Claims leaders rarely get the luxury of solving one problem at a time. There are ever-changing claims volumes, stretched teams, and work across systems and skill sets. And sometimes the strategies meant to relieve the pressure off of teams only create more of it.
In a recent Claimversation, we sat down with Terry Bowling, Director of Claims at Lincoln Financial, to talk about what she’s learned from navigating those realities firsthand. The conversation wasn’t about a sweeping transformation or a perfect playbook. It was about practical leadership: understanding what is happening, listening to the people doing the work, testing different approaches and building a more sustainable operation piece by piece. Here are a few of the lessons that stood out.
Watch the full Claimversation, From Backlog to Breathing Room: Lessons from the Claims Leadership Front Lines, to hear the complete conversation with Terry Bowling of Lincoln Financial.
When Terry moved into her current role, one of the most visible challenges was a significant volume of work across multiple queues. There was a large backlog to wrangle, but even more than that, team members were stressed and morale was low. Mandatory overtime had become one of the primary tools for addressing volume, and after an extended period, it was taking a toll.
Rather than simply asking people to work more hours, Terry moved away from mandatory overtime. Employees who wanted overtime could still take it, but others had more control over when their workday ended. While counterintuitive when there is already plenty of work to do, Terry saw an immediate difference. When people knew there was an end to the workday and could plan their lives outside of work, engagement during those working hours improved.
The broader lesson is simple: capacity isn't only a math problem. The way people experience the work matters, too.
Once Terry began looking more closely at capacity, she faced another challenge: there wasn't reliable data showing how long different types of work should take. She didn't want to solve that by standing behind an examiner with a stopwatch. People behave differently when they know they're being observed. They may slow down to double-check every step or simply work differently than they normally would.
Instead, Terry tried something else. She introduced incentives without first setting a production number employees had to hit. The strongest performers established what was possible through their own work, giving leadership a more realistic baseline. With better information, the team could begin understanding how work was flowing, how much capacity was available and what reasonable expectations should look like. It also gave Terry something concrete to coach against.
Incentives played an important role when the team was actively working through higher volumes, but the strategy changed as the operation stabilized. Instead of running frequent incentives, recognition shifted toward a more regular monthly cadence. At the same time, managers could focus more closely on individuals who weren't consistently meeting expectations.
The question became less about simply increasing production and more about understanding why someone might be struggling. Is there a training gap or maybe a coaching opportunity? Is that person working in the area that best fits their skills?
Strong performers can be recognized for what they're doing well while leaders still create clear expectations and support people who need help reaching them.
Once the workload was more manageable and sustainable, it created room for the next priority: cross-training.
Like many claims teams, Terry's organization had people with deep expertise in particular parts of the process. That works well until someone is unavailable or volume suddenly shifts from one type of work to another. Cross-training gives leaders more options. If setups are relatively quiet but payment volumes increase, for example, someone trained in both can move where they're needed most.
But Terry was also deliberate about who she asked to help with that training. She looked for people who combined expertise with strong performance, attention to detail and the behaviors the leadership team wanted others to model. The goal wasn't simply to transfer information. It was to build capability across the team.
Near the end of the conversation, Terry offered perhaps the simplest lesson of the session: understand the landscape before you start changing it. It’s important to look at the work and talk to the people doing it every day. The people closest to the process generally already know where the friction is and where opportunities for improvement exist.
And if something you've tried isn't working, be willing to reconsider it. Leadership doesn't require having every answer immediately. Sometimes it means pausing long enough to understand the problem, trying something practical, watching what happens and adjusting from there.
Technology, processes, workflows and data all matter in claims, but Terry's story was a good reminder that the people doing the work connect all of them.
Giving people more control helped improve engagement. Better operational data created clearer expectations. Stabilizing volumes created room for development. Cross-training gave the team greater flexibility for whatever came next. None of those decisions alone changed everything, but together, they helped create a more sustainable way of working.
And for claims leaders facing a long list of challenges, that may be the most useful takeaway of all: you don't have to solve the whole thing at once. Start by understanding what's really happening, and then take the next practical step.
