ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
Continuing Education with Bob Wilson
In this rebroadcasted episode of ADJUSTED, we welcome Bob Wilson, President & CEO of WorkCompCollege.com. Bob shares his expert insights on the evolving landscape of the workers' compensation industry.
Season 9 is proudly sponsored by Berkley Industrial Comp. Join hosts Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Mike Gilmartin, Area Vice President of Sales & Distribution at Key Risk, for this enlightening discussion.
For more insights, visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog. Have questions? Email us at marketing@berkindcomp.com. For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com.
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from Sweet Home, Alabama and Berkeley Industrial Comp, and I'm excited to have you join me for this rebroadcast. This episode is with a good friend of mine, bob Wilson, and I've known Bob for a number of years. His claim to fame was starting workerscompensationcom and then moving on to the education space, and I've really enjoyed having him on the podcast multiple times. But in this episode we really focused on the importance of continuing education and how do we help adjusters learn and grow and advance in their career through deepening their education. Bob's new endeavor is focused on that, and so this was a great opportunity to talk about the tools that are out there to help adjusters further their career. So I hope you enjoy this one. Remind folks to like, follow and share the podcast. We'd also love it if you leave us a five-star review so others can find their way to the podcast and, as always, remind our listeners to do right, think differently and don't forget to care. Hope you enjoy this one.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody and welcome 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. Mike Gilmartin, mike, you wanna introduce yourself to everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hello everybody. Mike Gilmartin from Key Risk. I am in sunny Greensboro, North Carolina. It's going to be like 80 degrees today, Greg, so I'm really excited to be stuck inside. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:I know Well. Hey, having grown up in the Midwest, I'll take this warmer weather every day. So we've got our special guest today, bob Wilson, who actually did an episode with us a while back. He is the president of WorkCompllegecom and has been in the industry a long time. Bob, do you want to say hi to everybody?
Speaker 3:Hello everybody, thank you. Thanks, greg, Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I'm glad to have you, bob. So if you haven't followed Bob, bob's been very involved in workers' compensation for a number of years and has spoken at many different conferences, and we wanted to talk today about continuing education, and I think we joke about this a lot that none of us when we were in kindergarten thought we were going to become workers' compensation experts and there aren't really degrees for that. There are some risk and safety degrees, I think, at a few colleges, but for the most part, everybody got into the industry one way or another, and so I felt like covering a topic of continuing education would be good. So, bob, I know for you it's been a while since we did this previous episode. I thought we'd just start by talking about how did you end up in the industry?
Speaker 3:Well and we may have even talked about that in the last time we did this and the answer is probably the same as everybody else, I got here by accident, completely by accident. I had background in business management and human resources. I ended up starting a web development firm in the 90s which was fairly successful and through that was introduced to a gentleman who owned the domain workerscompensationcom and had never done anything with it, and we had a common vision for what could happen and we decided in 1999 to set that up and that's what I actually did. For almost 23 years I ran workerscompensationcom and you get into this industry, I tell people it's like Hotel California you can check out, but you can never, ever leave Once you're here. You're here and it's a great industry. And I left that previous position last year to start something new but obviously wanted to stay around. There's still things to do here, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask the same question to Mike, because I've hosted I don't know how many episodes with you, Mike, but I don't think I've ever asked you this question. So how did you end up in workers' comp?
Speaker 2:You know, greg, I don't really know. No, I'm just kidding, and I appreciate you calling us all experts on this, because I'm not sure I'm an expert, I'm not sure you can ever be an expert?
Speaker 2:No. So I went to University of Maryland and I studied criminal justice and I had high hopes of being the next Jason Bourne or an FBI agent. And for one reason or another that process didn't really work out. And so my dad was actually in insurance for 50 years, started in claims and said hey man, why don't you look at insurance? And so a job opening came available at a larger insurance carrier. I went into it and said you know what? We'll give it six months, like we'll do this for six months and I'll find something else to do. And it's been almost 15 years. So it's.
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't mean to get into it, but I've learned a ton along the way. I think it's an unbelievable career and I think in general I know there's some risk management programs in college, but it's an under I don't want to say under known field, but it's underutilized how good of a career path it can be for folks coming out of college, and I think the vast majority of us fall into it and then end up staying, like Bob said, for forever. So I've thoroughly enjoyed it. You told everybody your story, greg, but what about you? Is it similar? You just kind of like decided you were going to handle work on claims one day, yeah.
Speaker 1:No. So for me, I was also a criminal justice major, and at the time, though, I was doing non-for-profit fundraising for Indiana University and loved it, love giving back, like helping people passionate about it. I felt like if I could help people get an education, then they could fix a lot of their own problems, hopefully. So I really love doing that. But at the time I was young and crazy. We got my wife and I have been we'll be married 20 years coming up, but we got married while I was in college, and so we already had a baby. While I was going to school, and as I was trying to figure out how to graduate, I met with the people at the foundation to further my career there, and they said you've already got a kid, do you want more? And I said, well, my wife jokes that she wants 10. And he said then you need to get out of non-for-profit, you need to figure something else out. And I said, well, I don't have a business degree, I'm a criminal justice major and I don't think I want to go on to law school. And so they said, well, go to a career fair, go talk to the business people. You've been doing the same thing in non-for-profit, just switch over and then give back with your extra time in the non-for-profit sector. So that's kind of the way I've took things.
