A conversation with one of our Training Specialists

I had a chance to catch up with Karla, one of our Training Specialists to see if she'd be nice enough to share some insights into the training function and offerings at Pinnacol. Our Training Specialists are officially tasked with "working with team members to develop, coordinate and implement strategic corporate and technical training", but what does that really mean? Karla has also recently joined our company, having been with us about 9 months so she'll also share some insights as a new employee.

Pinnacol prides itself on being a continuing learning organization, and as you'll hear Karla epitomizes that vision having recently been certified in Crucial Conversations and now pursuing her Coaching certification as well as a Phd in Organizational Performance and Change. We're happy to have Karla on board, but I'm not so sure about having to call her "Dr."!

Giving thought to the upcoming holiday

Like many companies, Pinnacol's offices will be closed on Monday May 31st, in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. Like many of you I'm looking forward to the time off with friends and family. In anticipating a fun-filled three day weekend I caught myself forgetting to think, if even for just a moment, about why we have this holiday. That made me realize I don't know too much about the origins of Memorial Day. In today's world it took just a couple of seconds thanks to Google to learn what brought about this holiday and I thought I'd share some of what I found (thanks to http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html).

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring not just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May though several southern states still have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead.

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans, (myself included), have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored or neglected. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades.

There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50's on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye's Heights. And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

Pinnacol employees enjoy 8 company paid holidays every year, and they are all special in their own way. Most of them are clear in what and why we are celebrating. This upcoming Monday I might actually take a moment to remember the reason for this one.

Glimmers of Hope for Grads

The New York Times had an article yesterday indicating that while the job market is by no means thriving, this spring's graduates are facing better job prospects than the environment faced by last year's grads. Of course, all things are relative - average starting salaries are down, and employers were planning to make only 5 percent more job offers to new graduates this spring compared to last spring, when job offers were down 20 percent from 2008 levels, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks recruitment data.

According to the article, 24 percent of 2010 college graduates who applied for a job have one waiting after graduation, up from 20 percent last year. Economists are less upbeat however, and the possibility of a double-dip recession is a growing concern. The Times point out that some economists are worried that the increase in job offers might peter out if the economy stalls because concerns with the stock market and the financial chaos in Europe.

Thomas J. Nardone, an assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that the jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 was 8 percent in April, up from 6.8 percent in April 2009 and 3.7 percent in April 2007, before the recession began.
The 8 percent unemployment rate is lower than the nation’s overall 9.9 percent jobless rate, but it is high for college graduates, who typically have a lower unemployment rate than those without bachelor’s degrees. Mr. Nardone noted that for high school graduates under age 25 who did not enroll in college, the jobless rate was 24.5 percent last month, more than twice the 11.4 percent it was in April 2007.

The article also makes it clear that many grads are now taking jobs that don't technically require a degree. Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University, points out that “One reason a lot of high school grads are having such a hard time is you have college grads willing to take jobs that high school grads used to get.”


Jeffrey D. Rice, career management expert at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, advises job seekers to look to where federal stimulus money was being spent — health care, green industries and education — and to other growth areas like risk management, telecommunications and digital recordkeeping for health care: “Even in a bad economy you have to look at where pockets of opportunity are.”

Linda Arra, director of career services at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., points out that networking is vital in today’s highly competitive job market. “This generation has an independent spirit and feels they should do things on their own,” she said. “But when there is a great opportunity and an employer has all these applications, you really need someone inside advocating for you.”

To read the full New York Times article click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/business/economy/25gradjobs.html?pagewanted=1&%2359;adxnnlx=1274799832-1SP%20Wb6HF7u72QysSyJhOQ&%2359;adxnnl=1&&%2359;th&%2359;emc=th

Jobisms...

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computers, has said a lot of things over the years. Some of what he says you may agree with, some you may not. You may not like everything he does, but he is thought provoking. Here are some of my favorite Steve Jobs quotations….

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“We think you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”

“You know, we don’t grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved… I mean, we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.”

“There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind.’ It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.”

“I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

By the way, can you name the other co-founder of Apple Computers?

Strange Questions...

I was just reading an HR-related blog about some of the strangest questions candidates get asked during an interview. The list was long but here are some of my favorites:

• "Why are manhole covers round?"
• "If you were a color (or animal, song, number, appliance, car, etc.), what color (or animal, song, number, appliance, car, etc.) would you be?"
• "How many quarters would it take to make a stack as tall as the Empire State Building?"
• "How would your wife (or husband, or significant other) describe you?"

You may have been asked some similarly strange questions in interviews you have participated in. I'm sure the people asking these odd questions have reasons for asking them but they leave me scratching my head (maybe that's the point!).

