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I’m all for authorities trying to inform citizens about specific threats to public safety, but let’s not treat people like they are in the third grade. Nonspecific, blanket statements about an increased risk just make little sense. And color-coded labels? Works for a stoplight. Not so much for terrorist plots.
Fortunately, government officials have seen the error of their ways.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the pending announcement, say the Homeland Security Department will begin a 90-day phasing out of the system on Thursday.
The Homeland Security Department plans to tell the public about a terror threat much like it has been doing for the past few years – through government announcements and the news media.
The five-tiered color-coded terror warnings were created after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks, and they quickly became the butt of late-night talk show jokes. Online Pharmacy https://galenapharm.com/ no prescription
The government hasn’t made changes in the colored alert levels since 2006, but it has been reviewing its usefulness for more than a year.
You know it’s bad when AP stories are citing “late-night talk show jokes” as a legitimate criticism of how silly the system is. The new system of communicating threats won’t do anything to lower the risk.
I had never seen the CBS show Undercover Boss until this weekend. Honestly, I didn’t even mean to watch it. That type of thing just isn’t the brand of TV I make time for. But my DVR decided on its own to keep recording for another hour after 60 Minutes (which featured a great segment on Tucson gunman Jared Loughner that evening), and I noticed that this episode of Undercover Boss was featuring the CEO of BELFOR, one of the world’s biggest disaster restoration companies. So I watched, curious to see a major show profile a company connected to the risk management industry.
The premise of the series is pretty self-explanatory: the head honcho of a big company puts on a disguise to anonymously work for a few days alongside his front-line employees, and in the process, he learns that these salt-of-the-earth workers are the key to his company — a revelation that forces him or to rethink the jet-setting lifestyle of luxury. It’s basically like Goldie Hawn in Overboard but with more inspirational music and voiceover.
And that’s exactly what happened in the BELFOR episode.
Company CEO Sheldon Yellen slapped on a comical wig, donned some Coke bottle glasses and grew a terrible beard to go hang drywall, inspect moldy insulation and clean smoke damage. Then, due to his frustration at how bad he was at these tasks and how much he was touched by the sad-sack stories told by those he worked with, he cried. A lot. Like “five, maybe six, times in a 44-minute show” a lot.
Like I said, this type of television really isn’t my cup of tea, but even I thought some of it was heartening drama. At one point Yellen gets so emotional while talking to a woman with whom he had just inspected insulation in a crawl space that he becomes compelled to remove his wig to reveal his identity. She had been promoted to the position of “water technician” many, many months ago and was clearly really good at this job — but due to a companywide freeze on all pay increases that Yellen and his fiscal decision-makers in corporate had implemented to weather the financial crisis, she still hadn’t gotten her raise. She was just discussing this casually, talking about the difficulty of paying bills with some guy she thought was named “Tom” and mentioned off hand that she didn’t think anyone from corporate would know who she was if they tripped over her. Yellen broke down and hence the big reveal, with him assuring her that he — and the company — does care. Cue the piano strings.
At the end, he continued this theme by bringing back all the workers he spent time with and showering them with bonuses, raises and new opportunities at the company. It was all rags-to-riches, and because you know these are indeed real people whose lives will instantly improve due to a $15,000 check, it was definitely uplifting to watch.
At the outset of the program, I was wondering why an executive would go on Undercover Boss. It’s not so much this show in particular, I have just never understood why someone would want to be on a reality show at all. For reference, I’m the type of person who is still pretty upset with my boyhood hero Jerry Rice for debasing himself by going on Dancing With the Stars. I suppose I can understand a relatively anonymous CEO wanting some “fame” more so than Jerry Rice caring about such nonsense, but it still seems silly.
