A glance at a screen...

We have a big screen in our lobby area near our


reception desk that displays all sorts of information, from meetings scheduled for the day, training sessions underway, videos about our company, and more. One of the things I noticed this morning as I came in was a snippet on why the flags in front of our building were at half staff. I have to admit there are mornings I don't even notice the flags have been lowered as I hurry into work, full of anticipation for what the day will bring. The items on the lobby screen rotate from view, so only those walking past at a certain time would have seen the snippet so I'd hazard a guess that this morning most of our employees missed the information about why Governor Ritter had ordered the flags lowered.

Army Captain Dale Goetz is certainly not the first soldier recognized by flags being lowered. At first I didn't make the connection of the name, and at least this morning I felt guilty enough about that to take the hint from our lobby screen to put some meaning behind the name.

Dale Goetz was 1 of 5 soldiers killed Aug. 30 by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. He was based at Fort Carson, Colorado, and served as pastor of First Baptist Church in the South Dakota town of White from 2000 through 2003.

What stopped me in my tracks was that he is the first Army chaplain killed in action since 1970, during the Vietnam War.

I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands of priests, ministers, rabbis, and mullahs serving in the armed forces, often in harm's way. Unlike their fellow soldiers who are there to fight, and often to kill, the Dale Goetz's of the world are there for other reasons, most of them centered around  a quest for peace, spiritual awareness, and love of one's fellow man. They especially are not there to kill, or to be killed. The IED that killed Captain Goetz and his fellow soldiers didn't know who he was, what he did, or what he stood for. That he was willing to give his life for what he believed in is evidenced by his willingness to serve. But for a fleeting glance at a screen in our lobby as I strolled into work this morning, safe and sound and worried about nothing other than my upcoming day he would have simply been one name among many. In the future I'll perhaps give more pause as I pass flags lowered and remember there are people, not just names, behind the significance of the ceremony.

Funeral services for Captain Goetz, who is survived by his wife and three sons, are scheduled for today in Colorado.

CU Denver Launches Program funded by Pinnacol

Pinnacol Assurance is joining with the University of Colorado Denver Business School to create a new Risk Management and Insurance Program (RMI), the first of its kind in the state.

Pinnacol is providing a $5 million gift, allocated over seven years, that will fund a unique curriculum offering both graduate and undergraduate degrees focused on insurance and risk management. “We want this to be a nationally recognized institution for risk management and insurance knowledge creation and dissemination,” said Ajeyo Banerjee, Ph.D., associate professor of finance and director of the new RMI Program at the Business School. “We have been through a major economic crisis and some think this was caused by a failure to manage risk.”

Like other insurance companies, Pinnacol is concerned about the coming shortage of leaders. Industry officials say 50 percent of top managers will retire in the next decade. The RMI program will highlight career opportunities in insurance and risk management and help create a pool of qualified candidates to be the leaders of tomorrow.

“We envisioned a comprehensive curriculum that would enhance the reputation of the industry, be accessible to students of all ages, support our agent partners and provide an incubator for cutting-edge ideas in the industry,”

said Don Collins, Pinnacol’s chief marketing officer/vice president of communications and chairman of the RMI advisory council. “This partnership delivers in all of those areas, and we are grateful to the UC Denver Business

School for helping us make this dream a reality.”

The money will help support the hiring of new teachers, provide scholarships and fund an office suite. The RMI program, now enrolling undergraduate students for its first spring semester class in January 2011, will teach traditional risk management and insurance principles while exploring new ways to integrate them into changing business models. It will also host forums, provide student internships, recruit speakers, conduct research and work with the industry to place students in jobs.

The program will grow in phases, starting with an undergraduate component next year and leading to a graduate program in the future. Several Colorado companies and risk management professionals will actively participate and enrich the classroom experience. They have already reviewed and offered suggestions on course content and curriculum. The input has led to the creation of a course entitled “Legal and Ethical Implications of Risk,” which will deal with everything from water pollution to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For school administrators, the RMI program fills a void in a region where risk management studies are rare or non-existent. “We want Denver to be the epicenter of risk management and insurance in the Rocky Mountain West,” said Sueann Ambron, dean of the University of Colorado Denver Business School. “Businesses today are looking at risk management as a fundamental. It’s an integral part of their thinking going forward.” Ambron said more and more people are becoming experts in risk management and insurance because the stakes are so high. “Failure to properly assess risk can bring an entity down,” she said. “The opportunities for students in this area are expanding rapidly and they have a good chance of finding jobs when they walk out the door.”

