Safety Consultant positions now open!

In the world of workers' compensation the best claim is the claim that never happens. That's good for everyone involved - a worker isn't injured, and the employer isn't without one of their staff due to an accident. Guess what? Accident prevention is no accident and it takes the concerted efforts of employers, their workers, and their insurance company all working in unison to ensure a safe workplace. At Pinnacol we have the state's largest group of safety professionals all working towards one objective - reducing the frequency and severity of accidents occuring at the companies we insure.

We hire both experienced as well as entry level candidates into the ranks of our Safety Consultants and we currently are looking to bring on board two individuals in this capacity. Entry level candidates tend to come through school programs dealing with environmental health and safety and we have our current openings posted with several schools both inside and outside of Colorado. I also have the openings announced through the Colorado Chapters of the ASSE (American Society of Safety Engineers).


Safety Consultants at Pinnacol perform a variety of specialized tasks including implementing one or more of the following services to our policyholders: safety program development and on site safety inspections, Cost Containment Certification assistance, accident and injury trend analysis, onsite Train the Trainer programs, OSHA compliance assistance, construction safety, ergonomic resources, as well as researching and updating other staff on changing regulations & emerging safety issues. 


To be effective in this role our Safety Consultants spend the majority of their time at policyholder locations so  considerable travel throughout the state within an assigned territory is necessary. Successful candidates must also be a self-starter, well organized and have good computer, communication, and presentation skills.

I've always thought these to be very interesting positions  as they offer the opportunity to learn the nuts and bolts of many of the businesses and industries our policyholders are involved in as well as the ability to make a positive impact by helping reduce the accidents they and their workers experience. If you are interested in this opportunity to make a real difference, please complete our application via our company website.

Claims Redux... Will Entertain Entry Level Candidates!

I had posted last week that we have some Claims opportunities available. In following up with Jerica, one of our Team Leaders, she indicates that for at least one of these openings they are willing to entertain entry level candidates who are interested in beginning a career in Claims. To be considered for the entry level opportunity candidates must have a minimum of a Bachelor's degree, strong computer skills, excellent interpersonal and communication skills and be able to pass a Critical Thinking test.

For the right person, Claims can be a very rewarding career path. The work is challenging, very customer-service focused, and revolves around ensuring that injured workers' progress effectively from the point of being injured to hopefully returning to work. If this sounds like something you'd like to explore please apply on-line. It's been quite a while since we have had an entry level opportunity in claims, so I was thrilled when Jerica let me know that entry level folks would be considered!

New Opportunities for Claims Representatives

Workers' Compensation insurance does two very basic things at it's core. First it analyzes the risk of employees getting injured, and then it takes care of the risk when the injury occurs. Underwriters focus on the first part - the risk analysis, and our Claims Representatives focus on the second - taking care of injured workers and helping them get through what can be one of the most challenging times of their lives.

We are looking for experienced Claims Representatives who work as part of multi-functional teams to bring claims to resolution. Generally they are assigned to specific policyholder accounts with the expectation that they will provide outstanding customer service to injured workers, policyholders, and other stakeholders. These positions routinely staff cases with team nurses, return to work specialists, team leaders, claims experts and legal counsel as needed as well as making use of all appropriate internal and external resources. Setting initial reserves, our Claims Representatives maintain current and accurate reserves for all assigned cases and negotiate settlements. Claims Representatives can also serve as a technical resource to other team members including the mentoring of less experienced adjusters on complex issues and closure strategies.   3+ years of adjusting experience with direct exposure to workers’ compensation preferred but if you have other claims exposure we'd love to hear from you! Please apply online at our company website.

Deja Vu

You would have to be an exceptionally sound sleeper to have gotten through last night in the Denver area without being awakened from some very unusual storm activity. Driving into work through parts of town you couldn't help but notice piles of leftover hail piled on grassy areas and along roadways. In my neighborhood some trees and limbs were down, leaves and flowers were decimated and I'm going to have get out the ladder when I get home to climb on the roof to check for shingle damage.

When I got to work it was the first thing that came up in conversation. We have employees who live throughout the metropolitan area and it seems that almost everyone experienced some aspects of the storm. Some suffered fairly serious damage with screens, windows, siding, and roofs bearing the brunt of the storm's fury. Others were awakened by pounding rain and sirens going off in the middle of the night. My first interview candidate of the morning had driven up from Castle Rock and mentioned that his local King Soopers had suffered such extensive damage that they might have to close until repairs could be made.