Speaker 1:And again similar story. The way I've took things and again similar story. I'm at a large carrier, at a career fair, and knew absolutely nothing about workers' comp. But I knew I needed a paycheck and a way in. And here I am, almost 20 years later. So very similar, very similar.
Speaker 2:What I'm hearing is criminal justice majors don't do what they go to school for.
Speaker 3:I'm kind of picking that up. I have a nephew who just graduated from the Cary School of Law University of Maryland and he's now he's a new assistant state's attorney in Frederick, maryland actually. But he didn't go the criminal justice route, but he did have to go pursue on beyond into law school to do something. So apparently, criminal justice you end up in workers' comp. Now that's probably a whole blog in there somewhere, I would think.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. When I was going to school, 9-11 happened. So I was a business major to begin with, and when 9-11 happened I thought, well, if I switch to criminal justice, in this new world there'll be job, and so that really why I switched. But I didn't know I would end up in this space. But it's worked out really well because again, we get to help people, not to sidebar too quickly.
Speaker 2:But I think what that proves since we're talking about education and continuing education unless you're going into something very specific, right so like a science or law or things where the degree truly like what degree you get truly matters, what you major in in college is just a stepping stone to get into the working world. It is not a dictation of where you have to go. And I think people like I think college students, are like man, if I don't do this, I don't do this, I don't do this, it's not going to work out. And I think what we've all realized at least what I've realized is what I studied in college has nothing to do with what I'm doing now. I mean, there are things I learned in college that I can apply, but I think people put so much weight on their major and what they're majoring in and unless you're going into a specialized field, really it's just a proof that you can do the work to an employer.
Speaker 3:I agree with that. I have a bachelor's degree in business administration and really in college what you learned was the discipline to learn and how to then learn your job once you got out of college. I mean, there were some things in a business world and business school that certainly apply, but a lot of it is you know, you have to get out of the school and fall on your face a few times in the trenches and that's your education.
Speaker 1:I exactly agree with both of you, and I think that's especially in this industry, and probably all industries. I think that's where continuing education is so important. Once you get into the career that you're moving into, it's recognizing the skill sets you need and then finding the resources to help you improve and really sharpen your saw. You know from your perspective, bob, why do you feel like constantly learning is important?
Speaker 3:Well, I think, because things constantly change. You know, we're not the same industry we were 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago, you know, and to some degree, this industry, particularly it's so heavily regulated and process driven that there are a lot of things that we do because we've always done it this way and I think there are better ways out there. I am curious, and I think it's been a trend in the industry. You said you were in school at 9-11. You had just joined the industry. After that what level? And not naming it you were with a different company than the one you're with today. Correct, correct, yes, oh, good, so we don't have the name, but we can talk about it. We don't. Yes, what was the quality of training that you went through 20 years ago? What was the training program? Like, you're a newbie, you don't know anything about comp, like the rest of us. When you step in, what was your training?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. So I think initially I probably worked a month or so where I had a manager that would sit with me sometimes or there was a senior adjuster that would help. And then sometime in that period, within the first maybe two months, maybe six weeks, they sent me to home office for two weeks and it was two weeks of generic kind of workers' claims training. They couldn't get into jurisdictional specifics because they were bringing people in in this national carrier from all over the country. So you know, but you at least learned where the system was and how to basically investigate a claim.
Speaker 1:I think we might've even done a mock negotiation. But then after that it's like you're back at your desk trying to figure this stuff out. And what's hard about workers' comp and I don't know if you noticed this, mike, when you started out is every claim's different and just a couple different facts means you got to go a totally different route and trying to understand the medical component, the legal component, the jurisdictional component, the investigative component, how to work with others, how to listen, like a lot of those things. It was a lot. It felt like I was drinking from the fire hose, especially the first three years, I would say.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm curious about that because one of the trends I noticed and I started in 99, and I went a different route. I didn't have a claims background, I was an information services background serving the industry. But one of the things I noticed in my discussions with people around the country is after the dot-com bubble burst, which was early in 2000. I know because I launched a dot-com operation about three weeks before it busted. It was like showing up at a big rave three seconds ahead of the cops, but anyway it was where's everybody going? But prior to that time, training was probably more prevalent than it has become in the last 15 years across the industry. After the investment income for the insurance industry went away, there were some good programs that got cut. Training seemed to get cut and we concentrated more on stealing each other's people. And now, of course, we're running out of people to steal. And that's kind of what drove us to where I'm at now is that I think it's really becoming an urgent focus to get back and refocus on the core elements and train people so that we can actually keep the people we bring in, because you're a different generation than what's coming in today and no one ever agrees with the generations behind them, but they have different focus, they have different needs. They want to make a difference.