By the end, however, Yellen’s decision to do this was obviously very good branding for his company (depending on how viewers feel about a weeping CEO, I guess). And I imagine the higher profile for the company, particularly a firm in a relatively obscure industry like this, will help BELFOR draw new applicants. I mean, I was probably one of the few people watching who was familiar with the concept of disaster restoration, let alone heard of BELFOR, so the name recognition benefits gained through Undercover Boss had to exceed anything else the company could do from a marketing perspective. And since the emotional heartstrings gimmick even (somewhat) moved a crusty, skeptical cynic like myself, I imagine the company came off in a pretty good light to most viewers.
A piece created by MoneyWatch last November listed “10 Disappearing Jobs” and among the the professions on their way to extinction was the insurance underwriter.
The rationale was essentially that technology can do the job.
Blame it on the software. New programs allow underwriters to take on three times as much work as in the past, collapsing the need for more hires. As a result, the BLS projects that the number of people employed in the field will decline by 4 percent, or 4,300 jobs, by 2018. “[The underwriter] just punches in data, and it spits out, say, whether a potential homebuyer is approved or not,” says Henry Kasper, supervisory economist at the BLS. Growth in the insurance industry isn’t exactly exploding either, further undermining the career outlook for underwriters.
That’s obviously a vast over-simplification of what the underwriters do as we’re not talking about screwing in bolts at an auto plant. Then again, I’ve met a few brokers and risk managers in my day who probably would prefer dealing with a robot rather than some of the underwriters they have gotten quotes from.
For another perspective, let’s ask: what does the insurance community think of the notion of underwriter as a disappearing job?
Here’s what Seraina Maag, chief executive of North America P/C for XL Insurance had to say.
“Underwriters are able to look at what’s happening in the world, what it means for our customers, and to devise appropriate solutions. Computers can’t replicate those abilities,” she also said. “So I believe the opposite to be true: The underwriter’s job will increase in importance because of these changes and their ability to understand them fully.”
A Lloyd’s director expressed the same.
“Whilst technology is no doubt advancing, the face-to-face relationship between brokers and underwriters is a unique and essential part of how business is conducted here,” stressed Sue Langley, director of market operations at Lloyd’s.
“Technology in the market serves to improve and aid the business, but the complex and specialist risks that are underwritten need the expertise of the Lloyd’s underwriters and always will.”
I would have to agree that MarketWatch got this one wrong.
And for risk managers, the fact that underwriters — human underwriters — are likely going nowhere is a good thing.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from risk managers is that they sometimes don’t get what they feel is a fair rate because they are lumped in with similar companies. Through loss control methods, they have reduced their risk. They while have lowered their risk profiles, they still cannot differentiate themselves to their underwriters.
From what I’m hearing, however, things are improving in this area. Today more than ever, risk managers can get underwriters to actually see the true exposures of their operations — not just the typical risks of a company in their industry. This differentiation would not be possible when just dealing with technology. To a robot, you’re just a number and an account. To a person, it’s much easier to make the case that you are different.
So if the insurance underwriter is indeed not a dying breed, the risk manager should be the first one to show up to her next birthday with a gift.
An interesting piece recently appeared in Randy Cohen’s “The Ethicist” column in the New York Times Magazine.
It discussed an exchange with a company employee that should keep corporate legal and compliance departments awake at night. An employee, unhappy that his company wanted him to take a four hour on-line training course about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), claiming it was a waste of his time, asked The Ethicist if he had an ethical obligation to complete the training. The Ethicist gave the best possible answer, stating that even if it was inefficient, it was the company’s prerogative to train its people, and that it might not be the waste of time the employee assumed since the company could have a larger plan of action invisible to the employee.
The punch line lay in the “Update” posted later: The employee skipped the course, went straight to the on-line test, and passed it. The employee, who underwent no training of any kind (and arrogantly assumed he needed no such training), is now certified by his own company as having mastered the FCPA. This is an all too common scenario, and everyone involved in it is a fool.
Murphy goes on to explain exactly why and how everyone involved is a fool and I encourage you to go read the rest.
But at this point, you probably already know why they are fools.
