Workers' Comp

NWCDC 19 Preview

October 30, 2019
5 MIN READ

Tom Kerr

Director of Public Relations

NWCDC is just days away. As you get ready to head back to Vegas, we asked Genex’s Ron Skrocki to give us a preview of what to expect at this year’s conference, including a session he’ll be presenting on Nov. 6 with Mitchell’s Michele Hibbert-Iacobacci and Rebecca Morgan.

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Tom Kerr (TK): Ron, thanks for joining us.

Ron Skrocki (RS): Good to be here, Tom.

TK: Ron, you’ve being going to NWCDC for several years, what do you like best about the conference?

RS: Thinking about these conferences, particularly this one at the end of the year, a couple of things about them I like. First of all, for a lot of us who are in this business, it's going to sound maybe odd, but they're like family reunions. [laughs]

You see all the people in the industry that you've worked with for a lot of years. And this is an industry, like a lot of industries, with a lot of veterans. You get to see clients that maybe you've seen or not seen during the year.

But, it's near the end of the year, and it just sort of marks another calendar year gone by and another opportunity to connect with the people in an industry you've been in for a long time and you love. And it does have, for me anyway and for a lot of us, sort of a family reunion feel to it, even though it's Vegas. And, I don't know about your family, but our family doesn't do Vegas family reunion. It sounds cool. But …[laughs]

That's what I think about when I think about National.

TK: Tell us a little about your session with Michele Hibbert-Iacobacci and Rebecca Morgan that takes place Nov. 6 at the Innovation & Solutions Theater.

RS: So, part of the Mitchell-Genex merger, this session really just grows out of the fact that we've got this combined company of a tremendous amount of compliance resources. It is more than just compliance reactively. It's proactive. It's getting in front of issues, it's advocating, it’s lobbying.

So, we have leveraged and will increasingly leverage the combined, what I call regulatory compliance and regulatory group to inform our product design, our system design, our client engagements.

And what we did here, really just for the session, is we mine that gold of regulatory trends and try to then draw a line from some of the key trends to some things that we've been working on from a product perspective, from either a software or from a service perspective.

So, that's really the crux of it. We thought we would go where we've had the most content, which is really on the regulatory side of what's either happened, or what's going to happen, or what might happen.

TK: How did the panel come up with these trends?

RS: So, we sifted through them and tried to winnow down the list. We ended up with a subset of trends, and it was iteration to get there. So, there's so many things, there's so many opportunities, you just don't know where to start, similar with regulatory trends. But ultimately, we did get it down to a few that we thought were relevant, and that we also could talk about, in terms of how they've influenced what we're working on.

So, they are the aging workforce, the security issues, and we revisit the opioid crisis, specifically, how to continue to stay diligent and design programs that continue to make sure that problem becomes smaller and smaller.

TK: What message do you hope attendees will walk away with after your session?

RS: Well, it is a conference, and we're there to learn and listen, and hopefully in this order, and promote. Our hope is that people, when they see what the combined Mitchell-Genex organization is doing, they'll come away with really seeing us as a company that's very committed to influencing and staying current, and then, learning what's going on from a regulatory perspective.

So, I think you'll see that in our thoughtfulness. And certainly, we can show you the numbers of staff, and our regulatory content products are amazing, I think. So, this is a demonstration of that, that we hope people take note of. And hopefully, they know that's going to be a continued area of investment for us.

So that would be one thing, that we are on top of this stuff and, in some cases, even influencing the future of it. I think the second thing I would say is this will demonstrate that we are practically implementing things that contemplate those regulatory trends.

So, in other words, it's not just talking about it, suggesting or conjuring. It's building things that in our services and in our software platforms, that line up with where these trends are taking us, or are likely to take us. So, there's a level of practicality and competency in building and delivering things, that this combined organization has me excited to work for it.

And last, I think they're going to get the following from it: we have fun doing it. We have done versions of this presentation before. And, you know, I think the content is great. I think the expertise is very experienced and solid. And I think the fun factor is high, and it's just the way we operate as a company.

We have fun doing what we love doing, and I think that'll hopefully translate. We're in Vegas, right? And if we do really well, we're hoping it'll lead to a residency, and that we will be performing this on some regular basis at some concert hall in a casino near you. [laughs]

It's great talking with you, Tom.

TK: All right.

RS: See in Vegas.

TK: And we’ll be back in a few weeks with another Inside Workers’ Comp, when we invite a special guest to the show. You won’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks for listening.

Also if you're attending NWCDC, come see us at booth 1813!