Colorado certainly gets its share of severe weather from blizzards and frigid temperatures in Winter to droughts and extreme heat in the warmer months. Anyone who has lived along the front range is used to our summer cycle of afternoon thunderstorms and we see our share of gulley washers. Maybe its just my perception, but yesterday's storms seemed out of the ordinary.

I live on the west side of town and normally our storms come rolling in from the foothills and then march across the Denver area until eventually dying out over the far eastern plains as nightime temperatures sap the storms of their energy. Wednesday's activity didn't appear to start over the mountains, and when I drove home after work the sky above the foothills was actually clear and sunny. Looking to the south and east though, it was clear there was some nasty weather brewing. Watching the nine o'clock news it was evident that even the weather forecasters were having some difficulty getting a handle on a developing weather situation. At the start of the broadcast the weatherperson was saying what we typically hear: heavy rains starting to let up, tornado watches beginning to expire, and the storms heading out to die in the arid air of the Colorado plains. By nine thirty however they were singing a different tune - storms that generally move off to the east and weaken were now moving to the north and west and strengthening.

When I went to bed I wondered if we'd be lucky enough to get some of the moisture (Coloradans love our green lawns, but don't like to pay to water them...). Little did I know that in just a couple of hours I'd have more water falling from the sky than I could have hoped for, and then some. 12:35 a.m. is when the thunder and lightning awakened I and my wife. Actually that's not quite correct. What really woke us up was our 55 pound Siberian husky jumping into bed and trying to bury himself under the covers. Chinook is twelve years old and as alpha a male as a dog can be. Normally he can sleep through anything other than the sound of kibble being put into his food dish, but last night he was physically shaking. Hmmm, we thought, something must be up.

Then it hit. Slow, steady rain rapidly turned into a deluge of water falling out of a greenish colored sky (several of my coworkers also noticed the eerie appearance of the clouds). The buckets of rain then gave way to pounding hail. Again, anyone who has lived in Colorado has seen all this before but usually these storms are fairly short lived, wreaking their havoc and then moving on. Not last night. It seemed that wave after wave of rain followed by hail fell from the sky for more than an hour. How my skylights survived is beyond me. And the lightning was something I have never seen. It was non-stop. I commented to my wife that it looked like a strobe light it was so continuous. The thunder too was out of the ordinary - it never stopped. There were no gaps between the claps of thunder. Instead it was more of a steady roar with an occasional boom indicating a closer strike. And then the sirens went off. I'm assuming they were tornado sirens but I do know they were just barely audible over the crashing of the thunder.

Eventually, of course, the storms eventually moved on to pummel other neighborhoods and wake up other people and other pets. Forecasters warn of a repeat this afternoon. As I write this I realize how easy it is to get caught up in the moment and think that what we have experienced is completely new and truly out of the ordinary. But last night, at about 1:00 a.m. in the midst of the storm, I caught myself thinking back to a night long ago when I was much younger. July 31, 1976 is perhaps a date that has no meaning to many who read this as it is likely that many of you were not even born then. I was surprised last night how vividly I remembered that Saturday night storm from so long ago.

Now remembered as the Big Thompson Canyon Flood, like yesterday's storms, no one quite anticipated what was about to happen those 36 years past.As with last night, the rain came and would not let up (Estes Park would see more than 3 1/2 inches of rain fall in a 24 hour period; Fort Collins had 4.6 inches in just 4 hours), continuing to come down in sheets for an extended period. What most people back then didn't know is that it was doing much the same thing in the mountains to the west of Estes Park. Over the next four-and-a-half hours, very heavy rain fell over a 70-square mile area in the central portion of the more than 800-square mile Big Thompson drainage basin.

By the next day the resulting flash flood would claim 139 lives, destroy 316 homes, 45 mobile homes, 52 businesses, and 438 automobiles. Thousands of tourists were in the canyon anticipating the next day's celebration of Colorado's Centennial. People had to literally run for their lives ahead a wall of water which peaked at more than 30,000 cubic feet per second as it rushed down the normally placid canyon (by comparison, according to the U.S. Geological Service, the average discharge of the Colorado River as it flows through the Grand Canyon is just over 21,000 cfs). So as impressed as I am with last night's weather, and as tempted as I am to think it was unique, I'll never forget my young man's memory from 1976 as it started to rain: Hmmm, something must be up...

Payroll Administrator Opportunity now open!

We have a very rare opportunity to join our Human Resources team. We are looking for a Payroll Administrator with at least two years of experience as the primary payroll processor in an organization of approximately 600 employees. Experience in UltiPro Workplace is strongly preferred and experience with pay cycle transition conversion is desired.