Speaker 3:I'm a boomer, okay, I'm a boomer, okay, I, I'm a boomer. I was taught to do my job and suck it up and feed your family. And if you don't like your job too bad, do your job. That's not the way people feel coming out of school. They want to make a difference.
Speaker 3:But if you look at how we market ourselves as an industry, you know people coming out of college they think we're a heavily regulated, stodgy, paper-driven industry that manages files, when in reality we need to market ourselves as and I've said this before we need to market ourselves as an industry that actually repairs broken and shattered lives. That's a very noble effort if we do it properly, and that's the element that we need to train people in and I think that's kind of been lost. That's why I asked that question early on about the type of training you went through, and I don't know if you've seen the same type of degradation overall in training from an industry perspective. And I'm not talking about the programs that are available. We'll talk, you know, I know today about several that are good programs, but internal corporate training is the focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. I do think you called me old there, though, Bob, because you said I'm from a different generation than the current one.
Speaker 3:Well, I think I did. I call you old.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 3:But I'll tell you there's a shocking reality and you just I could tell from the dates you gave you were in school 20 years after I was in school. Ok, so you're still in for shocking realities. When people who don't seem much younger than you start calling you sir, you know you're in trouble. That's happening to me.
Speaker 1:Well, I have my like I said earlier my daughter's graduating from high school this year. So I'm going to officially have a college, a college age child. So I think I think I'm earning it. But I think you hit on some things there that were really important.
Speaker 1:I think you hit on some things there that were really important and I think the problem that I'm seeing now in the industry and I'll be interested in Mike's take on this is, I think, that we lost a lot of people through great resignation during COVID. A lot of people went into retirement and that caused, like you had mentioned earlier, companies stealing each other's people and then allowing people to work remotely. But the new challenges that's created is a lot of people had to enter the industry who had to immediately start handling claims, and they may have even entered the industry in a remote location without the ability to sit in an office or to learn from people, and they weren't able to travel for a while there when they were being onboarded. So I think we've got some unique challenges that have come out of what we've just come out of as an industry Thoughts on that.
Speaker 1:Mike.
Speaker 2:No, I completely agree. And I think, Greg, you and I started at the same place out of college, so I had a similar experience. Training was fairly robust, I will say. Training made me think that every claim was being handled the exact same way and be kind of easy. And you quickly realized, like that is not the case, and so you're like wait, what, what do you mean? Like this is what's supposed to happen next. And then the interworkers like, no, but we're going to do this. So anyways, I think the biggest difference that I've seen. I agree with you completely, Greg. I actually think last time the three of us were talking, we talked about in-office, out-of-office stuff. Funny enough, Bob, I agree with you. The training when I started was very robust. We had groups that were dedicated to training. That's all they did and that's what they were focused on, and they were really, really good at it. And I think now we're good at training people and I think we have the best intentions, but we're asking folks who already have a full-time job to then train people.
Speaker 2:And that gets very difficult and through no fault of your own. Greg, on our last podcast you talked about the fact that you sit with folks and it's a lot of time right and you also have your whole job that you're doing. But you do it because it's long-term, you get good benefit from it and everything else, but it's really hard to do, and so when we're bringing new people.
Speaker 2:In a lot of the times it's on the manager or the supervisor or a senior to really get that person up to speed, and that senior, that supervisor, has 1,200 other things to do. So it gets really tough to be a full-time trainer and a full-time supervisor and a full-time claims adjuster and that's really hard and there's a lot of great resources out there, but I think that's made it tough. And then, from a claims perspective, working from home and not hearing people around you is really hard. One of the biggest ways that I learned was on the job, listening to all the adjusters sitting around me just having conversations, and oh, that's how you handle that situation. Or oh, that's how you talk to that attorney. Or oh, those are the questions that you ask.
Speaker 2:Or I could just stand up and say did I sound like an idiot? What should I ask next time? That stuff is real. And if you don't have that, it's really hard to get up to speed and to learn. Because, talking about continuing education, I'm still learning things about work comp every single day, like things I did not know or things, statutes I didn't know or different states I didn't know, and so I think that's what I've seen. The biggest change in is that we're asking more of people with less resources. These days, I think Companies like to run lean, but that gets really hard when it comes to something like training.
Speaker 3:That's what I would say run lean, but that gets really hard when it comes to something like trading. That's what I would say. Well, and I think your point is excellent, because one of the challenges we have is we look to recruit and replace these people we've lost. They're working in a remote environment, but they don't want to work in an office. They want now the flexibility to work at Starbucks or wherever they want to work and when they want to work, and that's a challenge. I agree with you. There's so much to me.
Speaker 3:Through the pandemic, I was very fortunate that virtual worked well for us. I mean, it just worked, but you still lose if you're in. I would not want to be a 20 something coming out of college today and not have that office environment where you can learn so much just by osmosis because you're around the people. As it happens, I was talking to someone the other day who said I used to be able to spot where I could stand up in my cubicle and say, hey, anybody ever dealt with this particular issue and someone would stand up and have it. So there might be some tools today.
