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Claim Professionals Deliver on the Travelers Promise During Trying Times
Our claim professionals are continuing to deliver on the Travelers Promise, to take care of our customers, communities and each other, which has become increasingly important during the upheaval and uncertainty caused by COVID-19.
Just before daybreak on a Monday in mid-April, a severe windstorm swept through Charlotte, North Carolina, damaging properties across the region. After the storm passed, Erin Karaffa packed up her drone and her personal protective gear, ready to start conducting property inspections and helping our customers recover.
Within a few hours, Erin, a Property Claim professional in our Virginia-Carolina Claim Center, had spoken to a customer whose home was damaged by a large falling tree. Because of the extent of damage to the attic, Erin couldn’t conduct a virtual inspection, so she set up an in-person inspection for the following day and arrived on site in protective gear, following social distancing guidelines.
“I like to give customers a heads-up and call from the driveway to say, ‘I’m here. Are you comfortable with me coming in? I have a mask and gloves on,’” Erin explained. “I want to make sure they’re prepared. Even though you see a lot of people wearing masks, it can still be intimidating.”
In addition to inspecting the interior damage, Erin used a drone to assess the damage to the roof and then issued the customer’s claim payment via ePay, Travelers’ secure electronic payment system. “The tree impacted a pipe that came out of her roof,” Erin stated, “and it shattered all the way into the attic and down into the crawlspace, so she needed to get a plumber in there right away. ePay helped her do that.”
The customer was so pleased with Erin’s prompt, professional response despite the challenges posed by COVID-19 that she sent a heartfelt letter of thanks. “You had a caring demeanor and were very thorough, professional, diligent and knowledgeable about what to do,” the customer wrote to Erin. “Travelers is fortunate to have an employee like you, especially during this pandemic that our world is dealing with.”
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Tech Inventors Awarded U.S. Patents for Designing Forward-Looking Solutions
Members of the Car Dealer UAV Team.
For more than 165 years, Travelers’ innovative employees continually ask themselves and their colleagues, “what’s next?” And throughout the years, their curiosity has led to the development of creative solutions recognized by the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office.
Check out what creativity looks like at Travelers in the following six U.S. patents received this year by members of the Travelers Technology team.
- Electronic Auto Policy ID Card (U.S. Patent No. 10,636,096).Michal Sterzycki and his team are meeting our customers where they are by enabling auto customers to create and download an ID card, receive it via email or text, and save it to their Apple Wallet. The card contains instructions on filing a claim and deep links to the user’s policy info.
- Car Dealer UAV (U.S. Patent No. 10,592,934). Ian Michel, George Lee, Pee T Lim and John Han devised the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to capture images for immediate analysis and damage estimates. Imagine the system being used to efficiently determine the amount of damage to a vehicle fleet at an auto dealership after a severe weather event.
- Digital Forensics Lab (U.S. Patent No. 10,546,133). Krystopher Aurigemma, Roy Emmerthal, Patrick Griffin, Eric Raabe and James Shanley received a patent for creating a system to analyze digital media devices infected with malware, using virtual desktop sessions to provide flexibility in the deployment of processing resources and isolation of threats.
- Mobile Risk Assessment Tool (U.S. Patent No. 10,586,193). Steve Roach participated on a team that identified how real-time video analysis of property conditions can aid the underwriting process. Consider a subject matter expert observing assessor data collection and providing real-time guidance to optimize the data collection process and minimize the need for multiple trips to gather supplemental information.
- Virtual Co-Location (U.S. Patent No. 10,574,942). Doug Roy and Ryan Scanlon introduced the use of an Internet of Things (IoT) device that connects remote workers with their teams using host device hardware sensors and a client software app to communicate status changes in each location.
- Data Archival and Retrieval Tool (DART) (U.S. Patent No. 10,635,688). Venkatraman Raman designed a reusable metadata-driven, sustainable data transfer framework that simplifies data complexities, access, availability and analysis onto a single platform.
Through Travelers’ Innovation Jam Hackathons and day-to-day innovative thinking, our multi-disciplinary teams will continue to put their creative minds together to produce solutions that make a difference in the lives of our customers and each other.
