. And I think the big idea with all of that, it's just that when thinking about that, you know, maybe that claim eventually gets litigated. But there's certainly a level of trust there and cooperation and a partnership, which is really a role that we need to be in. And the so I love that story.

Matthew Yehling:

I just can't imagine, you know, the, I love the idea of the flowers. I just love to see all these spouses and like, you got some 'splainin to do now. No, it was the Insurance company that sent I'm sure. Kate, what are other examples that that you're doing? to infuse some empathy?

Kate Schottlekotte:

Yeah. So when we first started talking about this, Greg came to me and he knows that I'm kind of the type of person that I've been this way for a long time, I love to send cards to people, like Nayeli was saying, when we had got the cookie card in the mail, I was actually super impressed with that from our home office, because I like to send things to my friends, my family. And so when that came in, I was just, I was so excited that it even came because I knew I could use that in my personal life. It was a good price. And it was just something to to send to someone you know, that you care about letting them know, Hey, I'm thinking about you, hey, I miss you. And so Greg knows me and my personal life, that I send cards to friends all the time, I send cards, just because you know, they live say, you know, and I've got a lot of friends in Denver from when I was flying, and just the card, hey, I miss you, you know, just just let them know, I'm thinking about them, or, you know, anniversary or birthday card, whatever it is, you know, I mean, you can get cards at the dollar store, if you want, you know, but although I will say I like to spend hours in the card aisle looking for the exact proper cards. But so Greg said, why don't we do a type of empathy card to send out to our injured workers, just a, you know, handwritten little card just saying, Hey, we're thinking of you, or, you know, thinking of you during your recovery time, or congratulations on returning to work. So we thought it would be an easy, inexpensive way to reach out to our injured workers, just to give them a little bit more encouragement. And a little bit more like Greg was saying, to help our partnership, and to have the trust there. So we got with our HR department here I'm sorry, our marketing department. And they got some cards put together for us a couple of different little designs, and we're just sending handwritten cards for injured workers. I will say the feedback from those is much different, which I expected that I mean, when you get a box of cookies in the mail, it's a little bit more impressive than a card. So the feedback hasn't been the same on the cards, I will say. But I still do think it is important, even though we're not getting the feedback of them thanking us for a card. It's still putting our name out there in front of them when they get home from work after a long day. And you've gotten a handwritten card to you from your insurance company saying, Hey, we're just thinking about you hope you're recovering, going. Okay. I still think it's a good thing that we're continuing to do it just to keep our name out there letting them know we're here and that we do want the best for them.

Greg Hamlin:

That's awesome, Kate, and she really, is if you if you've ever met Kate, she literally will spend hours in the card aisle like trying to find the perfect card for the perfect person. I've never met somebody who's who like finding cards is their hobby.

Kate Schottlekotte:

Greg, I'm struggling right now with I'm getting married and couple of weeks. And I'm still struggling finding all the perfect cards for my bridesmaids. I've been I've been searching at all the stores and I've been ordering cards on Etsy. So I'm not there yet. Got a couple more perfect ones to go for.

Greg Hamlin:

I think that this will show results over time. And it's one of those things that anyway, you can show people you that you care matters. And it's you know, I've said before, there's a narrative out there that is there. And there's some truth to it. But there's a narrative out there with lots of commercials, because there's lots of money behind litigation, that insurance companies, companies are evil, and they only care about money. And you know, I don't think that they have to not, I don't have to think they have to live in different planes. We can be profitable, and we can do the right thing. There's no reason that we can't and in fact, in many ways, I think we'll get better results doing that. So I'm absolutely glad you shared that.

Matthew Yehling:

I was just gonna ask you, Greg and you know, maybe you you see this more than Kate, Hope, or Natalie but what was the mindset of you know, corporate legal or even HR when you made this recommendation to them, I mean, it's uh, you know, we talked about innovation all the time, but in this is something that's outside the normal channels. So what was the pushback or was there pushback or were they immediately on board or what? Give us some of the background here.