Speaker 3:I think they've got Yammer and some other internal communication devices where people can use that, but it's still not necessarily the same, and that's one of the challenges I think we're going to face going forward, because we're not going to be able, even though it's important for that young and experienced person to get into an office, they may not know that and they may not want to go, and you may not be able to hire them based on the fact that you're insisting they come to an office and they won't do it. So I think that's one of the big challenges we have as an industry.
Speaker 1:I think you're spot on, and for a lot of organizations that may not have the resources for a robust training program that Mike and I went through then figuring out how do you get people to that next spot and how do you help develop them. I know, bob, one of the things that you've been working on this last year is a program called WorkCompCollegecom, and so I wanted you to fill me in a little bit on that, because I do think that's pretty new, if I'm right.
Speaker 3:It is Thanks. We officially launched in November and our first certification program, called the Workers Recovery Professional Certification, went fully live on January 14th or 15th. We really wanted to, and there are good training programs in the industry available for people. But one of the things that I think has not been given its full service was an emphasis on the biopsychosocial elements that, as Mike said earlier and you said earlier, claims are not always the same, and one reason they're not the same is because the injured worker we're dealing with can handle it in a completely different manner than the previous injured worker with the identical injury. It's the differences of what's going on in their head that really matters and as an industry I don't think we've been as strong as we need to be in training, that communication and that understanding, the ability to listen and to really understand the broader picture of what's happening in that injured worker's life. And that's what torpedoes a lot of the claims that we see go off the rails. So we really set up a course that's based on the biopsychosocial element. We call it whole person recovery management. We set up nine schools of discipline. We have a school of claims, school of medical management, school of legal, school of regulatory legislative. We have a school of claims, school of medical management, school of legal school of regulatory legislative. We have a school of stakeholders.
Speaker 3:I've returned to work I'm probably going to forget them as I go through because we wanted to give a whole picture, not just to understand what's going on in that injured worker's life and that you need to know the technical aspects of doing your job, but to understand why your job in comp is important. What's the big picture? That's. The second thing is we've came to realize that a lot of people don't really understand what happens outside their little sphere of influence and how, if they don't do their job one particular way, or somebody along the line doesn't do their job properly, the entire thing can go off the rails.
Speaker 3:So we call it work comp 360 was kind of the phrase we picked up just to get it so that people coming out have a better understanding of the comp industry in general. So that's really was one of our focuses, to do that, and we've been very fortunate. We've got a couple hundred students in the system already. We've got people starting to graduate with certifications, which is really good. It's a difficult thing 64 courses, 50, some hours of content in that program, but I think we're getting tremendous feedback and hopefully we'll be able to make a difference in some of this.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So in that program, is it all done online? Are you meeting virtually, or is it self-driven where you're, you know you're doing the reading yourself and then and taking a test, or how does the coursework set up?
Speaker 3:It's all done online. It is self-guided and they're self-driven, on your own, at your own pace. Every course includes a lecture video and these we have. I will say one thing that's really neat is we've had people dozens of people step up. They came to us. We didn't have to seek people out. They wanted to help build a better industry and they want to leave a better industry than they found and we've got some incredible and incredibly talented people working. We've got a board of trustees. We've got deans of each school and a lot of really skilled faculty. They have recorded video lectures. There are transcripts of the lectures, there are other resources and links available in each individual class and there is a graded test for every course and you have to have a 70% or better on each test to pass the individual course test and there is a final exam that you need to maintain an average of 80% or better.
Speaker 3:We put in certain protections. You cannot fast forward the videos. We restrict that. I have a business partner who discovered that when he tried to zip through a couple of classes and he wasn't able to fast forward, he had to actually watch the lecture. We have in addition to the testing. You can't fast forward through the videos. Even our certification form, when it's issued, has a QR code that anybody can scan to verify the validity of the certification, so it can't be fake. So we've tried to put in protections to counter the fact that it's an all virtual system. We eventually would like to have some live events, but right now off the ground it's all online, all virtual, awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think these kinds of resources are definitely needed in the industry and just getting different ways for people to expand their depth. I've seen some of the folks on your website that are involved and know several of them and they are fantastic, so definitely worth checking into. So there are lots of ways to further your education in the insurance industry and, mike, you took the route of the institutes as one of those paths by getting your CPCU. So I thought, knowing how hard that is to get, having done several of the sections myself, I just wanted you to talk a little bit about one. What motivated you to do that and what did you think of the process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question, Greg. So I started it probably four or five years into my career and at that time I think I quickly realized I wasn't going to be in insurance six months, I was probably going to be here for a lot longer. And so I was going back and forth on. I knew I wanted to do more education, whether it was an MBA or something more industry specific and what I landed on was I'm learning a lot of the same things I would getting an MBA, but it's all tailored to insurance, which is really what I was looking for. So I like to call it the CBCU, the Masters of Insurance, just because I have one now. So I get to say that.
Speaker 2:But it was tough, I mean in full transparency. My dad kind of pushed me to do it. He was the Maryland chapter president of the CBCU for a long time. He taught a lot of the courses. So I had a really good advocate in my corner that when I had questions on stuff I could call and say, hey, what's this or what's that?
