Ep. 526 Workers' Compensation AI Innovations with ICW Group

Rancho Mesa President David Garcia sits down with ICW Group’s VP of Risk Management Services, Sandy Smith, and Technical Specialist, Tom Jolliff discuss the growing impact of AI, and it’s effect on both personally and professionally.

Show Notes: ICW Group, ⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠

Host: David Garcia

Guest: Sandra Smith, Tom Jolliff ⁠

Producer/Editor: ⁠Jadyn Brandt

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “Breaking News Intro” by nem0production

© Copyright 2025. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Dave Garcia: Hi everyone, you're listening to Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ podcast where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your businesses thrive. I'm your host Dave Garcia and today I'm going to be joined by ICW's VP of Risk Management Services, Sandy Smith and Technical Specialist Tom Jolliff.

By the way, ICW is one of the leading workers’ compensation companies in the United States.

You know I've been in this business for 38 years so there's a couple of observations I've seen and I just kind of want to get your thoughts on and see what you guys are doing if you're along the same lines. But I've seen how like the day-to-day leadership of a business so the culture they establish and how it filters down from, you know, the owners of the company has to set the standard. I think we all agree with that. Then how do you get that into the management and the supervisor level? Because those are the people typically that are the owners not in every meeting, not in every job site, not in every office, whatever it happens to be. And the abilities to be a better leader in that role or not is going to really make an impact, in my opinion, on the overall health of that company. So are there any resources that you recommend using to help develop leadership skills for key employees? Have you addressed that at all?

Sandy Smith: Actually, we have. We have a new leadership series that we're putting out for our policy holders. We've run it two times, it's six sessions. We have our risk management leadership is all taking part in these sessions, but that's exactly what it's covering. Like, how do we make sure that leaders are modeling that and know how to enforce it, know how to, you know, sell their teams on safety, and we've had great response to it.

We just finished one last week, and we had over 250 attendees and that's sign-in. So some people were meeting in groups so that might've been a group of three or four that were just going together. So we had over 250 people that sat through all six sessions and then we're issuing a leadership certificate for those folks and we've done it twice. And I think the second time was better than the first time because we learned things and great feedback.

The topic is very important, like you said, and we've got the folks on our team that are presenting it. You know, they have real-world experience. They've seen things in action, so they all have stories to tell that really reinforces what we're doing. And those, the series is available to watch. I think it'll get uploaded to our Safety on Demand, which is our platform that we use for our online training should be up there ready to go pretty soon, I think. But yeah, it's been a really, I think it's going to be a game changer for us.

Tom Joliff: Yeah, for sure. And then if you watch it on demand, so if you sit through all six series, you also get a certificate because we tracked that. So I love your question because this is something that we identified several years ago. So, we started hosting risk management for leaders or risk management for managers, kind of like in symposium type scenarios. So, we would do one or two a year here in California and we would invite our policyholders, managers and supervisors and we just saw the need and the real interest from our clients about sending their managers and leaders to this. And it was in-person and more interactive, but just seeing that response really kind of set the stage for the development of that leadership series.

And it's something that we as consultants see every time we go out, right? Because again, we're and whether it's HR person or whoever it is, managers and supervisors, get put into that position of having to lead when it comes to safety. And they just maybe haven't had the training or understand what that means from a safety perspective. You know, how to talk to people, how to discipline if you have to in a compassionate and…

DG: Right, positive way.

TJ: Positive way versus you know the old school way. So yeah it's been really, really well received and we're just excited to be able to present that.

DG: So is that something you guys are doing building out internally versus the software that you're using for AI is this program something that ICW is developing on your own?

SS: Yes, we have a couple of our risk management directors, Erin Holenwater and Jason Rosa, who are really passionate about it. Jason especially is super passionate about leadership and training and continued education. So those two really drove it the first time we went through. They taught all six sessions. So this time we have different voices which I think helps keep the interest throughout this, because it's a lot to ask somebody to come for six weeks in a row. And so yeah they developed all of it from you know their own training that they had received and put together what they thought was the best.

