2019 Women to Watch: Wesley Hyatt
Posted On: Dec. 2, 2019 12:00 AM CST
Wesley Hyatt
Senior vice president, global risk solutions;
manager, workers compensation claims
Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.
Boston
Age: 38
Wesley Hyatt, who began her insurance career 15 years ago with Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. as a frontline workers compensation claims adjuster, said she knows working with injured workers calls for constant contact.
Now in management, she is rarely in her office, crisscrossing the country often to meet with adjusters to hear how they are managing their claims and caseloads — and gathering feedback from injured workers on their needs, progress and experiences to not “lose sight” of the job details.
“I realize that this is all about helping people,” she said.
To her, workers comp “will always be a human-centered people business with humans who have to work together to get the best outcome for the claim,” she said.
“It’s about a person who has been injured at work and they end up in your caseload, and you learn about their injury, their work, their family, and you work with them at a pivotal point in their life,” she said. “It’s mission-driven and all about helping people.”
To boost morale, she regularly reads aloud to claims adjusters on conference calls letters from injured workers to other adjusters. A sample from one worker expressed gratitude and appreciation for advocacy: “Due to your professionalism, concern, and compassion I have a solution to what I thought was an impossible situation.”
Such words fuel Ms. Hyatt’s work, she said.
“It’s a hard job … the work never ends. You always go home with more to do the next day,” she said. “People who do it and stick with it is what inspires me; people who want to help other people. Going to our field offices is inspiring to me … just sitting down and talking to our folks and hearing success stories of lives that have been impacted.”
Debbie Michel, Liberty Mutual’s executive vice president for national insurance risk management in Boston, described Ms. Hyatt as personable.
“Whether it’s our employees, our customers, our brokers … She is very big on listening to the front lines and absorbing that, and using that to build strategy and direction and look for opportunities to make the organization stronger,” she said.