State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF) is trying to restore its battered image of a culture of corruption by engaging in a “rebranding” campaign. This morning close to 300 SCIF employees many of whom were decked out in Service Employees International Union T-shirts trekked to the San Jose Convention Center, most in tour buses, to hear a presentation on SCIF ‘s rebranding strategy. SCIF management hopes to give its employees a boost in morale with new language and a new way of looking at SCIF’s role in California’s economy.
State Fund employees have been subjected to barrage of negative media about the organization due in large part to malfeasance from some of SCIF’s top management leading to the removal of two executives last year and the resignations of three Board members. Reaffirming SCIF’s important role in the workers’ compensation marketplace, president Janet Frank who didn’t come down from her office in San Francisco to attend the event, told the attendees via video that they’re here to “affirm and celebrate” State Fund’s role in the marketplace.
SCIF is not planning to change its logo, but it is changing its mission statement, vision, and some of the language associated with the carrier that top management feels has dragged it down.
“We see the carrier of last resort, how many have heard that? I’ve always hated it,” SCIF’s Rich Schulz, Santa Rosa District Manager, told the group. Can you imagine what our customers feel like? ‘Don’t worry I have workers’ comp coverage for you, I just got it from the carrier of last resort. The new term: “Unique resource insuring the California dream;” That sounds a little better doesn’t it?”
You can put lipstick on a pig as the saying goes but its Mission is still to be California’s market of last resort. And “it is unfortunate,” one SCIF employee told Workers’ Comp Executive, “that we aren’t proud of our role. Perhaps that is because the new management comes from outside the system.” SCIF’s constitutional charter requires it to be the market of last resort and to be “fairly competitive” with the private market.
The new language also wants to banish the phrase, “We’ve been around for 94 years, and the term “SCIF.” The abandonment of “SCIF” began in the Tudor administration when he told everyone paraphrasing: “We’re not ‘The Fund’ and we’re not ‘SCIF’ we are ‘State Fund.”
“SCIF doesn’t have any soul, says Schultz. It sounds jargony and bureaucratic. It sounds more like a state agency, and no offense…but we want to be more like a private carrier,” civil servant Schulz says. “Fortunately most of our customers don’t know us as SCIF. They know us as State Fund, and that’s who we want to be.”
This all sounds well and good, but private carriers and brokers are probably having a good laugh about now. When a risk has no place else to go it goes to SCIF.
-30-