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Digital EditionNational Comp 2026: The Capacity to Care
Claims professionals hear constantly that they need more empathy. Far less often does anyone ask where empathy comes from, or what happens when the supply runs low.
“If you are out of gas and you don’t notice that you’re out of gas, then the car just stops,” said Dr. Les Kertay, a consulting and clinical psychologist. At work, he said, that stop looks like “us not listening anymore to the people we’re talking to on the phone. We’re not listening to the injured workers. We’re yelling at the person in the next cubicle because they’re being too loud.”
Kertay joined Yvonne Guibert, vice president of education strategy at Institutes of Health, and Greg Hamlin, senior vice president and chief claims officer at Berkley Industrial Comp, for a session at National Comp 2026 in Las Vegas. Their argument: empathy depends on capacity, which has to be managed deliberately.
A Permission Problem
Guibert opened by asking how many attendees check in with themselves daily. Only a few hands went up.
“We have a permission problem, I think,” she said. “Sometimes talking about taking care of ourselves, slowing down to notice how we’re feeling and what we’re doing, feels kind of like a luxury.”
The panel deliberately avoided the language of self-care and wellness. Guibert and Kertay call it self-leadership instead: “taking ownership and accountability of how you show up day in, day out,” she said. “If you’re in the work of managing claims and talking to injured workers, this is really a core competency to your job.”
Added pressure comes from A.I., Guibert said; claims professionals she met at the conference are uneasy despite assurances that humans will stay central. “Whether you’re an individual managing your own stress levels or you’re leading a team, there’s no neutral,” she said. “You’re either doing it or you’re not doing it.”
Learning the Signals
Stress itself isn’t the problem, Kertay said. “Stress is a good thing. It drives us. But if we don’t have the resources for it, then it becomes a problem, and eventually we crash.”
The skill is noticing your status before the crash, and everyone’s warning signs differ. For Kertay, it’s spacing out at his screen. For Guibert, it’s a short temper. For Hamlin, who handles catastrophic claims in high-hazard industries, it’s getting sick. “My immune system gets trashed because I’ve run too hard for too long,” he said. “And then I’m not good to anybody.”
When noise from a neighboring room cut into the session, Kertay named what he felt. “I feel it right there in my chest, and that is my signal that I’m about to get irritated,” he said. “By knowing that, I can make an adjustment. I can deliberately take a breath and let go.”
Guibert then led a brief check-in covering body, capacity on a one-to-10 scale and emotion. At six or below, she said, it’s time to act. And the first step is only noticing. “Don’t think about fixing it. Don’t think about what’s wrong with you. You just want to notice.”
Naming an emotion matters too, Kertay said. “We try not to feel something, and then we act out. It’s the opposite,” he said. “Simply by naming what’s going on for yourself, you automatically create a space between your immediate experience and the response.”
He offered one caution about the capacity question. Follow it with: No, really. “If you’re as driven as most of us are in this industry, you’re going to overestimate your capacity, and that’s when you hit a wall.”
Kertay uses a program that blanks his computer screen for five minutes every hour. Guibert gets outside for sunlight. Hamlin, who said he can’t meditate, gardens. “I’ll be outside with my tomato plants, and you know what? They don’t talk back to me,” he said.
Trust Is Built in Repetition
For leaders, self-leadership extends to the team. Hamlin said he set out to build “a team that stays” at Berkley Industrial Comp, with weekly one-on-ones that are not always about claims. He said the unit hasn’t lost an employee in two years.
He contrasted that with employers that track keystrokes or make staff log every task. “Where’s the trust there?” he asked. “If there’s no trust, you’re not going to get maximum out of your people.”
Kertay agreed. “Human beings hate ambiguity above all else,” he said, so consistency builds trust. Leaders should also mind what they measure: “Be careful what you count, because you’ll get a lot of it.”
Hamlin also argued for candor, even when the news is bad. He recounted telling a high-performing employee that he couldn’t give him a raise yet because of corporate constraints. The employee came back the following Monday and said he was staying because Hamlin had the guts to have the conversation.
“If you can tell the truth, tell the truth,” Hamlin said. “That’s going to build trust, even if it’s bad news.”
Listening isn’t enough on its own; people have to feel heard. After a 360 review told him his staff didn’t feel heard, Hamlin practiced reflecting back what people said, starting with his own children. “My ability to listen to people didn’t change,” he said, “but the person on the other side felt heard.”
Kertay offered a simple starting point: ask, “How are you doing?” in full, not the reflexive “How you doing?” that invites “fine.” Then restate what you hear. “I can be a great listener, but if you don’t know that I’m paying attention, then it doesn’t count.”
The Cost of Ignoring It
Modeling sets the norm, whether leaders intend it or not. Early in his career, Hamlin worked for a manager who stayed until 8 p.m. every night. No one told him to do the same. “I felt like there was an unwritten rule,” he said. “People watch what we do when we lead. And if we don’t give permission for other people, they’re going to feel that standard is the standard for them.”
There is a business case, too. Hamlin said that when he arrived at Berkley Industrial Comp eight years ago, the unit’s return on equity was about 8%, and his entire staff turned over within a year. After rebuilding the culture, he said, it has run at 25% to 27% in recent years. “If your job’s to make money, you can’t ignore this stuff,” he said.
Guibert tied the work back to the injured worker. “They can tell when somebody’s truly present and listening to them or not,” she said, “and that feeling shapes whether they trust the process.” With the industry facing a talent gap, she reframed the investment question. The question isn’t whether organizations can afford to do this. It’s whether they can afford not to.
Guibert closed with a reminder. “The mind may be distracted, but the body always knows what’s going on,” she said. “The point is to connect what’s happening in our mind with what’s happening in our body, and that’s when we can do something about it.” &
If you attended National Comp but missed this session, you can still catch the audio and slides on NoteAffect in the conference app. Log in with your conference registration number.
