Do you know if spam e-mail can cause property damage under theterms of a GL policy, or whether spamming constitutes anadvertising injury? Do you know if spoliation of evidence is anactionable tort in your jurisdiction?

If you cannot answer these questions, you probably areprofessionally obsolete. The good news is that the condition is notfatal. The cure is continuing professional education.

Obsolescence is the degree to which professionals lackup-to-date knowledge or skills necessary to maintain effectiveperformance in either their current or future work roles, accordingto H.G. Kaufman, in his book on obsolescence and professionalcareer development. Professional obsolescence will hit each andevery one of us at some point. Age, gender, and performance ratingshave no effect on professional obsolescence. We all are susceptibleto it, but we all can use continuing professional education to cureit. Age, gender, and performance ratings do not affect ourabilities to learn.

In addition, we have an ethical obligation to avoid professionalobsolescence. The RPA Code of Ethics and the CPCU Code of Ethicsdictate that we continually maintain and improve our professionalknowledge, skills, and competence. Continuing education is theprimary way to meet this obligation.

Continuing education is a building block of professionalism. Itcan have a positive effect on employee retention. Studies show thatcompanies that support career development by including it inperformance reviews experience a 1 to 3.5 percent lower turnoverrate than companies that do not.

Professionalism also contributes to personal growth. Byexpanding your knowledge base, you not only perform your currentjob assignment more accurately and efficiently, but you also beginto position yourself for your next career move.

If you actively engage in continuing professional education, youwill produce a higher quality work product. You will have greaterconfidence in your decisions. If you support continuingprofessional development as a manager or owner, your organizationwill have lower turnover rates and higher employee morale. You willbe able to hire and retain higher caliber recruits. It will beeasier to delegate tasks to younger associates because you willknow that they are well trained. You will be better able to acceptthe inevitable change that will occur in your business.

There is a price for continuing education, however. It costsmoney to provide courses, travel to seminars, and lose productivework days. Rather than focus on these costs, focus instead on thecost of professional obsolescence. You lose productivity if you arenot aware of the latest technology and case law developments. Youcan be subject to bad faith judgments, which also can mean loss ofreputation and future assignments.

Setting Goals

If you do not plan your continuing education carefully, you maylose time and money. Undoubtedly you have suffered throughpresentations by instructors who have been coerced into givinglectures on topics with which they were not entirely familiarbecause the timing and location of the class were convenient. Whilesuch lectures allow you to put in enough classroom hours to meet aCE requirement, they are not productive continuing educationexperiences, and certainly do not contribute to your level ofprofessionalism.

Here are some suggestions on how to get the most value from thetime and money you spend on continuing education. Begin by viewingCE as your own personal research and development project. Focus onwhat will benefit your career, not just on meeting externallyimposed CE requirements. Link your learning objectives to yourbusiness objectives.

Do the following exercise: think back on all of the work youhave done this year. Divide it into three categories and assign apercentage to each category, arriving at a 100 percent total. Keeptrack of your numbers on a piece of scrap paper.

oCategory 1 — I love to do this. This is why I am anadjuster.

oCategory 2 — It's OK that I have to do this. I can tolerate itbecause it is what I do for a living.

oCategory 3 — I hate doing this. I wish it were not part of myjob.

The typical results of this assessment show that 20 to 25percent of the time, adjusters love their jobs, 60 to 70 percent oftheir days are spent simply tolerating them, and 5 to 20 percent ofactivities fall into the category of, “I hate this part.” Thismeans that the typical claim professional is enjoying his workabout one day a week.

Now for the second part of the exercise: think about all theclients you have served in the past year and divide them into threecategories.

oCategory 1 — I like these people or this company, and enjoyworking for or with them.

oCategory 2 — I can tolerate these people or businesses.

oCategory 3 — I'm a professional, and I will do my best forthem, but I really don't like working for them.

Typically, 30 to 35 percent of top professionals around theworld responded that they enjoyed the people with whom they worked.Another 50 to 60 percent tolerated those whose business concernsintersected with their own, and 5 to 20 percent said, “I don't likeworking for or with these people.”

Ask yourself why you would want to spend the majority of yourtime working on tolerable stuff for acceptable clients when, withsome effort on improving your skills or acquiring new skills, youcould be working on something you love for clients you like? Do notfall into the trap of believing that these percentages areinevitable. Invest in your own research and development, and youcan change those numbers dramatically.

Do an assessment of your professional goals by asking yourself:What do you want to do next? Where would you like to be three yearsfrom now? What kind of clients would you like to have in threeyears? What career challenges would you find exciting?

