Medical Insurance Company

Medical Insurance Company

Medical insurance provider streamlines new hire training, reduces classroom training by 34%, and improves Quality Assessment Scores in first 5 weeks post training.

Situation:

ADI worked with a medical insurance company to streamline its new hire training for underwriters, claims processors, and call center representatives and to develop a core group of internal staff skilled at course redesign and fluency-based learning. The redesign process refocused the training on the primary job tasks and the knowledge required to perform those tasks correctly and without hesitation (fluently). The redesign replaced much of the lecture format of the existing courses with hundreds to thousands of opportunities to practice components of the critical job tasks in a way that produced accuracy and speed in the full job tasks. The learning format included traditional classroom instruction, online knowledge fluency training, computer system drills, and job task and process drills that required the integrated use of medical knowledge, online resources, computer applications, and communication skills.

The design and development of each of the courses required coordination and communication with internal stakeholder groups (e.g., Human Resources, operations, nursing staff) and a review of and revisions to the online resources that supported the job positions addressed.

Student progress was tracked with individual student scorecards that summarized their performance on classroom exercises and tests. Students also charted their accuracy and speed of responding for each practice exercise so they could monitor their performance improvement. At the end of each day, the instructor(s) reviewed the students’ charts and performance scorecard.

Solution Implemented:

ADI Calculated the performance improvement opportunity based on an exemplar analysis
Facilitated the redesign of two new hire courses, one for underwriters and another for claims processors
Performed trainining and coaching client staff in the redesign of a new hire course for customer service representatives (CSRs)
Coached he client staff in the development of the underwriter and CSR courses
Shaped the course design and development skills of the client staff, with a design emphasis on building fluency in key job tasks and the knowledge required to complete those tasks quickly and accurately
Developed a plan to measure the impact of the redesign on job performance

Results of Intervention:

The intended results of each course redesign was to reduce the length of the new hire training, better align the course content with the job process, and increase the amount and relevance of the practice so that new hires would perform as well as seasoned employees more quickly than they had in the past.

These are initial results from the redesign of the underwriting course.

Training Duration – Reduced length of classroom training by 15 days or 34%.
Time to Fluency: Average Handle Time (AHT) – Reduced the post-training time taken to attain the AHT of seasoned underwriters from 26 to 3 weeks. Improved AHT by 31%.
Time to Fluency: After Call Wrap (ACW) – Drastically improved ACW performance. In week 1 posttraining, the fluency class performed at the seasoned underwriters' productivity level, and then outperformed them in weeks 2-5. Improved ACW by 43%.
Quality – Improved Quality Assessment Scores of new hires in first 5 weeks post-training (93% vs. 75% in week 3 and 93% vs. 82% in week 5).