Speaker 2:But it's pretty intense. I mean it's eight sections or eight, basically courses with a test at the end, everything from insurance operations to finance to commercial property. You really run the gambit of insurance and I just felt like it would make me a more well-rounded insurance professional, regardless of what industry or what area of the industry I wanted to go into. The tests are not easy. I think a lot of them have fairly high fail rates. I was fortunate enough that when you go through it and you do it, and you go to a testing center to do all the tests and there's a screen at the end that tells you whether you passed or you failed, and there's like a three-second delay doesn't come up, and so you sit there in just like the most intense anticipation of like, did I pass, Did I pass, Did I pass? And I fortunately passed all of the tests the first time.
Speaker 3:You know they build that in just to tease you. They could just produce the results like that. They just want you to suffer for a few seconds.
Speaker 2:Every other screen somehow pops up right away, but that one it waits just long enough for you to be sweating. But no, greg, I think it. Just you know I had always only been in work comp I for the most part have only done work comp and it really opened my eyes to policy structure and the different lines of business and kind of how insurance companies are run and what the finances and the balance sheets look like, and it just it gave me a better understanding so that when I'm in conversations or I'm talking to different groups of people, I have a better understanding of what they do when it comes to our industry. And back to what Bob said before, it helps you get a broader picture of where what you do fits in with the entirety of of of the product that we're offering and of what we're doing. So it's a long winded answer, but I just I knew I wanted to do more education and I decided that going with something that was industry specific worked for me, because I plan on completing my entire career in insurance.
Speaker 1:I think you definitely hit on some things.
Speaker 1:You know I've taken three of the courses and completed them first time, but they're hard and, as you mentioned before, it's very much the 5,000-foot view over all of insurance, and so I think that's probably the difference, if we're talking about a workcompcollegecom experience versus the CPCU is you might spend five and I might be giving too much credit here but 5% focused on workers' comp because there's a lot of liability, there's a lot of property, there's a lot of financial, so it is risk management ideas.
Speaker 1:So, understanding how everything connects, I think you get a really good picture through the CPCU from the 5,000-foot view of all lines, but it is not the zeroed-in work comp only, so there's value in both. I think I actually did this is my claim to fame I did some video clips for the associate in claims that they have, which is probably the step I would encourage folks who haven't done anything to start with if they're going to go down that path, and some of those at least one of the courses I believe transfers over for your CPCU, so it's not a wasted effort if you decide to go down that road. Bob, have you had any interactions with the institutes before?
Speaker 3:I really have not and it was interesting to listen to Mike's description because he relates to my understanding of what they do in the broad spectrum A good program, very broad across multiple lines. In a lot of ways I talk about the RIMS event sometimes and workers comp is always like the redheaded stepchild in RIMS. You know it's five or 10% of any contact that RIMS is national is sometimes dedicated to comp and that's kind of the way the industry I think. I think we have a feeling sometimes that we don't get the full attention that we may want from other avenues. But insurance industry is huge and it's understandable from the lines of the business in these other, in the other lines, the volume of the other lines of business, why that may be the case. But yeah, he gave my understanding that you did. Now it's not my place to ask you questions because you're the host, but you know what can I say?
Speaker 2:I can ask myself questions, but this is like my second time here, so I'm going to ask you questions because you're the host but what can I say?
Speaker 3:This is like my second time here, so I'm going to ask you a question, because I know you said earlier you do teaching for CLM as well, the CLM College, claims College. You want to tell people what that is, or can you add to the story for that?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Clm stands for Claims Litigation Management. It's a group of a lot of attorneys. There is a carrier involvement as well, and they do a three-year designation, and so this is actually an in-person event where you go to I think right now it's in Baltimore for about four days of in-class work in person, and then after year one, you complete a test and then you go back for year two and the next year, take the next round, and then year three is your final year, and then that one, instead of taking a test, you do a group presentation where they actually give you a case study of workers' comp, and so what's kind of nice about that is you are getting the in-person piece.
Speaker 1:The challenge with that is you're going to have to work for an employer that's going to allow for you to travel, and it is at a hotel. There's three or four days out of the office where you're fully going to be engaged in different lectures from different professionals throughout the industry who are teaching. So I think it has its own benefits and, of course, its own challenges. I believe you can do year one online now, and I don't know if they're bringing that back in person, but during the pandemic they switched that one, so that would be a good way for people to see if that's something that they like and it is directly related to workers' comp, but they also do designations for other lines, so if you were listening to this and you're a property person.
Speaker 1:They've got something going on that same week for that. The work comp group. It's usually about 20 or so students, I would say each year that go through the program, 20 or 30. And there's several hundred when you start looking at all the different lines. So so definitely interesting. We've had several of our people go through it and I think you get a good flavor of workers comp. Again, it has to be somewhat generic because you've got people coming from all over the country so you can't talk about Virginia workers comp you know this high level best practices, national focus overview.