Greg Hamlin:

So That's a great question, Matt. So, you know, I, that's part of the reason this never got off off of the runway in my previous career, because it's definitely outside of the box, a lot of this stuff outside the box and even figuring out well, how do you build us to the file, even though it's a $6 charge, you know, we had to figure that out. And there were there hurdles to figure out how to make the connections to make it all work. But eventually, I mean, it went all the way up to our EVP, and then it went all the way up to are in the innovation team at corporate. And there was amazing, amazing support. And I can say, I'm very proud to work for WR Berkeley, and that innovation is such a champion of what we try to do. There's been more support than I thought. And in fact, when we came up with these initial ideas we're talking about today, the next thing was, okay, let's get this idea. And let's get everybody involved in coming up with ways to build this out, which was so opposite to anything I'd experienced before. Not that my other employers weren't open minded, but you just don't normally think about creativity in the financial sector. Right. So and this is really more outside the box. So it, it I'm glad to have the support we've had. And I'm glad that you asked that. It's it's actually been refreshing. So. So one thing I wanted to chat with on was Natalie. So one of the other things that we had thought about was, when we make our first contact with injured workers, that's the very first impression whether we talk to him on the phone, but often we can't get ahold of them. And we send a first contact letter, because we want, we want to reach out to them. And as we started reading these letters, they sounded very corporate very, almost like an attorney had written them. And maybe they did. And, as we were thinking, nothing wrong with that my brother's an attorney. But you know, if you think that many of our injured workers may not have an education beyond an eighth grade education, they're doing manual jobs, that they're paid and compensated well, for the very physical jobs. Some of them English is not their native language. So this, this really was something that we wanted to get our arms around. And I really threw the baton to Natalie on this. So now I want you to talk about the journey of looking at how do we rewrite our contact letters?

Natalie Dangles:

Well, the thing that really stood out to me is, I look for patterns. And with the injured workers, they would get the contact letter, and they would be confused. They would sometimes get bills, they wouldn't know what to do with which would scare them, which is completely understandable. And those were some big pain points, there was a lot of confusion with that. And I was looking at the original contact letter, and I was like, well, it, it doesn't really flow. And it's not, you know, it doesn't give a lot, it doesn't go through step by step. And I wanted to create something that was almost like a manual, where you could, you know, go back to it and read through it. And it would make sense, and have our contact info and give them options as far as email, fax, you know, just giving them options on how they would want to communicate. But I also wanted it to sound more warm and inviting, as well, because it did sound kind of cold. Originally. The first letter, you know, like you said, it sounded like you know, it was from a corporate attorney. But this one, it sounds inviting. And I and I think it conveys the message. We are here to help you. We want to work with you. We want to make this process as easy as possible. And that was important to me to cut out a lot of the confusion, because I can put myself in their shoes and imagine going in the mailbox and thinking well, what does this mean? So we wanted to make it better.

Greg Hamlin:

I think the key word there, Natalie, that you said as you wanted to put yourself in their shoes.

Natalie Dangles:

Yeah.

Greg Hamlin:

And the end of the day. I mean, that's what this is all about. Just without without giving out all of our secret sauce, I'm going to share a couple lines so that people can see the difference. Yeah, so the letter now reads my name is so and so the adjuster, and I'm your adjuster, who will be assisting you with your workers compensation claim, being injured at work is not easy. But I want to reassure you that I'm here to make your claims experience as smooth and streamlined as possible. And then right from there, it goes through all the steps. So to us it was important. And Natalie did such a nice job of this thing, looking at it through the lens of how can we show that we're here to help. And at the same time, make sure we give them all the information we need so that they get the benefits that they are owed. And so that's the key with that and I appreciate your work with that. I'm excited to see we've just started changing those out. So we don't have a lot of feedback yet. But I really do think it's the mindset as we look at everything we do a little bit differently. See how it can change things overall.

Natalie Dangles:

But that's one thing that I really, you know, when I'm speaking with my injured workers, I'll tell them most likely, if you were at a hospital or you know, had an ambulance, you're going to get a bill, do not panic, I want to call, you know, before you get it, I want you to be aware of it, just snap a photo of it, email it to me, and we'll get working on it. And, you know, so that way, they're not blindsided, I get really upset when I think of people getting blindsided and stressed out.

