Bulletin
ICBC – Claims Specialist Survey Results
April 12, 2021
To: All ICBC Claims Specialists
We want to say thank you to the 395 Claims Specialists who took the time to complete our survey in March. We are working our way through the results and have started to share your perspectives with ICBC.
Changes will not happen overnight, but we have urged ICBC to take these results seriously and to come up with concrete plans to resolve some of the most distressing issues that you identified.
Here are some of the things that we learned from this survey and have shared with ICBC’s senior leaders:
In your role as Claims Specialists, you really love your job and the work you do. You find the work rewarding and important. The results showed that you want to do a good job but are hampered by being overworked and overloaded. Case volumes are excessive, which is a constant source of stress for you and your coworkers.
• 66% of you indicated your work is having an impact on your mental health, while an additional 16% chose not to say whether they felt an impact. We can only assume this means that they are not comfortable self-identifying a mental health impact. We have made it clear to ICBC that the reported mental health impact is at a crisis level and can not be ignored.
• We specifically asked for your pre- and post-transfer file numbers to get a sense of the impact. 83% of respondents received file transfers from the movement of staff for Enhanced Care. 64% of you have more than 170 files in their case load (this is the post-transfer numbers). Prior to the file transfers from Enhanced Care, 25% of respondents reported a case load of 170 files or more. We have been told that you should not have more than 165 files, so clearly ICBC has abandoned their own guidelines for what is a reasonable case load. Even more troubling, 52 people reported having 200 or more files.
• 6 people reported they had more than 90 files transferred to them. Again, we advised that this is an unreasonable ask of anyone and they need to look at this right away.
• When asked, you told us that you do not agree the number of files that you are expected to oversee is reasonable. We agree completely, especially when we know that two-thirds of Claims Specialists are having their mental wellness impacted by their work.
• 73% of Claims Specialist admit to working through breaks or working unpaid overtime just to keep up on your work. Thank you for being so forthcoming about this issue. The consistent message you shared was that you are struggling to keep up and the only way to get your work done, is to work unpaid overtime and through your breaks. We have already advised ICBC’s labour relations managers that they need to figure out how they are going to compensate the staff for working unpaid overtime and through their unpaid breaks. More importantly, we need to know what they are going to do to reduce the volume of work to ensure this stops once and for all because right now, ¾ of the staff are donating their personal time to ICBC to keep up on their work. This is completely unacceptable.
• 52% of respondents said they have told their manager about their workload concerns. When we asked what actions were taken by your manager, you identified that your managers were sympathetic, but no concrete help was offered. Furthermore, there was no indication of a long-term plan for appropriate staffing levels to be reached. Essentially, Claims Specialists feel your managers are helpless to make any changes that would help improve your workload demands.
Your message to ICBC is clear: Your workload is excessive and there are not enough staff to complete the work assigned. Your work volume is unmanageable, and your health is being impacted by this situation. And finally, three quarters of the staff are working unpaid overtime and missing breaks just to keep up on the work they have been asked to complete. We have shared all of this with ICBC’s labour relations department. We have told them that they cannot sweep this under the rug and leave you to suffer. Now that they know, they have an obligation to you to act.
We will be meeting again with ICBC’s management next week to hear from them on what they plan to do to help alleviate the problem of workload, unpaid overtime and missed breaks, and the impact this is having on your mental wellness.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email us at icbcconnect@moveuptogether.ca .
In solidarity,
Annette Toth, Vice President
Kevin Smyth, Senior Union Representative