Located on the University of Colorado Denver’s downtown campus, the Business School is the largest accredited graduate school of business in Colorado with more than 21,000 alumni. It serves more than 1,200 graduate students and 1,400 undergraduate students each year. Students and faculty are involved in solving real-world business problems as they collaborate on more than 100 projects with area businesses every semester through classroom work, guest lectures and research projects.

More good news about Pinnacol as a place to work...

Its always nice to be able to share good news about Pinnacol Assurance! This morning we found out that we were again recognized as one of the top 50 best small and medium-size employers in America. Pinnacol was one of four Colorado companies to be recognized. Joining Pinnacol on the list were:
Infinity Systems Engineering, The Integer Group, and Ehradt Keefe Steiner & Hoffman PC.

The Great Place to Work® Institute, which also publishes the annual Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list of large employers, recognized Pinnacol for the third time in four years. “We are pleased to be named to this prestigious national list again this year,” said Pinnacol president and CEO Ken Ross. “We have worked diligently to build a culture of mutual trust and openness with our employees and our continuing placement on this list is evidence that those efforts have been successful. We continue to have high policyholder satisfaction and retention scores, which we believe is a direct result of our employee’s satisfaction with Pinnacol as a great employer.”

The Great Place to Work® Institute evaluated Pinnacol based on five areas:
credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. The Institute’s
methodology measures the level of trust that exists between employees and
management, the pride employees express about the company and the

camaraderie employees share. Congratulations to all of the companies and their employees on being recognized. Even in the midst of one of this nation's deepest economic downturns its nice to know that companies still recognize that the best way to take care of their customers is to also take care of their employees. To see the complete list of companies click here. Entrepreneur Magazine, which also helped sponsor this year's recognition, will have additional information on their site later this afternoon.

Pot in the workplace? The answer is still no, but...

The Denver Post ran an editorial this morning arguing that employers have the right to require a drug-free workplace, regardless of Colorado's Amendment 20 which provides eligible sick people an affirmative defense to criminal prosecution for medical marijuana use. Increasingly courts are being asked to decide whether employees with medical marijuana cards are excluded from employers drug-free workplace rules. Thus far the courts have consistently ruled in employers favor. Eventually the Colorado Supreme Court will have to weigh in and depending on future changes to federal law the issue may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court at some point in the future.

As with most employers today, candidates who have been offered positions with Pinnacol Assurance must take a pre-employment drug test. Marijuana is one of the substances tested for. In talking with our vendor who does our drug testing I found out that there are employers out there who, upon being told the potential employee has a medical marijuana card, are waiving the positive drug test result. This is not the case with Pinnacol.

The Post editorial implies that there are many people who have come by their medical marijuana cards fraudulently in that they are not truly sick. And clearly people in certain types of jobs such as pilots, truck and bus drivers, and operators of heavy equipment shouldn't be under the influence of a drug that may impair their reaction time. The editiorial hopes that recent changes to the way the nascent medical marijuana industry is regulated will start to weed out those abusing the system.

However, as Colorado voters intended, there will remain folks who are truly ill, and who seek relief for their symptoms by using medical marijuana. Many of these folks will be gainfully employed or seeking employment. It will be these cases where employers may have to become increasingly sensitive as they enforce their policies in the future. Can a person using medical marijuana run a cash register? Can they serve someone a meal? Can they do an infinite type of jobs that don't directly impact public safety?

I'm thankful it won't be up to me to have to make these decisions. The broader society is going to have grapple with these issues. In the Human Resources world this is something that's not going away anytime soon and we'll be watching it closely. There is a joke about Colorado weather that if you don't like it, just wait five minutes and it will change. What the forecast is for the future of medical marijuana is anyones guess!

