Workers Comps Future – Recruiting & Retaining the Next Generation of Claims Talent
The Workers Comps future rests on the next generation of claims talent.

Jennifer Burkhart | National Workers’ Comp Claims Leader, Westfield Insurance
Dan Holden | Manager of Corporate Risk & Insurance, Daimler Trucks North America
Rick Thompson | VP of Talent Management & Administration, Rising Medical Solutions
November 12, 2015 2:00pm – 3:15pm
*The title may seem incorrect. The WordPress system does not like apostrophes. Please excuse the odd-sounding phrase.
This NWCDC Session was PM5 from the Program Management track. I decided to attend this one as this subject was one of the major concerns at the Rising Medical Think-Tank from earlier this year.
One of the better slides during this session pointed out how offices were 10 years ago.
- No cell phones while at work.
- Business formal dress code.
- Very little schedule flexibility or work from home.
- Employee handbook over 100 pages.<<<Actually a conservative figure
- Annual reviews (quarterly today, with daily huddles and weekly touch-bases).
- Less than 10% of workers were Millennials (today it’s over 50%).
- One computer desktop/screen. Few laptops. No smartphones or tablets.
- Virtually no online collaboration (email document-based).
The session centered very heavily on appealing to Millennial generation workers. One statistic that was shocking to me was the workforce now being 50% Millenials.
Millennial Challenges
- They don’t know/care about insurance/risk management (not “sexy” or fun). That is actually a given.
- Loyalty/commitment (high turnover). This was occurring in the industry long before Millennials were on the scene.
- Talent shortage of 85,000 commercial claims professionals in 2015 (Deloitte). Expected to grow to 400,000 in five years (Insurance Journal).
- WSJ – Insurance on “least desirable industries” list.

Until this session, I did not realize the insurance industry is and will be experiencing such a heavy shortage of workers. The shortage reaching almost 1/2 million workers total is astounding.
The rest of the session covered how each respective company is recruiting, training, and retaining the millennial generation. This was a great session that “looked outside the box” so to speak.
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