Episode 47 – Stress & Strain of Adjusting

Ray Shelton, Ph.D. is a nationally-known expert on stress and the impacts it has on frontline personnel in disasters and other crises.  He is a Fellow and the Director of Professional Development for The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, in Miller Place, New York.  He’s seen tragedy first-hand over 35 years serving with the Nassau County, New York Police department, including the Twin Towers Collapse during 9/11.  He’s also a former firefighter and paramedic.

“The adjusters are no different than fire, police, and EMS, they're front line.  They're action-oriented.  They take risks.  They have tremendous attention to detail.  They have a powerful need for control, to help people get their lives back in order,” said Shelton.  “But the price that is paid for that, is all of the memories, all of the conversations, all of the sites that they see stays with them.  There's absolutely no delete button in the human brain.”

Shelton worked with the Liberty Mutual Insurance Catastrophe Response Team during the California Wildfires in 2008 and subsequent tornado outbreaks across the country.  That’s where he met Jenny Pye, M.S., whose 35 years with Liberty Mutual included serving as a Property Claims Manager and Director of Quality Improvement for Auto Physical Damage (APD), Property, and Shared Services.

“Every time I hear Ray talk, it takes me back to early in my career when I was an adjuster in the field and would go out and have multiple fatality 18-Wheeler accidents, and just the emotions of being on scene and investigating a claim,” said Pye.  
“Sometimes the bodies were still there and then talking to their families, just all those emotions.”

Today, Pye is the Director of Commercial Claims at Pilot Catastrophe Services, based in Mobile, Alabama.   She helps adjusters and the firms they serve to not only proficiently manage the technical part of the job, but manage the emotional toll that claims can have.  She said adjusters who strive for great customer experience, often ignore or cover-up signs of traumatic stress.  

“But sometimes you get feedback as a manager and hopefully before you get that feedback from your customer, you're recognizing these issues,” said Pye.  “Maybe the adjuster is not as responsive as they normally are.  It's not just answering a text or phone call, if you're calling about a claim, it can be on a Zoom call and you will see where these folks that are normally engaged are not engaged.”  That, she adds, requires claim managers to “finely tune your senses to be aware of what’s going on.”

Shelton, who presents “Fine Tuned Adjuster” webinars for the Property Loss & Research Bureau said there are consequences of not recognizing the signs in adjusters or of claims management not responding to the signs.

“If you do nothing, it stops productivity and the bigger danger (is) maybe that you lose that person who has bottled this all up from multiple times that this has occurred and finally says, ‘You know, I've had enough’ and they leave the industry,” Shelton said, noting the current market challenge of recruiting adjusters to replace those that leave the profession.

(For full Show Notes, visit https://lisamillerassociates.com/episode-47-stress-strain-of-adjusting/)