This is a high-contact customer-facing position dealing with employees across the organization so outstanding customer service skills and a patient attitude are critical. The successful candidate must also be able to obtain a Notary Public license within 6 months of employment. An Associate’s Degree or equivalent work experience in Business or related field is required. If you are interested in this unique opportunity to join our company, please apply on-line.

Looking for a few Great Web and Flex Developers!

We have a couple of different IT opportunities that I wanted to make folks aware of. The IT market in Denver is relatively small and has tightened up considerably from just a couple of months ago. Candidates in IT, and increasingly in other career areas as well, are finding more opportunities than have been available in the last several years. There are a lot of great IT shops in Denver and we think we are among those that can offer a lot to folks interested in exploring opportunities. We are currently looking for some great Web Developers and Flex Developers to join our IT team. 

One of the advantages Pinnacol has is that our corporate headquarters are based here in Denver. What that means is that we have all the corporate support resources, including our IT shop, located at our Lowry offices. This allows all the support functions, including our IT staff to interact and collaborate very closely with the business users who depend on them. Pinnacol has only about 600 employees so over time people really do get to know each other and develop close working relationships. More than one out of every 10 Pinnacol employees works in IT which highlights our commitment to, and recognition of, the changes taking place every day in technology.

Our IT staff work in an Agile environment and we use and adopt software that makes good business sense. IT folks know that their world is in a constant state of change - the hot tools of today will likely not be the same they will use tommorrow. As the old adage goes, if you are not moving ahead you are falling behind, and our IT staff recognizes that Agile is not just a tool but a philosophy.

In the following video Dave Hoffman, our Associate Vice President of Application Services, shares some insights about the Web Developer role and also gives his thoughts on where IT at Pinnacol is heading, and what it's like to work in our IT shop:  




Pinnacol Assurance is looking for a talented web developer with a passion for creating great products to help our customers do what they love. Our current technology stack includes HTML5, jQuery, Ruby (some on Rails, some not), Oracle, Passenger, Apache and nginx, and even a little bit of C.

As I mentioned, our IT team works in an Agile environment with an emphasis on fast turnaround to get customers what they need quickly. On the Web Developer side we're looking for "full-stack" developers who can be a jack of all trades and can quickly learn a new technology they are not readily familiar with.

Some of the must have skills we are looking for include:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• jQuery
• SQL
• Unix
• Proficiency in one or more Object Oriented languages (Ruby preferred but will consider PHP, java, etc.)

Other skills it would be nice to have include:

• Ruby
• Rails
• UI/UX design skills
• HTML5
• Sass
• CoffeeScript
• jQueryUI
• C/C++
• Oracle
• Phusion Passenger
• Apache or nginx
• git/github

Our Flex Developers develop and maintain multiple-tier application programs, with a heavy emphasis on advanced sophistication of the user interface and user-facing application logic, using technologies such as Adobe Flex, HTML, Javascript, CSS, and XML. They collaborate on assignments with the Product Team while working under the guidance of the Application Resource Manager or Application Technology Manager to meet our Customer needs.
 
Some of the things we are looking for include:

• The ability to utilize FlashBuilder and Flex SDK to design and build graphical user interfaces for web applications used by internal business users.

• Able to work in a team setting utilizing agile development processes to produce software products.

• Experience using modular and object oriented approaches to building Flex applications. (sub-applications, custom components, custom skinning)

• Experience using test driven development methodologies to produce software applications which support automated unit and regression testing. (FlexUnit, continuous integration)

• Experience using the various forms of Flex frameworks as needed to standardize and organize code in large projects. (Swiz, Robotlegs)

If you are interested in exploring further these opportunities with Pinnacol Assurance we invite you to complete an application via our company website.

External Reporting Manager Opportunity!

Due to a recent promotion we have another unique opportunity on our Finance team. We are looking for an External Reporting Manager who will be responsible for the preparation of Company financial information, including preparation of financial statements and regulatory filings.

This position oversees investment accounting including monthly reconciliation of related accounts and is responsible for the relationship with Pinnacol's external actuary, reserve accounting and reporting. Reporting to the Assistant Controller, this position also oversees accounting functions for reinsurance and various programs and coordinates regulatory and external financial audits. 

Successful candidates will bring a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting along with a minimum of seven years accounting experience with management experience preferred. CPA certification is required unless you have a minimum of five years of insurance accounting experience. Insurance experience is preferred. For immediate consideration, please apply on-line!