Matthew Yehling:

So I'll throw this one out to hope or Kate, when this process rolled out, and you're changing, you know, the empathetic resolution model within within the claims department. What was the how was that? Perceived or accepted or not accepted? You know, how was the the adjusters feedback on that? What are you guys and what have you seen with your peers? And? And was it accepted? Were people pushing back? You know, what, give us some background or insight on how people responded internally with within the claims department?

Kate Schottlekotte:

Well, Hope do you agree? I think everyone at Berkeley is pretty accepting to most things like this, because they're everyone here is about thinking outside the box, about making our injured workers trust us about doing you know, what is the right thing and, you know, getting claims to where they need to be so that we can, you know, we can close them. You know, that's, that's our goal. So I think everyone really just was excited about it, and is open to any of the new ideas. And I think a lot of them seem excited to start the process that we've been doing with the cookies, don't you think, Hope?

Hope Remetta:

Yeah, I do. I think that, I think one thing that you that you would see, as a commonality with adjusters is to do this job, you have to care about people, this is a really hard job to do if you don't care. And so I think that given that that's the mindset of many people in the role of doing the work that we do, that you bring an idea to, to make that better, and just show that our injured workers that we care, we haven't had any pushback, quite frankly. And I think that also speaks the team to lots of different personalities, lots of different backgrounds. But we all have a commonality or a common goal, which is to do the right thing for our injured workers and get the best outcome that we can get. And if we can do that, by having all these different tools to show them that we care. It makes our job more fun, quite frankly, in my opinion.

Greg Hamlin:

I agree. Hope. And I think you you said that very well. And I think you know, one thing that I think has been a challenge, you know, not at the adjuster level, which is interesting, but maybe at some of the leadership levels, and not in our company, but I've seen it in the industry is there's a concept of, if I do this, then that just means I'm rolling over on everything. And I and I think of it as much like my, I'm a parent, I have five children, and I'm crazy enough that I have a sixth on the way. So we'll go ahead and get that out of high school, I've got a junior and a sophomore in high school, and I'm gonna have a baby. So I'm definitely on the Crazy Train. But what I will tell you, though, as a parent, right, I love my children. At the same time, there's still rules, and there's still accountability to follow those rules. So just because you're displaying empathy and you care doesn't mean that you're not going to hold people accountable. If they have restrictions that they go back to work, if they're working accommodated that you do those things. So I think somehow there's a mindset of well, if I do this, then I can't do that. And I would argue that that's absolutely accurate. I would never parent my kids and only be mean to them and only hold them accountable and never show any of the other qualities, right. So I think as an industry, we can do better. And this is one of those opportunities. So I want to make sure I said that. Because I do think sometimes there's a mindset when you hear the word claims advocacy, which I'm not in love with that word. But when you hear that sometimes people think well, okay, that's warm and fuzzy. But we're a business. And the reality is I think we can do right, by everybody by doing this the right way. So I wanted to bring that up. But I did want to mention, so Matt had asked us about corporate. So they had asked us to put the idea out. And so we had already started working this Hope, Natalie, and Angie was out on this call as well as Kate, to come up with these ideas we've talked about today. And when we opened it up to the company, 28 more ideas were submitted. And it was fascinating, like these ideas went everything from how we interact with our agents, which has nothing to do with claims right, or how we interact with our policyholders or insurance. And so we're in the process now of ranking those and talking about which ones can we implement are easier to implement, what steps will we have to take to use these but I'm actually excited to see this move beyond claims into Berkley Industrial Comp. as a whole. And I really do think it will be a differentiator in the market. Again, it's still really early to see where all these ideas go. But it's definitely encouraging to see how much employee engagement there has been from all types of different departments and thinking about what we could do different.

Hope Remetta:

Well, and just just on Monday, what I was, I was thinking, as you said, that that, you know, rolling this out, you know, that affects our agents. And that's nothing to do with claims. I think one of the things that I've found coming from a different insurance company to how we function at Berkeley industrial comp, has been that we actually are so much more interconnected, then than I ever previously perceived, right? And that the agent is really directly linked to our claims and how we ended up handling claims or getting them timely and working with our customers. And I think that I had more of that disconnect. So I think if we can, the more timely we're able to do things for our injured workers, does kind of come up from the top right leaning in that world, it's from our customer, their employer, it's from the agents, the brokers, it's, it's like this domino effect, right? If we can start at the top, it will only get better.

