It’s a good thing Worksafe and workcover insurance claims departments aren’t graded on writing skills because the state of writing within most claims departments today is just awful, according to injured workers, who see an average of six to eight mistakes per letter!
Workcover and WorkSafe have appalling writing skills
Most case managers are writing more each week than most professional writers and yet they haven’t had a class in writing since college!
The most common mistakes we see include:
- Punctuation and grammar issues mostly with commas, apostrophes and hyphens
- Grammatical issues such as run-on sentences, sentence fragments and trouble with problematic pronouns (me and I)
- Substantive problems, tone issues like “we are unable to do this” as opposed to “if you do this we will be able to help you”
- Old-fashioned phrases: “as per,” “pursuant to,” “enclosed please find”
- Wordiness
- Vagueness
Claims professionals should not expect template letters to reduce the likelihood of errors! Even the template letters which make some claim executives and case managers think that they are off the hook in terms of needing help with writing are not very good either!
While it is helpful to have some letters ready to go, case managers in particular forget that a template letter only provides a starting point. The problem is most case managers forget to mold it to a particular injured worker!
There are many examples of a pre-fill template letter where a case manager even forgot to choose a pre-fill option, likely causing confusion for the recipient.
Perhaps injured workers could prepare a company style guide! (and sell it for profit!) If they had a style guide you would be capturing all of the questions that case managers who are sitting at their desk grumbling about or wasting a morning about in terms of ‘do I use this serial comma or not.’
We strongly believe, in our seriously injured opinions, that a 10-to-30 page customised claims writing style guide would be a handy resource for case manager 
A lot of letters also show how negative tone is used and those case managers tend to forget that problems with tone can affect the end result of a claim.
We are constantly amazed at the number of case managers who just are not aware that they are crossing the line between objectivity and subjectivity.
Reasons why good writing skills are important to a claims department:
Bad writing hurts customer service, causes embarrassing errors, takes away from professionalism and can lead to substantial complaints , soured relationships and even bad faith lawsuits (the latter in the US).
We reckon that WorkSafe and workcover insurance employees ought to be put through a mandatory writing workshop!
Some examples
WorkSafe envelope addressed to MR V
WorkSafe’s envelope content addressed to Dear MR V and then Dear MR Z (but this injured worker is FEMALE!)
A bizarre letter from Xchanging
A letter of denial from Xchanging (note the date)
Also note that a “shoulder brace” is “treatment” 
Same matter: letter but note the date – so what is it? Approved or not?
A bizarre letter from Xchanging stating that some 5 years previously (date of injury) the injured worker chose…
Got any funny letters from your case manager or WorkSafe, please share them with us!
Shortlink: http://aworkcovervictimsdiary.com/?p=5163
Wow, isn’t it surprising to see how much time people spend going over punctuation in generic letters, when they don’t have to get up and go to work every day. Keep up the good work guys.
I’m detecting a bitter Allianz or Xchanging employee here.
If these case managers can’t get basic spelling, punctuation and grammar correct, how on earth can people have faith that they can even read and understand medical reports?
We all know, it is commonly known, that these case manegers have little if any skill in the sort of work they are doing. They’re placed in the job after a few weeks training and their primary (though unwritten) goal is to kill off claims.
It’s like in the USA recently a guy was rejected by a police force as his IQ was too high. That police force was taken to court and it successfully argued that you can be too smart to be a police officer. That is, they wanted morons (can’t think of a better word at present) to be their cops so that they could easily be controlled.
Same applies for these insurance companies. Sure you’ll get “promoted” and given a fancy title like “Senior Case Manager” but in the end you’ll be nothing more than the moron the insurance company wants you to be.
If you want to read on about the moron cops, here you go: http://nyletterpress.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/police-reject-candidate-for-being-too-intelligent/
Perhaps james we all have nick names here and we may not disclose too much about what insurers do because of privacy concerns see no freedom of speak, BUT you could use your real credentials and you couldn’t risk anything here other than disclosing the name of your Employer??
Wow, a real bitter workcover insurance employee indeed! Very very insulting! Well, let me tell you this: I once worked full time in an exec position, mate and when I was working my letters and emails were very nicely written, rest assured. Not sloppy like yours! Even now, sourpuss, whilst I am not be able to work because of the negligence of my employer *and YOUR contributing negligence forcing me repeatedly to return to the same job that caused me to get re-injured over and over again, until the injury was so severe it could no longer be repaired with the 8th or 9th reconstructive surgery * and the fact that I am up to my eyeballs on narcotics, I make the effort to use correct grammar and spelling and I am using dictation, duh.
Get a life. Enjoy the fact that you have not suffered a serious injury, you moron!
How do you pretend to talk to someone moron and so stupid and he/she should be able to understand you??
Hey workcover dude
You are extremely rude, and you clearly have NO idea what you are talking about. I hope you will get seriously injured very soon.