Becoming the Best...

Several years ago our CEO Ken Ross set for us the goal of becoming the best workers' compensation insurance company in the nation. This is a tremendously lofty goal given that there are more than 500 insurance companies across the U.S. that can sell this line of insurance. Approximately 200 of those are licensed to sell workers' compensation here in Colorado.

Like any journey, our path to this goal is fraught with trips and falls. One of the things I've admired about this organization since I first started is that regardless of how good we are at any particular moment we recognize that we are far from perfect. It is the striving for improvement that makes the journey worthwhile. Pinnacol has been in the news a lot this summer and over the last several years. Some of the stories have detailed our pluses, others have explored (in great detail!) our shortcomings. The reality is that we may not be as great as some of these stories make us appear to be, or as bad as others would make it seem. In all things there is a kernel of truth and the challenge of our organization remains what it has always been - to seek out that kernel, good or bad, and learn from it.

Our policyholders and other stakeholders would likely agree that in balance Pinnacol has more going for it than against it. The company continues to return dividends to most of the companies that insure with us, rates have decreased dramatically over the last decade, and we continue to guarantee coverage to any Colorado company regardless of the risk that they bring.

By contrast, I was reading this morning in Business Insurance magazine that California's workers' compensation system may need a complete overhaul. One sign of California's woes is the California Insurance Rating Bureau's proposal for a 30% rate increase. California happens to be the largest workers' compensation system in the nation, dwarfing Colorado by comparison. As proof that size does not always matter, no one in our industry would highlight California as having the 'best' workers' compensation system in America. So there is room for optimism as Pinnacol continues on its quest to become better and better. Will there be more stumbles in the future? Perhaps. But, as one of our team leaders, Amy, puts it in a video we show new employees, this is a continually learning organization. And if, as Confucius said nearly 2,500 years ago, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", that's a pretty good place to begin.

Something you won't generally catch me doing...

Something you won't generally catch me doing... being filmed! As part of this blog I've been fortunate to interview our employees about their thoughts on life at Pinnacol. In those videos its the person I'm speaking with that is the focus of attention.

This morning, Karla Barry, one of our training specialists, snagged me and turned the video spotlight my way. In fairness to Karla, I had done the same to her several months ago so I guess turn-about is fair play! (See our May 28th entry "A conversation with one of our Training Specialists") Karla will be presenting at an upcoming conference and wanted to get insight on how we use social media at Pinnacol. We have a social media guru, Ryan, in our communications team so I was a little reticent, but Karla was insistent.

I enjoy being involved in different aspects of social media because its a chance to communicate with lots of folks about our company and it keeps changing. Where social media will be, and what it will look like in 5 years I don't profess to know, but the journey from now to then will be nothing short of fascinating.

Most of Pinnacol's 600+ employees are active participants on a variety of social media sites from LinkedIn to Facebook to Twitter among others. Our Chief Information Officer challenged all of us years ago to stay abreast of the changing technologies that have come to impact us and become a part of our lives. My tenure with Pinnacol started pre-internet, pre-email, and definitely pre-social media, and despite what my friends and family tell me about my not getting any younger that wasn't really all that long ago.

So here's to the future, whatever it may hold for social media. I for one, can't wait to see what unfolds!

Possible upcoming position on our finance team...

We currently have an internal job announcement up for an Accounts Payable Clerk and are actively looking at internal candidates who have an interest in joining our finance team. If we are unable to fill the position internally we will be looking externally. If you are interested in possibly being considered for this position should we need to look externally, please submit an expression of interest via our company website at www.pinnacol.com/careers.

While I can't guarantee that external candidates will be interviewed for this opportunity, I would like to have a group of folks for my hiring manager to look at in case she needs to look outside our company. Openings in our finance team are few and far between and this relatively entry level position is a great opportunity for someone looking to pursue an accounting and finance career. Ideally, external candidates will bring some real-world accounting/bookkeeping experience or an applicable degree, proficiency in Word and Excel, and the ability to understand interfaces between operating and financial systems. As with every position at Pinnacol a very strong focus on customer service is crucial. If you know of someone who may be interested, please let them know!