Speaker 3:One of the things we're developing, that will be launching this summer, are 50 different state specific modules being produced with state partners that will cover legal claims, ethics, the specifics of doing business in each given state. You need that. I mean you can you do come out of this training and and you still need to know what's the filing requirement, what's the waiting period, what's you know what? What's the fine If I don't get this form checked off in the proper amount of time, all those nuances. It's difficult because comp, as we like to say, is exactly the same yet totally different in every state.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. That's right and you could be thinking you're doing it right and if you don't know the jurisdiction you're in, you could be doing it completely wrong and find yourself in some trouble if you don't know the jurisdiction you're in, you could be doing it completely wrong and find yourself in some trouble.
Speaker 3:Is CLM CCP designation? Is that the one dedicated to comp? Is that the designation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and we've had a few of our folks go through it and I think that third year, when you do your own presentation, they give them a pretty difficult workers' compensation claim and then have them present as a group what they would do in retrospect because it's kind of at the end point and kind of see where maybe some of the challenges how did it get to that spot and what were things that could be done to either get it back on the rails or could have been done earlier to keep it from going down that?
Speaker 3:path. Yeah, I know somebody who went through that and was very complimentary of that particular portion of the program, thought it was very useful to have that team effort and collaboration, which is pretty valuable. I think you can learn a lot just in that process, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely of the themes is that it sounds like we're all folks that want to learn, right, like I just want to know more. And if I don't know the answer to something, it's instead of asking someone I want to go figure out why, or but I think it's. I had this conversation yesterday, funny enough, with I was sitting with a group of agents having lunch and I was talking to a woman who was a teacher for like 13 years and for one reason or another, she needed to get into a different industry and so she kind of came into insurance not knowing anything, and she came in with one role and then a couple of folks moved on fairly quickly and so they had different things they were doing and she said well, I'll learn that, I want to learn that, I'll learn that I can do that. Let me see if I can figure that out. And what quickly dawned on me is continuing education isn't just signing up for a course or going to a conference. It's as simple as saying, OK, I want to know where my data comes from, so let me get more versed in how we do our data. Or I want to learn what underwriting is doing, so let me go sit with somebody for a little bit and really understand what they do. And I think what people need to understand coming out of college is it's great to have your job and do your job and be really good at your job, but if that's all you're interested in doing, it's not going to take you the farthest right. So the people that are curious, the people that say, hey, I want to learn this, or hey, I want to do this project, or hey, I want to push myself outside my comfort zone and do this, those people become invaluable to an organization, and so I think that's overlooked.
Speaker 2:For continuing education, all these resources are awesome and they're something that should be utilized, but it can be as simple as saying I just want to learn how to do this at your current job, and that's something that I think I don't know, if you guys agree, but that gets overlooked. I do my job and my job is my job and that's it. But the people that I find most successful are those that get outside of the comfort zone and say, hey, I want to do this project, or I want to learn this, or I want to go do that. I mean, look at me, I switched from claims to sales and distribution two years ago and completely changed the trajectory of my career because I wanted to try something different and wanted to understand the totality of our industry and what we do from a different perspective. So you know, that's just not a question, just kind of a thought on that from you guys. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think you're absolutely right. I think there's a difference. And there's the type of employee that wants to. You know, there's a type of employee who's counting the days to retirement Okay. And then there's the type of employee who continually wants to find a better way to do something, expand their horizons, maybe want to step into another area for different challenges. They like the challenges. And those are the people that are generally looking for the education to improve themselves and to take on those challenges. Those are the more successful people. I mean, I think in our mind there are stereotypes of the jaded professional that's just been sitting at a desk for 20 years and just can't wait until the day they're done. And then there are those who just can't wait for the next step and the next challenge and something they haven't dealt with before.
Speaker 3:And you said something that really struck me, because in my previous life, previous company, we dealt with a lot of very, very large insurance carriers and wonderful people, really great people in this industry.
Speaker 3:I love this industry, but Dilbert is alive and well in corporate America. Okay, when you start negotiating with some of these companies, you realize how little, how heavily siloed some companies are. So you mentioned something about underwriting. There are people in claims who have absolutely no clue what goes on in underwriting and business development and vice versa, and I've actually listened to calls where people have to negotiate amongst departments in their own company to get something done when they're trying to bring in an external service. And people who routinely reach out to understand what's going on in those other areas and what's happening in the bigger picture have much more flexibility and much more ability to advance, and I think that's important. But I don't even think they do it because they want to advance. They want to do it because it's just a chance to do something different and a different challenge. I really do think that matters to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you hit on something there that the goal of a company is to hire very talented people that are well-rounded. And if you are only in one area, and that's all you know, and that's all you learn it's very hard to become well-rounded and I know Key Risk and same for Berkeley Industrial.
Speaker 2:We want people to learn what everybody else does and we want people to collaborate and talk and everything else, and all that does is benefit the employer. It makes your employees more well-rounded. It makes them more talented. I've always said I want to hire the most talented people. I can teach you the technical, but if you have the want to learn and the want to absorb information and the want to be curious and learn more about how what you do impacts the bigger picture, those by far are the most successful people. I can teach you the rates in Virginia and the statutory rules in Maryland. That's stuff that can be taught. But people that want to learn and I agree with you, bob those people are generally also the people that are going to reach out to you and come to work on college. They're the people that are going to get their CBCU.