As we look forward and wonder what’s next for our business, are you wondering what’s next for your career in technology?
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Travelers to Reach Goal of Planting 1 Million Trees
Travelers to Reach Goal of Planting 1 Million Trees in Partnership with American Forests
Through its partnership with American Forests, the oldest nonprofit conservation group in the nation, Travelers will soon reach its goal of planting one million new trees.
In celebration of the 50th Earth Day, and in keeping with the company’s dedication to environmentalism, Travelers is also continuing its partnership with American Forests through April 2021. Through this partnership, Travelers has planted one tree for every Personal Insurance customer who opted in to paperless billing in 2019. The company will continue these efforts and expects to plant up to a half-million more new trees.
“We are proud to have reached this important milestone and to continue our successful partnership with American Forests,” said Michael Klein, Executive Vice President and President of Personal Insurance at Travelers. “We are committed to operating our business efficiently and sustainably. This program achieves both, by creating a convenient experience for our customers and meaningfully reducing our paper usage and carbon footprint.”
“With Travelers’ support, we planted 1 million trees in some of America’s most endangered forests – taking 1 million steps for safe, healthy communities and a vibrant natural environment,” said Jad Daley, President and CEO of American Forests. “We are very grateful to Travelers, one of our largest corporate partners, and excited to continue working together to make a positive impact on our planet.”
Additionally, Travelers regularly implements cost-effective ways to positively impact the eco-efficiency of its business. Other measures include:
- Reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 35% since 2011.
- Reducing energy consumption by approximately 50% since 2006 at its largest-owned campus.
- Relying on renewable energy sources for 17% of the electricity consumed at its owned facilities.
- Ensuring its owned campuses are ENERGY STAR® certified.
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GUIDE TO ERGONOMICS IN THE WORKPLACE
Effective and successful workplace ergonomics involves the application of basic workplace principles to help address a worker’s discomfort, chronic pain or injury. A large part of good ergonomics involves workstation arrangement, equipment orientation and employee work habits. Proper placement of workstation equipment helps, but good ergonomics starts with the selection of furniture that can be easily adjusted to meet the needs of varied employees.
Having an effective ergonomics process can help you identify those job tasks and workplace factors that can put employees at risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). These types of conditions can result in additional expenses and lost productivity for your company. Addressing the risks should be a business imperative. Establishing a good ergonomics process can help reduce the frequency of MSDs, address ergonomic risk factors and concerns, and control workers compensation costs.
Some areas to consider in minimizing the risk of MSDs include:
- Good workstation chairs.
- Proper keyboard and mouse placement.
- Correct monitor/reference material positioning.
- Sufficient lighting to help reduce eyestrain.
Good work habits are essential to avoiding injuries from computer use. Even with the best workstation and properly positioned equipment, employees could end up with discomfort or MSDs. Your employees may develop bad habits over time that can lead to the development of MSDs.
Good habits to promote include, but are not limited to:
- Change your work position, chair height and angle, and keyboard position throughout the day.
- Look away from the screen periodically to focus on distant objects.
- Use the “ALT” functions on your keyboard where possible to reduce mouse use.
- Hold the phone with your non-writing hand or use a headset. Do not hold the phone with your chin and shoulder as this can lead to neck tension, headaches and pinched nerves.
- Stand to reach items on shelves above your desk, rather than reaching from your chair.
- Squat or go to one knee while getting materials from bottom drawers or shelves.
Changing work habits takes time and dedication. Even a slight keyboard height change can initially feel awkward. If a change feels awkward, work using the modified arrangement for at least a week to give it a chance to become natural.
Armed with this information, you can increase employee safety and comfort through education and workstation modifications, rather than making costly furniture or equipment purchases.
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5 WAYS MINDFULNESS MAY INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
Long associated with meditation and relaxation, the practice of mindfulness has become more mainstream in recent years. And, with studies showing that humans aren’t as good at multi-tasking as we think we are, practicing mindfulness or meditation may actually help us be more productive at work.
Ever felt scattered while having 12 browser tabs open on your laptop, while keeping up with a group text on your smartphone and answering emails as they come in? In an age of multi-tasking, mindfulness can help us be in a state of moment-to-moment awareness of our experience. So, can practicing mindfulness help your small business become more productive?