Assess the skills that your clients or employer will need you tohave in the next three years. Put these assessments in writing.Keep them with your business plan or your personal file. Every timeyou take a CE course, put a copy of the curriculum in the file. Atthe end of the year, review this file. Did you meet your CEobjectives? Do you need to reassess your objectives based onchanges in your life or changes in the marketplace?

Everyone Learns Differently

Before you sign up for another CE course, there is one otherassessment that you need to do. You need to determine what yourlearning style is. A learning style indicates the preferences thatyou have for perceiving, conceptualizing, organizing, and recallinginformation. Approximately 65 percent of the population is made upof people who prefer visual learning. Roughly 30 percent of thepopulation prefers auditory learning, and only about 5 percent ofthe population prefers to learn by doing.

To find out what type of learning style you prefer, go towww.engr.ncsu.edu/ learningstyles/ilsweb.html. The test will takeyou about five minutes. You will get results immediately. Scrolldown to the bottom of the page, and click on the link for thedescription of learning styles. This test categorizes learners asactive or reflective, sensing or intuitive, visual or verbal, andsequential or global.

The definitions of these styles are pretty straightforward.Active learners learn better by doing something with theinformation. Reflective learners like time to think about the newinformation. Sensing learners like to learn facts, while intuitivelearners prefer a learning situation that allows them to exploreall the possibilities. Visual learners remember what they see.Verbal learners get more out of written or spoken explanations.Sequential learners like information to follow a logical sequence.Global learners think in terms of the big picture and do not needto see the connection between each fact. Once you have some insightinto your learning style, use this information to make betterchoices when it comes to spending your CE dollars and time.

Finding the time for CE is always a challenge, but not as big achallenge as you might think. Calculate the number of hours youspend at work. Then calculate how many of those hours are billableand how many are administrative. By billable, I mean how many hoursin a day do you spend actually adjusting claims, as opposed todoing administrative work. Cut the non-billable hour figure inhalf. One half of the non-billable hours will be used foradministrative work. The other half is the time you will invest inCE.

Notice that I said invest. If you invest this non-billable timecarefully, it will redefine your client relationships, give you newskills, and help shape your future.

Here is an example: A typical accountant spends 2,640 hours peryear at work. Normally, he will bill for 1,200 of those hours. Thatleaves 1,400 non-billable hours. Surveys show that most of thattime is not used productively. By carefully mapping out your CEobjectives, you can put that potential 700 hours of CE time intoproducing concrete results.

Even with 700 hours to invest in continuing education, there areother reasons for not doing it. What about the feeling that yourcompany does not support your CE efforts? This roadblock has threeparts. The first is corporate support for CE. Despite what many ofyou may think, many companies provide financial support andincentives for continuing education. Each year, the Institutessurvey insurers to determine their levels of financial andincentive support for Institute programs. For the most part, theindustry strongly supports those who are enrolled in continuingeducation programs.

The second part of this roadblock involves support on a localcompany level. It does not matter what the corporate CE mandate isif the message is not put into practice by local managers.Enrolling employees in training programs only to interrupt them orremove them from classes because of claim emergencies is notsupport. Local managers need to allow staff the time necessary toparticipate in continuing education. One way to do this is to havethe company and the adjuster contribute some time. If you proposean in-house class or review session that takes an hour of your workday and an hour of your personal time, that might be more palatableto a supervisor or manager than a class all on company time. If youincorporate a CE objective into your performance goals, you aremore likely to gain management support.

There also is the issue of integrating education into the workenvironment. New skills must be put into practice. Nothing willdiscourage people more quickly than coming back to work, eager totry out what they have learned, only to be told, “We don't do itthat way.” Managers and supervisors must allow for on-sitereinforcement of newly learned behaviors.

The final part of this roadblock is the expense of education.Training budgets have been slashed to the bone over the lastseveral years. The good news is that this trend appears to bereversing itself. In a recent survey, two-thirds of the respondentsreported that their training budgets have stayed the same or haveincreased during the past two years.

None of us wants to be professionally obsolete. If you wish toavoid your own professional obsolescence, take stock of yourskills. Assess the needs of your clients. Create a plan for growththat links your learning objectives to your business plan.Determine your learning style. Then get the most value for your CEdollar and time by taking CE courses that support your objectivesand match your style.

Continuing education is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Donna Popow is director of claims and intellectual propertymanager for the American Institute for CPCU and the InsuranceInstitute of America.