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DAILY WORKPLACE STRESS
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of family.
Stress occurs when you perceive outside demands as being greater than your emotional
resources. When you are stressed, you have both physical and mental reactions that can last minutes or years. The source of stress may be in the past or the present or you may anticipate that they'll occur in the future. That previous sentence is so true for a claim adjuster.
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Claim Adjuster Workplace Stress is definitely a type of workplace stress which could be considered chronic (unrelenting demands and pressures for seemingly long periods of time).
Below I have given an account of the typical life of a claim adjuster.
• Receiving more claims in a day than you can handle. Unable to make same day contacts which is a requirement and part of your job evaluation which can effect your yearly raise.
• Your voice mail has about 10 - 20 messages.
All your voice mails need to be returned within 24
hours.
• You need to read all your incoming e-mails and respond if necessary and then make copies of all the incoming reports received for your pending files.
• Your mail has come in and you still have not gone through your mail from yesterday or maybe even a couple of days of mail are still sitting unopened.
• The phone is ringing which you need to answer and if you do continue to answer your phone all day, nothing will get accomplished.
• Inspections need to be ordered and payments made on auto repair estimates and/or property inspections already received as well as payments on your total losses that have already been evaluated.
• Recorded statements taken from all drivers and
witnesses, if there are any injuries.
• You also happen to be a Liability Claim Adjuster and you need to request copies of medical records and evaluate the medical records on your casualty claims that are already in your possession and then try and contact the attorneys to make settlements.
You don’t seem to be accomplishing anything at all.
• Because of other priorities, your diary is now backed up over 30 days or even 60 days. This is a measured category on your yearly review.
• Somehow you need to find time to handle subrogation claims, which include recovering the insured’s deductible.
• The insured’s seem to think that you should be collecting their deductible within 30 to 60 days even though you have little control over the other insurance company. You have told the insured it could take 3 - 6 months. If the insured does not hear from you, they will call you and request that you contact the claimant carrier and check into why they have not received their deductible back yet. This creates additional phone calls but is definitely last on your list of to-dos.
• You need to find some personal time to take additional claims adjuster classes to continue your education, which is a requirement on your yearly review.
You rarely take a break in the morning or afternoon and eat lunch at your desk most days or even maybe not at all.
You have been working 2 or 3 hours extra a couple of nights a week and you still don’t seem to be getting ahead of
the game. You’re even coming in an hour early some mornings.
On Friday you leave on time and run out of the office and go home to get some mental and emotional rest and family time. You are tired, anxious, overwhelmed, and angry and you feel as though you have been set up to fail. The list of categories that are measured on your yearly review are totally IMPOSSIBLE to reach.
When you go on vacation, no one covers your desk so when you return, your voice mail is full, and your mail is piled higher and falling off your desk. Over the next couple of days you try and catch up but in the meantime the team leader, who distributes the new claims, notices that your claim count is lower than the other adjusters (probably because you were on vacation), so he or she decides to give you more claims than the other adjusters so there is an even claim count. Going on
vacation is a punishment. You never do catch up and you are buried even more. You cannot see light at the end of the tunnel. It is a feeling of hopelessness.
It’s time for your yearly review and hopefully a raise will follow. You have worked so hard. You meet with your team leader and manager and they advise you that you did a good job and then they show you the criteria required for each category which of course is impossible to meet. The good news is, you get a raise but the bad news is, that the monthly increase is about the amount it would cost a family of 3 to eat at McDonald’s one night.
over the years and can be causing health
issues such as cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders and
Psychological disorders.
Workplace and family stress adds up to stress related illness and needs to be looked at. WE CAN’T REPLACE OUR FAMILIES OR OUR LIVES.
We can RE-EVALUATE what is going to happen to us during our day. We can control the destiny of our health and learn how to relieve stress. What can we change to improve the workplace stress of a claim adjuster?
Home Page: Claim Adjuster Workplace Stress is a Reality
