I work for an auto insurance company as a claims adjuster. I’ve been working here for just over a year now and I’m already hitting a hard burnout. I work from home and I know that many have it worse than I do, but I’m really struggling and I don’t know what to do.
We deal with unbelievable volume. My department is dealing with an average of about 380-450 claims PER PERSON. These are almost all needing to be called on and worked through with the customer. Due to the volume we are incredibly backlogged. This causes just about every call we get to be an angry customer ready to take it out on whoever answers.
I personally have over 400 emails, over 100 voicemails, and lists upon lists of “urgent – do right now” items. This is on top of us each spending 3 hours a day on our inquiry queue. Doing nothing but answering calls from people who haven’t heard from their assigned adjuster. We cannot work on our emails, voicemails, or our 380+ outstanding claims during this time.
Management has noticed everyone is falling very far behind. As a result we got no bonus this year (first time in company history) and now are mandated to make an excess of 15 outbound calls a day to try to catch up.
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Outbound and inbound calls are tracked and reported daily. Every minute of the day is tracked by our phone system and needs to be accounted for. We are monitored to have no more than 8 minutes after taking a call to go through a lengthy task list per each claim. (Realistically takes around 20 minutes if you’re really quick)
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Our operating systems are archaic at best. They were developed in the 80’s and operate as such.
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I have no control over my workload and make no impact on my infinitely growing to do list.
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I don’t have the ability to ask for help or say no to more work. Each employee is assigned an average of 8-15 new claims a day. We are told we should be managing this.
I’ve become bitter and resentful towards my job. When I first started I believed I was really helping people get through a tough time. Now I feel indifferent and tired of people complaining and getting angry at me. It’s left me pretty much useless and just sitting at my desk starting at my screen because every task I have feels mind numbing and I have no motivation whatsoever.
I can’t really jump ship and find something else yet as my girlfriend is trying to find a job and we can’t be without at least one decent income.
Any idea how to deal with this? I try to do things I enjoy after work to help cope. But by then I feel so crushed and drained I never have energy to do much.
I can’t fathom the idea of working like this until I’m too old and frail to be effective anymore.
I’m a person. I can’t sit here for 8 hours a day and do tiny, repetitive, boring tasks over and over again, and I can’t sit here and call 15+ people daily have the same 20 minute conversation then answer our queue calls only to have another 10. I feel like I’m going to have a mental breakdown.
I’m sorry for the length of the post. I just needed to vent and get it off my chest.