DG: That's great. And how long does a session last each session?

SS: An hour?

TJ: Yeah 45 to an hour.

SS: Some are longer than shorter.

DG: Right, but it's, you know, it's the attention span you can hold for that length of time. It's not, you know, eight hours because you're going to lose people if it's straight hours, right?

SS: Oh yeah.

TJ: Right

DG: That sounds great.

TJ: Yeah, and the content, you know, they develop the content based on, you know, the leadership authors that are out there, the, you know, Brene Brown, that type of content, where we're bringing that into it as well, which helps expose our clients to that type of—

DG: Well, this is another innovative step that you guys are taking. It's going to be really interesting. You're at the beginning stages of it, but where will it be in a year? What's it going to look like then? How many people, policyholders, have gone through the training? What's the retention of the training? Is it, they need a refresher or I'm sure, you know, if you get the buy-in from the policyholder and now they hire a new person, right? Well, it's on demand. You can just sit through the trainings, right? Yeah, so that's really, that's special. That's great.

SS: It'll be exciting to see if we follow these, the policyholders that get the certification, how their results are in a year or two years to see if they're really taking it to heart and implementing what they're learning.

DG: Right. Yeah, I think all of us are trying to find ways to really mine the data that's available out there. You know, to have meaningful conversations about is it working, is it not? You know, so I commend you guys for taking that leadership position in the industry. And I'm sure there'll be more to come out. But before we wrap up today, is there any other area you'd like to speak to today?

TJ: Well, from my perspective, just the importance of clients, you know, working with not only the producers, but also with, you know, the carriers risk management people, you know, we really pride ourselves on our approachability and our, you know, really relationship building with our clients, because that's what we're looking to do. We're there to be there, you know, just like you guys, you know, the trusted advisor for risk management and safety services. And when we come out to visit clients, just having them understand that we're there as their partner.

DG: Yeah, you're not the police, you know.

TJ: No.

DG: Trying to catch you doing something wrong.

TJ: Yeah, we've worked really hard to try to change that perception. And I think we're having some good success there.

DG: Yeah, well, I can speak to, we have a lot of policy holders that work with you and up and down, they all enjoy their consultant on the risk and safety side. It's just positive feedback. They feel like you guys become a part of them vicariously, serving a really good purpose for them. Give them constructive and honest feedback. A lot of times it's praise because they've listened to you for the last five years and now they're doing the right things. And so that's nice too, to know, "Hey, I was out at a job site and it looked great. Way to go."

Or, "Hey, I was here and we're sliding back a little bit. So here's some things that we can do to improve.”

So I think, you know, from our perspective at Rancho Mesa, I think ICW has done a phenomenal job with the right people, hiring the right people, training them, bringing them along, and they have such up and down experience, you know. So it's not like everybody's brand new, and it's not like everybody's older than me, you know, which would be old everybody. That would be really old.

TJ:  One thing that we've had some really good success. And I'll let Sandy talk about it is just our associate risk management program.

SS: Yeah, we've, I think it's a program that was in, in place a number of years ago, but it kind of fell by the wayside.

TJ: COVID hurt it.

SS: And so we've, we have, rejuvenated that program. So right now we have two folks that are, that have been hired into an associate position. So one is Layla Gerard, and she was one of our customer care coordinators who is the team that's in the home office who helps onboarding with our new clients, sending emails, getting them set up for our resources. So she already had a lot of knowledge about what we do and how we work with our customers. And so she has stepped into a Senior Associate Role. And then we just hired somebody out East in our Northeast region, who she's in the same position, she had some experience, but not enough with larger accounts and doing that type of thing. So they're, you know, they're starting out with smaller accounts, they're spending a lot of time with our experienced, our experienced team members. So Layla's been out quite a bit with Tom, and with Rob Harrington who is also down here in Southern California. So learning on the job and understanding the new role. And I think that gives us a little leg up because like for her, with Layla she's you know kind of homegrown.

DG: Right.