I help generate the interview questions used here at Pinnacol and I don't think any of our managers are going down this path. I don't think I'm spilling the beans when I let you know that we use behavioral interview questions which simply means we believe that what you have actually done in your current and past jobs is the best predictor of what you would do in the future. None of the odd questions listed above seem to be very job-related (unless there is a real job as a quarter-stacker!) and what my wife would tell you about me depends on the day and the length of my honey-do list. These types of questions seem intent on almost trapping people, leaving them guessing as to what the 'right' answer is. At Pinnacol we are simply trying to get to know you around a couple of key areas:

• Do you have the technical knowledge and abilities to do the job?
• If not, do you have the ability to learn the skills necessary to do the job?
• Are you going to be a fit for our culture that is based on multi-functional teams and an unyielding focus on customer satisfaction?
• What is your motivation for working and for pursuing the particular job we are interviewing you for?
• Are you going to live up to our company Shared Values of Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, Teamwork, and Innovation?

 Pretty simple stuff really. We look for our hiring decision to be a win for both the candidate and for Pinnacol Assurance. Companies are different from each other. There are certainly lots of insurance companies selling workers' compensation insurance besides Pinnacol. Being the perfect fit at one company doesn't mean being the perfect match at another. And that's ok - people who come on board with us tend to stay a long time. The more  a candidate can help us get to know them, and who in turn make the effort to get to know us, the more likely a positive outcome and a long and happy relationship.

Pinnacol Issues $47.5 million in General Dividends

Pinnacol Assurance will be issuing its sixth consecutive general dividend. This year, $47.5 million will be distributed to more than 52,000 qualifying businesses — roughly 86 percent of policyholders — throughout the state.


With the 2010 declaration, Pinnacol has now returned nearly $400 million in general dividends to Colorado businesses over the last 6 years. This year’s dividend is based on policyholder performance between June 2008 – June 2009. Dividend checks are calculated based on the size of a policyholder’s annual premium compared with claims costs.

"At a time when Colorado businesses are struggling to recover from the devastating economic downturn, Pinnacol’s ongoing strong financial performance put us in a position to return money to our policyholders," said Ken Ross, Pinnacol president and CEO. ―"We know the impact of this dividend will ease some of the pain businesses are feeling and help create more jobs and stimulate the economy. We applaud our policyholders for their continued commitment to effective claims management and safety practices and are grateful to them for their business and continued support."

For those who are not insurance experts (myself included!) these dividends are a reflection of the realized risk (number and cost of claims actually experienced) during the policy period (in this case June '08 through June '09) being lower than anticipated. Insurance companies collect premium from their customers (policyholders) in advance of the claims based on what they expect those claims to be. If the claims are lower than anticipated then insurance companies can return some of the savings to their customers. As with all insurance, its a partnership between the insurance company and the insured to try to minimize the frequency and severity of the claims experienced, and workers' compensation is no different. Its a win-win: the policyholder (Colorado businesses) gets some of their money back, and the workers who aren't getting injured. Of course there can be years when claims exceed the resources provided by the premium collected, and in this situation it would be unlikely for any insurance company to pay dividends in that event.

What are Pinnacol employees reading?

Thanks to one of our new employees, Karla, who is one of our Training Specialists, Pinnacol has a very active book club open to all employees. Employees are encouraged to not only read the book, but to also take part in the discussions, and write a short review that is posted on our internal WIKI internet. The books generate some lively discussions!

The Club recently finished reading The Google Story by David Vise, Mark Malseed, and Stephen Hoye. Our employees rated it 4 out of five stars and felt the book did a very good job of detailing the transformation of a start-up company into the world's leading search engine provider. As Sarah, an Underwriter on one of our large teams, observed: 

"Google's sole purpose was to create the best search engine that they could, without even giving monetary gain a second thought. Their focus was on quality ~ and when the superior product was created, they then ventured into how to make the product profitable. All too often in business, individuals sacrifice qualify in order to make money, and therefore fail in the end. The fact that Larry and Sergey (the founders of Google) never once sacrificed the quality of their product speaks volumes and shows true integrity ~ something we value deeply here at Pinnacol."

Prior to reading The Google Story, the Pinnacol Book Club had tackled Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. If you haven't read the book, it talks about the "Five Tribal Stages" and incorporates data from a ten-year study of nearly 24,000 people in more than two dozen corporations, with insights from such leading and diverse figures as Brian France, CEO of NASCAR, Reed Hoffman, Chairman of LinkedIn, Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. Wendy, an Underwriter on one of our Associations teams shared her thoughts this way:"Although I knew that I was reading a business book intended for the enlightenment of interested employees (and by extension the betterment of Pinnacol), my focus was rarely there. Most of my time was spent wondering where I was in the processes or stages described by the book. What am I doing to help myself and others upgrade? How do my specific behaviors contribute or undermine? Where is my team? And, at times, "did I really just do that?" (Stage one and two behaviors are not pretty.)"

