Caroline Duffy, Sales Consulting, FINEOS
I spent the last 2 days of February fully immersed in the strange and wonderful world of Workers’ Compensation – or Workers’ Comp as we Aussies who abbreviate everything like to call it – in the form of the National Workers’ Compensation Summit 2014.
With our recent projects and upcoming sales activity, I thought it would be a good idea to get out and about amongst the people in the know to pick up some of the lingo and spot some of the trends in the industry. I mentioned this to our marketing department and the next thing you know I’m printing out and folding 150 FINEOS Brochures and fronting the FINEOS stand.
My colleague was good enough to set everything up so I arrived bright and early to the burgundy stand with our familiar pictures of all those famous buildings all over the world. The delegates started arriving at 8am and Dave and I spent a bit of time getting our videos to stream on the media player and then it was all systems go. There was a lot of eye contact avoidance as anyone who attends these conferences will be all too familiar with but we managed to have some very constructive conversations along the way.
Some of the presentations were really interesting and some common trends started to appear. Early Intervention is still a big topic for people but while there is knowledge that it can really make a difference, we’re still not harnessing its full potential and its success has been limited. There is huge potential to make a difference here. The other big area is around Mental Health and how those claims are not managed well. Other areas included topics on the changing Workers’ Compensation legislation in the various states and how that should be interpreted and escalation of Workers’ Compensation claims to external dispute resolution parties. It came over loud and clear that the focus now has shifted from treating an injury to treating a person and how claim plans should be tailored accordingly.
Customers were well represented with the International Keynote Address presented by Scott Pickering, CEO of ACC. His presentation was titled “Shaping the future delivery of a unique compensation scheme” and it covered the Shaping our Future project in a lot of detail. Denise Cosgrave CEO of Worksafe Victoria did a presentation on Strengthening Scheme Outcomes in Victoria which also touched on using technology as an enabler.
So all in all a very successful and enjoyable conference and a great opportunity to keep up to date with what is happening in this industry.
If you weren’t able to see us at the conference and would like further information on FINEOS Claims for Workers’ Compensation please visit our website or contact info@FINEOS.com.