Speaker 2:They're the people that are going to do the CLM, and I think it's no secret that those folks generally are the ones that just want to know more and be more well-rounded that.
Speaker 1:Just want to know more and be more well-rounded.
Speaker 1:Greg, what are your thoughts? I agree, and I think every company allocates different resources to training. So one of the things I thought maybe just to talk a step further is it may be that somebody who's listening to this podcast and where they're working unfortunately doesn't invest in training, but they want to know more, and so what does that person do? And I was thinking about some of the ways in my own career where I've learned. Some companies may even be state funds or situations where the budgets are very limited and trying to go to a conference would need to be approved two years in advance or three years in advance because of how tight things are run. So in those scenarios, what are some other ways that people can learn, Bob or Michael, I'll throw that to either of you.
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's an explosion in our industry of podcasts and webinars such as this, where people can go and learn about specific topics. Some are extremely technical, you know, and in nature those are great resources. They don't require travel, you know there are good. As you said, they have trouble getting to conferences. I think you know it's interesting after the pandemic, some conferences attempted a hybrid of in-person and you know you could attend remotely and discovered immediately that all companies said, oh, there's a remote option, you're not traveling, you know, and so you'll notice now those conferences aren't remote anymore, they're not offering hybrid. But there are some great conferences, some great educational events, I think for people looking for information. Those are some of the areas. I mean WCRI. I was just at WCRI in Phoenix, which is a really interesting if you're a data head, especially they really interesting stuff that they come out, that they report on every year. Wci in Orlando is a big conference with lots and lots of educational information and it's not an expensive conference.
Speaker 3:I mean they have it in Orlando in August and no one wants to be in Orlando in August, so it's a little cheaper from hotel perspectives and the conference itself is a few hundred bucks. It's not a lot of money. So those are some of the I think some of the resources people can look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was. I was at actually WCI this last year as a speaker and at that conference they even had a live work comp hearing a Florida work comp hearing that you could go to and sit in. You had to go through like security and everything but you could go and see what a hearing looks like. They do a live hearing.
Speaker 3:They did a live surgery. They do live surgery. Every year they do a live surgery. I guess you know your number gets drawn when you check in at the register.
Speaker 2:Guess what. Who gets that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, but I mean, I mean, what a great opportunity to learn.
Speaker 2:I'm not. I'm not doing it. My a couple of my coworkers actually went to the live surgery and they were psyched. That is a hard task for me.
Speaker 3:I'm good, I am the type of guy that just doesn't want to think about the concept of blood flowing through my veins. I just don't want to skip.
Speaker 2:You and I are the same person, bob, I'm the same way.
Speaker 3:I've been doing WCI for years. I've never gone to the live surgery and I don't think I ever will.
Speaker 1:Well, and you mentioned WCRI and they do some fantastic. I mean, if you want research, heavy research within very specific states, they're fantastic. I have read quite a few of their articles and they actually provide some of the best state specific guides that you can get each year if you just need the basics or if you want to go deep Well, greg, I'm going to quote your boss, who used to be at Key Risk.
Speaker 2:Google is your friend. I don't know how many times I've heard Mike Martin say that, but it's 100% true.
Speaker 2:And so, look, I'll go back to what I said earlier and I think you guys make great points, but it costs you nothing to ask a question. It costs you nothing to network and get to know good people Right now could walk into Scott Holbrook's office tomorrow and say, hey, man, talk to me about how you got where you are. Or hey, I want to know more specifically about our CFO calls and how we work with Berkeley as a whole. And it costs you nothing to ask questions and be inquisitive and reach out to folks and really network within your own company or just in the industry in general. That that's something that gets overlooked. It's great to go to a conference, but one of the biggest things I get out of a conference is the networking and getting to know folks that do things differently than I do and aligning myself with those people to figure out what they do. That is a big thing to me and that costs me nothing.
Speaker 3:I will tell you and I agree with that completely, but along those lines and tying into conferences, we work real heavily with the Southern Association of Workers Compensation Administrators, saca. About 20 states belong to SACA. That is an outstanding group for casual conversations about how to address issues and challenges in comp and how people process things. And you're talking to regulators from the various states. They're very open, they're very approachable. I've always enjoyed those meetings and a lot of our. I've gotten great ideas, in fact, when we're building WorkComp College, they were very supportive of what we were doing and we got great feedback from state regulators on what needed to be done. So it's helpful. Talking to people is and you're right, you could do it in a lunchroom. When you go to a conference, it's important to go to the sessions, but you should also go to the networking events and talk to people, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. The last thing I wanted to hit on, as we kind of wrap up this topic, is just how I feel like learning. If you want to improve yourself, a lot of that has to be self-driven. Of course, your company can offer you resources and of course you can wait for things to happen, but one of the things I've learned throughout my career is just that when I recognize an area that I could do better in, like Mike said, go look for the answers to that and take a self-driven approach. We're going to have an episode coming up in the next month or two.