"Tribal Leadership offered a reality check for me. It was less about a finding magic pill that can transform Pinnacol into the best company ever and more about discovering where am I at in this business. Do I like it? Am I willing to settle? How can I make myself and my working situation better? The originality of the ideas and the quality of the writing can be debated. But the book did make me think. It made me think while I was reading it and long after I finished it. It made me question and consider possibilities that I did not before. A valuable book indeed."

Pinnacol prides itself on being a continual learning organization, and Karla's great idea for a company book club fits right in!  

Congratulations to this year's graduates!

Graduation season is upon us, and more than 3.1 million students will earn their college degrees in 2010. Its also a census year, we're in a challenging economy, and a lot of folks are thinking the ways of old are gone for good. The census data will tell us a lot about where we are now, but not necessarily much about where we are going.

Yesterday I and 23 of my Pinnacol peers had the opportunity to volunteer with Junior Achievement at a local elementary school. Pinnacol's CEO, Ken Ross, has been active in JA for some time and based on his lead I thought I'd give it a try. I partnered up with Danielle, one of our corporate Training Specialists because the thought of facing 20-30 2nd graders alone was too much for my poor heart to take. Being the smart, intelligent person I think I am, I went right for the best: who better to help me teach than one of our corporate trainers? We did JA In A Day, which is where you teach five modules in one day rather than over the course of several weeks. The kids were awesome, Danielle was fabulous, the teacher was great, and I got through my part without looking like a complete idiot. Not a bad day of volunteering all in all!

Part of the message Junior Achievement tries to communicate to the kids is the value of staying in school. The second graders we were teaching have a lot of schooling ahead of them. By contrast, the 3.1 million 2010 graduates are now ready to transition from the classroom to the workplace. The data from the last census in 2000 strongly supported the idea that Higher Education pays off in terms of earning potential:

The data, which will soon be updated with this year's Census, indicated that over an adult's working life, high school graduates could expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million. Current data shows the value of education reflected in the unemployment rate: for those with college degrees unemployment is hovering at around 5%, for those without it is almost double. So encouraging kids to stay in school was an easy message to believe in as we shared it with the students we met yesterday. Those second graders  represent the class of 2024 and I have no idea what the world will look like when they graduate. What I do know is that the graduating class of 2010 will be instrumental in shaping that future world. So congratulations on your academic achievements, and we look forward to working with you in the years to come!

A conversation with one of our new Team Nurses

Last week I had a chance to sit down with one of our new employees, Deborah, to do her "New Employee Follow-up" which is an effort that Pinnacol has done for years with everyone who comes on board to make sure people new to the organization are starting to feel comfortable in their surroundings, their training, and with their team after their first several months in the job. That conversation led me to ask Deborah if she might share some insights with you into her specific role - Team Nurse Case Manager - and to highlight what skills she thinks are critical and what she particularly enjoys about her new position.

The Team Nurse Case Manager is a key position at Pinnacol. At the high level our nurses provide telephonic case management handling the medical aspects of workers’ compensation claims. They perform self-directed, professional level work in a fast paced team environment as they interact with injured workers, policyholders, and providers. Generally the position requires a broad clinical background, and experience with rehabilitation, occupational health, managed care, or emergency nursing. And as Deborah mentions, many clinical nurses may be completely unaware that this type of nursing opportunity exists.

A tremendous local resource...

I sometimes get asked by job seekers which websites I think are the best to find a job. That is a really tough question to answer, and the only real answer I can ever come up with is, "it depends". It depends on the type of job you're looking for, whether you are looking nationally or locally, whether you belong to any professional organizations - the list of caveats is almost endless.

However, one of the sites that almost always ends up on my recommended list is Andrew Hudson's Job List (http://www.andrewhudsonsjobslist.com/). Andrew started a newsletter years ago highlighting opportunities in the public relations, communications, and marketing arena. The newsletter circulated at first only to his friends. But then friends of friends wanted in, and what started out small has now grown into a full-fledged job site listing positions in lots of different areas from sales to human resources, information technology to Non-profit. We regularly use his site when we have an opening and he always seems to deliver top quality candidates.

That said, the real reason I'm mentioning him today is that he has also recently started a careers blog (http://andrewhudsonsjobsblog.com/) that is full of useful tips for job seekers. He offers a unique and candid perspective on the realities of the job market and the job search. If you are not familiar with what Andrew has been up to you should take a look. Its one local resource that's too good to pass up!