SS: And so she really has a good understanding of what's important to ICW and what's important to our customers. So I think that is really great, you know, like I said, we're, it's a relationship business. And as a risk management team, we have three customers, you know, we have our policy holders, we have our, all of the brokers, the producers, and then we have the underwriters.

And so we have to make sure that we're satisfying all three of those things. It's a balancing act. And with all the tools we have now, it really allows us to be more of the consultant and like Tom said, we're the partner.

It's not like when I started, I'm not going to say how many years ago, you'd walk into a factory or any kind of workplace with a clipboard and they were like running for the hills. Are they OSHA? What are they doing? Where are they here? And we want to change that. We don't want that to happen. We want people to be able to show up at a work site and be welcomed and not look out of place and build those relationships. We have some folks who work on our ag business, who have built really strong relationships with those customers. We're really fortunate we have quite a variety of levels of experience, like you said, and building out this team, it's been really exciting to see.

DG: Yeah, it's fun. You know, bringing young people into our industry is such a need, you know, you've probably read the articles where, you know, 400,000 people are going to age out in the next X years, and there's not 400,000 young people jumping in. So we've all got to do a better job of sharing what a great industry the insurance industry is, whether it's on the carrier side, the brokerage side, or on some other type of actuarial side, there's just so many facets to it. So I think it's important that we all bring young people in and try to develop them, you know, because it's a great industry.

SS: Yeah, people look at insurance and they’re like, “insurance really?”

And I'll be honest, when I started, I've worked in insurance my entire career and when I got the job at first, I thought, I don't know if this is going to be for me. But I think what I loved about it so much was that every day is different. You go, one day you might be on a farm working at a commercial agricultural thing, and then the next day you might be in a grocery store, and the next day you might be at a hotel, the next day you might be at a manufacturing. It's always different. You're out and about, which is really nice. People don't always want to be in a, like we talked about at an office all day, you know, this, you're out in the field, especially in Southern California. I mean, heaven's sakes, it's beautiful all the time.

TJ: She's from Iowa.

SS: It's a little different than like a hundred degrees steamy days, you know.

DG: Or six feet of snow

SS: Or six feet of snow. Exactly. I don't know which was worse. They both had their drawbacks, but yeah, there's so much to offer in this industry and good opportunities to build a career. So, it's yeah, it's important.

DG: Well, and I know you subscribe to that even on your claims side, you know, you have your, you're bringing an Academy of young people to train them, you know, in the in the ICW way, you know, and that's important. And I've been lucky to be a part of that several times. And I see the bright faces on the screen as I'm talking to them and they're eager, you know, they're, they're excited. And it's to your point, Sandy, I don't know how many people get excited about insurance, you know, but we kind of have to make it like, let's open the curtain. It's really pretty fun. We can have a good time.

SS: Well, for us too, it's, you know, it sounds really corny, but we're saving lives. I mean, we were really improving people's quality of life and knowing, we have a saying; so we go home safe. We want everybody to go home from work at the end of the day the same way they arrived and that that is important. You know, we're saving families and you know, it's important work and working for ICW too is great, you know, it's not just about insurance, it's about a community. And that's one of the best things about working for ICW.

DG: Well, right to the top of ICW, the ownership of ICW has always been really involved in trying to make people's lives better. So it starts at the top, like we talked about earlier, somehow he and his family have been able to bring that culture downstream to your management level and to your consultant level, to your new hire level. So I commend you for that. We need more of that in this world.

Well, listen, thank you both for joining me today in StudioOne. Welcome to have you back. Welcome to Southern California.

SS: Thank you. It's been great.

DG: Are you and Iowa Buckeye then, huh?

SS: Hawkeye. Oh my gosh.

DG: I just said that to see if I could get a little rise out of you.

SS: Of course you would. There's enough Buckeye grief coming from the office, believe me.

DG: Yeah. Well, you got a duck over here, right?

TJ: A beaver, Dave.

DG: See? You know, got to have a little fun, right?

SS: That's right.

DG: See? Everybody, insurance is fun.

Alright, thank you all for coming in today, so thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and consider subscribing to future episodes. For more insights like this, you can visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Bye for now.