Speaker 1:That's on listening, and I had a 360 review 10 years ago and in that 360 review I got some feedback that I could prove on listening and I thought, well, boy, I thought I was pretty good at this. And I asked my wife. She was like, yeah, you're great. But then when I started realizing that other people, some of the people that I was working with because I was so busy and I was moving so fast, I sometimes didn't take the time to pause and listen and really hear them I went and I got a book on listening, hated it, threw it away, got another book on listening, loved it and started doing some exercises. So you might go down that path and what you're pursuing doesn't work for you. But then, further down the road, you find that answer if you keep looking, and so we're going to hear from the author of that book in the next month or two, and that should be a fun discussion as well. But any other favorite books or avenues that you guys have taken to learn?
Speaker 3:Well, from a book perspective, there are a couple that popped to mind that I really enjoyed. There's a book that's been out now a number of years, From Good to Great, which is a review of certain case studies, business studies of companies and what they've done to make the difference between just a standard good procedure to becoming a great organization, and I thought there were some interesting thoughts in that book. There's another book that I haven't seen out in print in years. I read it back in the 80s, called Dinosaur Brains. Couldn't even tell you who wrote it, but it talked about the instinctual reaction in some people fight fright or flight and how certain people act as dinosaur brains to build little fiefdoms and empires in the corporate structure and try and maintain control through irrational methods.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, they say the dinosaur brains at that time could most often be found in accounting and human resources. I apologize to anybody who's listening who's in accounting or human resources, but it talked about the instinctual reactions that some people have and how to deal with it. They build little walls around them. They don't have direct control over a lot of things, but they try and control as much as they can, and I found it to be a really insightful book and to this day, I will sometimes come across some people and I'll be able to flag them and I think of dinosaur brains from their reaction or the way they behave. It was really a great book if you can find an old copy I don't even know if it's still in print.
Speaker 1:All right, you're going to make me look. That's definitely interesting, mike. How about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, One book that comes to mind, and Greg.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you guys read it at BIM.
Speaker 2:We honestly, as a leadership group, read it at Key.
Speaker 2:Rest was Extreme Ownership, that's very good, very good and it's written by John Willink, and it's him and another guy that are Navy SEALs or were Navy SEALs or still are Navy SEALs, and it's all about, as leaders, kind of owning everything in your world. Right, so you own the decisions that are made both at your level and your folks level, but just owning the results and owning kind of the direction that you're taking your team and it's but it's good for any level, right, it's not just about leadership from a managing people perspective, it's just a different way to look at your desk and your life. And you know you own your results and you own the work that's being put out. And it taught me one of my worst. One of the phrases I do dislike the most is well, I didn't have the file then, or well, I didn't, I wasn't involved then, so I can't blah, blah, blah. We all own the results right.
Speaker 2:We're all one company, we're all one place and we should all have ownership of, and pride of, the work that we do and what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So that was a pretty influential book. And then, honestly, I'm just involved in a lot of online newsletters and updates in different industries and niches. So, like PEOs or staffing, they have organizations that what they do is they send out daily updates on legislation, on different things that are going in the industry, how capital and the rates and interest rate increases are affecting the different companies and what's going on there, and I'm heavily involved in those. So if you're involved in niches or you have a lot of a certain type of business on your desk, go learn about that industry and there's I will guarantee you that there are plenty of newsletters and organizations that are that's all they do is that industry, and it's a really good way to kind of just stay current on what's going on in the environment and what's going on that can affect what you're doing. So those are two avenues that I you know, that helped me affect what you're doing.
Speaker 1:So those are two avenues that I you know that helped me. I think those are great.
Speaker 2:I've read Extreme Ownership, very, very good book and a good reminder and I love it. He also has a podcast and it's like it's a little like over the top intent, but some of the points he makes are fantastic.
Speaker 1:Well, and in his industry too, lives are at stake actual lives so when mistakes are made, there are people whose lives depend on it. So it was very good, so definitely good recommendations. Well, I wanted to wrap things up this year. The thing that we're doing this season is asking each of our guests to share something they're grateful for. I felt like one of the things that I've been on a mission for the next or for the last several years, just to put good vibes in the universe. The universe needs it. So I wanted to throw this one to Bob and ask you something that you're grateful for.
Speaker 3:Oh well, obviously I'm grateful for the opportunity to be on your blog, greg, or your podcast. That's what I'm grateful for. I am actually grateful that for the last 20-some years my experience in this industry, that I've had the opportunity to meet some tremendous people and just thoroughly enjoy everything that I've been able to do. When you look forward to going to the office in the morning or to get up and going to work every single day, with very rare exception, that's a real blessing and I've been really blessed with that. And even though my job has changed in the last year, I've had that opportunity to really expand our horizon and try something new and create again, and I'm just really, really grateful for that opportunity.
Speaker 1:Oh, I really love that, Bob. I know it's really about people in the end. The industry is what we do in our jobs, and I think that's one of the things, as I reflect on the time that I've spent in workers comp, that I'm grateful for as well. So thanks for sharing that. Thanks again, mike, for joining me on this episode. We remind all of our listeners to do right, think differently and don't forget to care and hope that you join us in two weeks for our next episode. Thanks, everybody, you.