Here are five potential benefits:
1. Mindfulness may help you and your team prioritize better. Multi-tasking is really task-switching, because it’s not possible for the brain to handle two tasks simultaneously. A research study at Stanford University found that multi-tasking actually made participants less able to switch tasks effectively, likely because they were less able to filter out irrelevant distractions.1 Since not every task has the same level of importance to your small business, being able to discern what’s most important can be a critically important skill.
2. Mindfulness can help boost your working memory. Research has shown an increase in working memory among participants in an eight-week mindfulness training.2 That working memory can translate to productivity if employees are able to better recall training and other information useful for their work – and may even help them avoid accidents and injuries at work if they are better able to remember safety practices.
3. Mindfulness can help reduce stress. According to an American Psychological Association survey, 60 percent of respondents reported that work is a very or somewhat significant source of stress, second only to money matters.3 Serious health issues can arise from stress, from hypertension to cardiovascular disease. Mindfulness training, especially when practiced as a team, can help reduce anxiety and teach emotion regulation strategies to better handle difficult situations.
4. Mindfulness can help improve focus. Distractions abound in the modern office. Open office concepts can mean employees need to filter out foosball matches to focus, frequent meetings may disrupt workflow, and notifications from email, texts and other social media can make it hard to concentrate. A study that looked at how participants were able to focus found that experienced mindful meditators performed better on all measures of attention and had higher self-reported mindfulness than those with no meditation experience.4
5. Mindfulness can be a good team-building activity. Practicing mindfulness can be a great way to bring a team together, by providing a team-building activity and by teaching how to better relate to one another. Whether you invite an instructor in to lead a yoga, tai chi or qigong class, or you offer a more structured meditation training program, the team can apply what they learn to handling challenges at work, being more focused and taking time to be present.
Thinking of how to get started? Of course, any mindfulness program should be voluntary for employees. Thirty-minute sessions once or twice a week can create a space where your team can practice guided meditation and discuss how to apply it to their experiences at work. Creating a more mindful culture can have benefits for you and your team, both inside and outside of the office.
Sources:
1 http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583.full.pdf?sid=d448f6fe-219c-402a-a617-03e7c5ed527c
2 http://www.amishi.com/lab/wp-content/uploads/jha_stanley_etal_emotion_2010.pdf
3 http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2014/stress-report.pdf
4 Moore, A. & Malinowski, P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness & Cognition, 18(1), 176-186
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IS DISTRACTED WALKING ON THE JOB A HAZARD?
The term distracted driving has become much-discussed as of late, but distracted walking is another common phenomenon. From crossing intersections to pushing shopping carts in crowded parking lots, you can see pedestrians focused more on their smartphones in potentially dangerous situations than their surroundings. There are near-misses with passing cars, twisted ankles on potholes and collisions with objects or other distracted walkers.
Injuries from walking while using a cell phone more than doubled over a five-year period, while the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during the same time period.1 Researchers believe the actual numbers might be higher than reported, especially if patients are reluctant to share the true cause of their injuries. It has become such a problem that for the first time, the National Safety Council included cell phone distracted walking as a cause of unintentional deaths and injuries in its 2015 Injury Facts Report.2
When distracted walking meets the workplace, employee health can suffer. Workers operating machinery while texting or using their smartphones may injure themselves or others, which may lead to lost time from work. Employees more focused on their devices than another person as they pass in common corridors may not be as engaged in their immediate surroundings and might not see potential hazards.
Creating a Formal Policy
There are also concerns about productivity associated with distracted walking. If you go to a common area in a company, you will likely find employees walking and talking or texting during business hours. Distracted walking can be part of a broader conversation about the use of mobile devices, personal email, texting and browsing the Internet during the work day.
A formal policy to address distracted walking, as part of a policy on the appropriate use of personal devices in the workplace, can help set some guidelines for employees and reduce distractions. As with all aspects of creating a culture of safety, it is important that people at all levels of the company adhere to the policy.
Sources:
1 http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/distractwalk.htm
2 http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/news-and-resources-pedestrian-safety.aspx
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