Daring to Think Differently

Powered by fresh visions and the technology to transform them into reality, EMPLOYERS® is serving small business with big ideas

“Technology is such an exciting place to be, especially in the insurance industry. Every year I’m seeing leaps and bounds in progress, in modernization, and in evolving the needs of the customers and agents of EMPLOYERS®.” As Chief Information Officer of EMPLOYERS, Kelley Kage is heading up what is just the latest of many improvement journeys for the industry-leading workers’ compensation insurer.

For over a century, small businesses across America have been choosing EMPLOYERS as their workers’ compensation insurer. As advancements in insurance technology have developed, EMPLOYERS is well-positioned as a future-forward adopter, with tech moves geared towards making workers’ compensation easier for their customers, agents, and employees.

Kelley Kage

EMPLOYERS provides the full life cycle of support, from selling and servicing policies all the way through the claims process. “Even before we have a claim, we think through risk advisory services, and antifraud programs, and ensure that we’ve got the right claims management and managed care services in place,” Kage explained. “EMPLOYERS is a small business designed to support other small businesses.”

In her role, Kage oversees EMPLOYERS’ application development, infrastructure, product management, and data and analytics teams. “My focus has been on developing a new tech strategy and vision, which includes how we modernize our organization, and how we ensure that everything we’re doing is improving our customer, agent, and employee experience,” she said.

To that end, the transformation is focused on busting silos, increasing communication, accelerating decision-making, and ensuring the delivery of the highest quality, most cost-effective projects. EMPLOYERS is investing in all aspects of the business, from claims, customer support, distribution, underwriting and data and analytics, to artificial intelligence and predictive modeling. There are wide ranging initiatives geared toward additional market differentiation including agency management and CRM capabilities. Savvy prioritization allows them to deliver the most critical high-value changes more predictably.

Despite its extreme complexity, workers’ compensation has similarities to other types of commercial and personal lines property and casualty insurance. Kage views the commonalities as exciting opportunities to demystify the discipline. “A lot of people think workers’ compensation is very mystical, but there are many similar applications from a technology perspective that can be applied.”

“We’re looking at our technical health, focusing on test automation and ways to streamline our development processes to create more internal capacity. We are also developing application modernization roadmaps so we can take advantage of the latest and greatest artificial intelligence opportunities that are out there.”

The lure of emerging technology

“A key part of thinking about emerging technology is shifting the mindset that technology teams are order takers. We aren’t anymore. We are the strategic partners and shapers of the future,” Kage said.  “Technology must have a seat at the table in crafting that future strategy and giving input into how those interactions work, and how we can leverage data to drive different decisions.” In Kage’s view, giving her team the capacity to learn, explore, and test real-world solutions brings a vital dimension to problem-solving. “Building in innovation is a critical part of us being successful.”

Transparency allows EMPLOYERS to better support their internal business partners by helping them shape their business strategy. “When I think about creating that transparency, I like to say anything is possible if we set the right expectations. I always ask, ‘What is the expected outcome? What is the business value that we think we’re get? What are those results?’ And then, ‘Let’s prioritize. Here’s everything that’s on your technology team’s plate.’”

That dialogue helps key stakeholders to understand how and why projects are prioritized, as well as providing opportunities to discuss tradeoffs that may be necessary for those deliverables.

At present, Kage and her team are exploring use cases around artificial intelligence and undertaking “test and learns” to find where AI can add the most value to EMPLOYERS. The goal is to make insurance easy to understand for any small business owner who has little time to spend purchasing and understanding policy details. There’s little glamor in their use of AI at this early stage, where it is used to automate manual tasks and to make time for higher-value activities such as customer interactions, but those set the foundation for the future.

“AI can change the way that we work. It requires us to think differently about how we actually go about accomplishing some of the tasks that are out there,” she said. “AI and automation go hand in hand, so we have to make sure we’re thinking about how we leverage our vendor collaborators, our third parties that we integrate with, and our business stakeholders to have the best outcome possible.”

Having the right collaborators is crucial too. Endava, providers of cloud transformation, software engineering, technology consulting, and test automation services, and global digital solutions provider Coforge are two such collaborators. “Endava has really helped us in building strategy and diving deep to understand the details of what we need to make sure we hit our targets,” Kage pointed out. Coforge helps EMPLOYERS assess new tools and technology and has also been a long-standing collaborator in our delivery success.

“Not only are both Endava and Coforge making recommendations to us, they are also taking those challenges on themselves to say, ‘We can do better for you.’ It really is working together for success. That’s critical in collaborations with our key vendors so that we can be successful.”

Kage also felt it was important to highlight the value of her team. These initiatives would be impossible without outstanding talent. “We are fortunate that we have strong individuals across the organization. The talent is not just within the technology, data, and product teams, but also our business leaders who are bringing in the latest developments happening in the industry. Together, we are really listening to customer service feedback, and incorporating that into the decisions that we’re making.”

“When I think about the people that I work with and the leaders in our organization, there is so much experience. We are at industry events, we are sitting on boards, and everything in between. We are consistently looking for ways to give back to the community, invest in our people, and make things better wherever we can. It’s that healthy balance of taking care of our teams so they can show up in their best light and are excited to come to work every day, participate in those innovation sessions, and make EMPLOYERS the best it can be.”