Such job tasks are layered throughout the claim workload of many insurance companies and independent adjusting firms. Quasi-adjusting may eat up as much as 10 to 15 percent of an adjuster's time — maybe more — in many claim departments. The “real” work of investigating claims, thoughtfully setting reserves, addressing customer needs, and negotiating settlements can take a back seat to clerical and administrative minutiae. Before you know it, adjusters are “majoring in minors.”

To be lean and efficient, company management (especially the powers-that-be) must identify this situation, support adjuster efforts to trim distracting clerical work, and refocus attention on genuinely productive adjusting activities.

Identifying “Administrivia”

Admittedly, quasi-adjusting tasks are tough to identify and define. No clear-cut definitions emerge. Instead, claim professionals should delineate high-value work from the tasks they are capable of doing but which have a lower value. Claim management with a clear understanding of how it best contributes to a company's success, combined with internal customer service reps who share that understanding, will maximize efficient workflow and minimize quasi-adjusting.

Where does quasi-adjusting work come from? Sometimes, company management fosters it. The problem festers when a claim unit is too thinly staffed, especially with support and administrative personnel, to handle workloads. When an insurer no longer has enough people to handle caseloads, higher-ups often make adjusters shoulder non-claim-handling tasks.

One step toward curbing quasi-adjusting tasks is to identify them. The most valuable work that adjusters and claim representatives do is investigating claims, interacting with policyholders and claimants, thoughtfully analyzing reserves, and negotiating claim resolutions. Adjusters cannot do these tasks if they are tied up in meetings or hunched over a photocopier for an hour, trying to get a file copied so that it can be assigned to outside counsel.

Many people believe that more technology is the answer, but that may be a fallacy. One claim executive put it this way: Less technology would help. More clerical staff would take the load off adjusters to allow them to do what they are supposed to do: investigate, evaluate, and settle claims. I don't need an adjuster who can type. I need one who can climb a roof, evaluate a broken bone, write and read English!

Chastened adjusters may feel like they are little more than glorified file clerks. Pronouncements descend from on high, exhorting the troops to deliver platinum claim service or deliver superb financial results. Like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians, however, adjusters are hobbled from accomplishing these aims by administrative tasks, and are tempted to cynically dismiss these edicts as ivory-tower musings by an out-of-touch home office.

It is virtually impossible to itemize every suspect task. There are gray-area tasks that adjusters are good at and even enjoy because they allow for a “mental holiday.” However, this does not make the activity the best use of an adjuster's time. Lower-value work often includes sending faxes, typing letters, filing, retrieving files, completing routine forms, etc. Often, what the adjuster does has the veneer of claims work. Scratch the surface, however, and you'll find that it is really clerical/support duty.

Value-Added vs. Non-Essential?

If a task seems suspect, ask yourself:

• Would the company hire an outside adjusting firm to do this work? If the company wouldn't, then an on-staff adjuster likely should not be doing it either.
• Could a person with no adjuster training handle the task equally well?
• How do other insurance company claim departments handle this work?

How does a claim department roust these time wasters? Simply understanding and articulating the idea can help adjusters spot and sidestep less essential work that masquerades as the claim person's responsibility.

Insurance company management may fail to value the true worth of adjuster time. The time of salaried claim adjusters appears to be free, so this resource can be squandered in low-value tasks. A fresh look might reveal just how much corporate resources are wasted in endless meetings and administrative tasks that fill the adjuster's workday. Instead of seeing adjuster salaries as sunk costs, insurance companies and claim departments could think in terms of opportunity costs.

Myth of “Free” Adjuster Time

Responding to a recent Business Week cover story on overworked Americans, one reader offered a trenchant observation that applies to today's claim adjusters:

The 1990s rushed to replace U.S.-viewed corporate liabilities (secretarial and clerical positions) with corporate assets (computers) so that one does his/her own file preparation, filing, address keeping, letter writing, voice-mail listening, etc. This insidiously adds many hours of routine clerical tasks to almost everyone's weekly routine.

Of course, it would be unheard of to suggest that a claim department hire more administrative or clerical staff. Adding staff is heretical toward the corporate mantra of being “lean and mean” and “doing more with less.”

Another in-depth approach involves asking claim staff to track how they spend their time for three-to-four weeks. They should note all tasks that take more than an hour, arranging them in five-to-seven categories. Then they should indicate whether each task was a good, acceptable, or nonproductive use of their talents. At the end of this three- or four-week period, hold a brief meeting. Discuss the assignments that may constitute poor use of adjuster time. Once claim people are aware of tasks that are inappropriate, they can start examining alternatives. Revisiting this exercise every six months or so can help trim adjusting flab.

Garnering Support

In drawing lines or boundaries, support from the top is essential. Without it, you may as well stay hunched over the photocopier while client and claimant calls pile up in your voice-mail queue. (“I can't come to the phone right now because I'm functioning as a de facto secretary. If you leave your name and number, however, …”)

Other solutions:

• Show upper management how much more productive adjusters could be if they could delegate clerical-type work.
• Bite the bullet and hire more support/administrative staff.
• Explore ways to shift non-claim-handling tasks to their lowest appropriate level of competence. Is photocopying, collating, or making travel arrangements the best use of your time — or the company's dollar — as a claim professional?

Another constraint: Adjusters do not want to seem to be prima donnas. In other cases, hiring freezes or staff cuts mean that there is more to do and fewer people to do it. In such cases, adjusters doing clerical work is a survival technique. Those mundane but all-important tasks won't get done otherwise. In other settings, adjusters may actually welcome such tasks because they are easy, routine, and more convenient than fielding the eighth complaint call from Mrs. Huffnagle wanting know where her check is!

Boost the productivity of your claim team by analyzing and paring these quasi-adjusting tasks.

Kevin Quinley is a claim executive with a specialty insurance company in the Washington D.C. area. You can reach him at [email protected] or through his web site, www.kevinquinley.com.