Matthew Yehling:

Yeah, I would imagine if the agents not getting those harassing phone calls from the customer, and the customer is not getting them from the injured employee, ever. Everyone down the line? is feeling some some of the love there. So yeah. I mean, maybe I'm leading into the next thing or , you know, how are you extending this beyond, you know, into into those spaces? You know, Greg referenced the 28 ideas, but what do you what do you see Natalie, Hope, Kate?

Natalie Dangles:

Well, one of the things I mean, not just with the injured workers, but you know, if we look at like, with our customers, they'll come to us and they'll say, I can't get him back to light duty, he's light duty, but I don't have the work available. And now my EMOD, which is, you know, which is very important for customers, when they go to bid on certain jobs, you know, what do I do, and you, you put yourself in their shoes, as far as, wow, this really affects everything, let's get our tools together, we have resources, maybe we can get them, you know, get them back to work, but in a nonprofit sense, maybe not physically on the location. But that way, you know, it reduces their costs. And it gets the injured worker in a routine who wants to get back to work. So you're helping everyone. But it's really important to, you know, think outside the box, use your resources and tools, and try to solve a problem. And that's what we do is we problem solve, and you try to do it as timely and quickly as possible. And, you know, when a broker comes to you, and has a question, usually, it's because the employer had a question. So you try to solve it quickly, you know, stop the bleeding, because it just festers, you know, more and more emails, calls questions, and you just want to stop the confusion, and solve their problems and do it pretty quickly. So it makes everybody happier.

Greg Hamlin:

The relationships that are built with our agents and our customers those really, really matter. You know, and I can think of Natalie was just telling me this when I was at the conference, this last weekend, this last week, you know, she had an injured worker, who had a severe hand injury, and the insured had a relationship enough with Natalie, he's texting her photos in the report and everything on a Saturday, when she's not working. But that relationship was there. And she said, You know, that's great. I'm gonna get get this information back to you. I'm picking up my dinner. But when I get back to my house, I'm going to follow up.

Natalie Dangles:

Yeah.

Greg Hamlin:

That kind of relationship, where they know that we're there for them, and we're going to take care of things. I think that matters. And I think that's part of it, too. Hope you were gonna add something.

Hope Remetta:

Yeah, I was just gonna say that. I think what's neat about generate other ideas is that you've got people from all parts of our company, right, looking at how not just from a claims perspective, but from finance perspective, or you know, underwriting or all all of the different ways in which we can impact impact our customers impact the industry and changing those mindsets, especially those that are more removed from that claims process. Right? We're moved from talking to the the injured worker that's now a quadriplegic, right? You if you it's easier to I don't want to say dehumanize but it's easier to detach that, right. And and having all these these ideas come through shifts that format Things that within the company, right? I think that Berkeley industrial compact was already shifted, quite frankly, certainly different than I had ever experienced. But it's neat to see everybody really working on changing that mindset and thinking, how can we show that we care? How can we not just change our claims process? Or impact our customers? But how can we make this a change within the full industrial industry, which is huge. I think it's the start of it an amazing beginning,

Greg Hamlin:

I think that's fantastic. You know, we, I was reading an article the other day, and there's a term being coined right now called the Great Resignation, which, which we're in the middle of, right. So if you, if you read the paper, right, with COVID, it's been coined the Great Resignation, where many, many employees are leaving their jobs that they that they had, due to either workplace flexibility that they had or didn't have during COVID. Or, or they've decided that the job they had did not give meaning and purpose in their life, which was important. And they went through the pandemic and realized, this matters to me, and I want this to matter. So I want to throw this one to Kate, how does implementing an empathy, empathy in, in your claims handling, change maybe the meaning and purpose in your day to day work?

Kate Schottlekotte:

Well, it kind of goes back to, like I said, that I enjoy sending out, you know, little cards, or little, you know, Cookie gifts, or whatever, to my personal friends and family. Because I like to let them know, you know, like I said, before, that I like to let them know that I'm care about them, or I'm thinking of them, or during a hard time, you know, I'm thinking of them, I'm there for them. And some of these injured workers, especially some of the, you know, claims that hope has, you know, you have a lot of contact with them. And they put a lot of trust in you. And some of them, you these injured workers you do develop a friendship with, and it's just a, it's a, you know, phone friendship, but you really do develop a friendship with them. And some of them, you know, they talk to you, they tell you about their grandkids, they tell you about, you know, their family, and so you do have a friendship with them. So that when you get a call, I have a guy that I actually sent one of the cookie boxes to, and you know, he called me and we were talking about something else with his claim. But you know, he said, Thank you so much for you know, those cookies. And he was like, that was really cool. He said, it's really nice to know that someone's thinking of me, and you know, and I explained to him, you know, that we want the best for him, we want the best outcome for him. And we hope that he does get better and get back to work. And he just really appreciated it. So it made me feel good. Because that's to the kind of the person I am. And, you know, he actually even thanked me past that and said, you know, my sister doesn't live here. And she's the only person who really I send things to, or she sent things to me. And he said, I really love this idea. I'm gonna save it and send some stuff to my sister. So just having that conversation with this man who, you know, very nice injured worker, and had already developed a little bit of a friendship with him anyway, you know, it made me feel good that he had a good day. Because I know how I feel when it you know, if you've had a bad day at work, or you've had just a tough day in general, I know how I feel when you know, I do get a card in the mail from you know, a friend or my grandma or something. It brightens up your day, regardless of who it is. It just, it brightens up your day.

Greg Hamlin:

That's awesome, Kate, and I, you know, I couldn't agree more with everything you just said, I really do feel like relationships matter. And we have to remember that we are keeping a promise to people with our policy. And when we treat people with dignity and respect, and we care, good things come from that. And I believe that in leadership, I believe it in claims handling it, I think it needs to be part of who we are. And the great thing is maybe not the great thing, not everybody's doing it. So it's a differentiator in the market to which is good. That's a good thing.

Matthew Yehling:

To steal Greg's line, right? Always think in a positive manner.

Greg Hamlin:

Yeah, it's huge. It's huge. Always thinking and I live by that. I live by that. And I really do believe that if you surround yourself with positivity, it grows, if you surround yourself with negativity, it grows. And so you've got to work at work at it every day with the people who you're around. And if you're around a team, where every time you have an injured worker, you're complaining about them, guess what's going to happen, you know, it spreads. So, I just want to thank you guys, Natalie, Hope, Kate all the other people who are on this call who have been contributing to these ideas. I'm so excited to see where we are in three to five years, as we implement a lot of these ideas and vet them and work through them and see where they go. I really do believe in what you guys are doing. And I'm excited. I always feel honored to have you guys on my team because of the change that we're that's happening. So.

Matthew Yehling:

I was just gonna say I applaud you guys do for what you're doing. So I'm a little removed from that process. But I mean, I definitely deal with clients and customers and, and third party, you know adjusters every day. And this is definitely not the norm. So I applaud what you're doing. And anytime we can, you know, we tried to avoid saying the word but anytime you can humanize the process and bring empathy back into it, I think is, is outstanding and remembering that, you know, it's, it is somebody's loved one, it's somebody's spouse or whatever those are, those are important things and , avoid using those negative words and, and being positive about the whole process is beneficial for the organization. It's beneficial for the injured employee, it's beneficial for their employer. So I applaud you guys for for being out front.

Greg Hamlin:

Well, thank you guys again. You guys are the best. We'll wrap up today. We hope you'll join us for future podcasts releasing every two weeks on Monday. And again, if you can't get enough Adjusted in your life, here's your chance. Natalie Dangles. You can read her blog following these podcasts at www.berkindcomp.com Of course, if you have questions regarding this episode or previous episodes, we'd love to hear from you. Send your questions to marketing@berkind.com And we read everything you send us and we try to address questions in future episodes. And if you liked your Listen, please give us a review on Apple podcast platforms. We'd love that. We want to express Special thanks to Cameron Runyon for our excellent music. If you need more music in your life, please contact him directly by locating his email on our show notes. And thanks again for all your support. Remember, do right, think differently. And don't forget to care. That's it for today guys.