Episode Six: A Conversation with Ryan Bruce, CRC, SPHR, CLMS

The value of the CRC credential is a common topic of conversation on Inside Rehabilitation Counseling, and Ryan Bruce, Director of Client Solutions at New York Life Insurance knows it well. 

At New York Life Insurance, Ryan has worked in long-term disability claims, stay-at-work programs, and now his role is to tell the story of how the 45 CRCs on staff strive every day to help people navigate short or long-term disability. Ryan says the same disability accommodations that employers struggled with a decade ago are still challenges they're encountering today, and having a CRC in an organization can alleviate a lot of the uncertainty and help businesses support their employees in the best way possible.

Transcript

Pam Shlemon: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Inside Rehabilitation Counseling, presented by the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. I'm Pam Schleman, executive director of C R C, and we're so glad to have you here for another conversation on the art and science of Rehabilitation Counseling. Certified rehabilitation counselors work with both employees and employers to ensure that necessary accommodations are in place for all to be successful. It's an expertise that New York Life Insurance values deeply and led them to require the CRC for staff working in vocational services. Ryan Bruce is the Director of Client Solutions at New York Life Insurance. As a longtime CRC Ryan is dedicated to ensuring customers and employers are prepared to adapt to any injuries or illnesses that may affect an employee's ability to work. He believes CRCs are the only professionals educated to find effective solutions for all involved. Please enjoy our conversation with Ryan Bruce. So Ryan, how did you come to the field of rehabilitation counseling and what drew you to the work of A C R C?

Ryan Bruce: 1:05

Yeah, so it definitely was not a straight path in college. I went to Penn State, double majored in criminal justice and psychology. Around that same time, I was thinking about a career in law enforcement, specifically federal law enforcement. So I had an internship with the Navy, and even at that point special agents. So really national investigations required a master's degree. So I went to Penn State, tried to figure out what would be fun, so I wanna get a master's degree if this, this investigations thing doesn't pan out like I wanted. Something that I'm really interested in too. Rehabilitation counseling, Penn State had just a really fantastic program. They still do really good instructors that I had known about before, and that was, that was really an important part about trying to figure out what to do is making sure that education piece made sense too. When I looked into the, the content, I thought that it was a really neat combination of some of the industrial organizational psychology classes that I was taking, as well as that therapy, the counseling aspects too. Around the same time I had been working as a, a, a counselor at a boys adolescent group home in central Pennsylvania. So it was really at that time in line with almost everything that I wanted to do. It's just one of those occupations that you don't necessarily know about until you start researching. And when you can start seeing, well, this ticks off a lot of those boxes that I'm interested in, that I'm doing right now that I wanna do in the future. So I thought it was a, a really strong program. And after that, it's, it's all written in history, a really good program. I had a fun time. I still tell stories about how I learned counseling techniques, uh, in the program, how they're useful and how they correspond to really not just individual one-on-one counseling, but every day. How does knowing about occupations and limitations and restrictions and essential job functions and how all of that comes together has just such enormous, uh, ramifications to businesses all around that I still find myself going back to, to school in those introductions of principals daily basis.

Pam Shlemon: 3:36

And I have to tell you, not only with the guests that we've had on this podcast, but as we talk to so many different CRCs, hundreds and thousands of them across the country, I haven't found one that has come into the profession organically. It is through pathways like yourself that you described, and it really is either an educator that has, through whatever discussions they've had, has driven that individual to the field or through something like you've gone through. It's just fascinating. And I think the more and more we get this out there, I'm, we're hoping more people understand the profession of rehabilitation counseling and start coming into these programs organically. We love the way the pathways that everybody's coming in, they're so passionate about their experiences and moving forward into this field, um, and working with individuals with all types of disabilities and challenges. So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. So you're currently the director of client Solutions for New York Life Insurance. Can you walk us through your career path and how you came to your current position?

Ryan Bruce: 4:37

Sure. So the quick story is I started at our organization as a long-term disability vocational rehabilitation counselor. We call them vocational coaches. So my job when I started, which is right out of my master's program, was to try to help people who had been out of work for more than two years usually find employment. And these are usually people who were working but no longer have that job to return to. They've been out of work so long, maybe they've been administratively terminated in a lot of those conditions. They didn't have any more job protection, so their company moved on and they had no return to work goals at that point. So that kind of made sense for everyone. So we got to help people who had work experience try to find something that they were able to do. So it's a huge focus on transferrable skills. It's knowing transferrable skills assessments and it's being able to bridge that gap between a limitation and restriction. Cause we don't really care about a diagnosis. We really wanna know what's keeping someone from being able to go back to work and then trying to find an accommodation that helps them to be able to do something that they want and it's that, that they want, which is really what drove me to New York Life. We have an amazing team that is focused on working with employees to realize their goals. And I can tell you that I have a lot of experience now talking to some of my colleagues at other insurance carriers and other types of organizations that I didn't even know existed before I started working here. And there's some really high quality, very moral, very ethical work that that is in place to help people reach return to work goals. And I see CRCs every single day working through that. From that experience and starting the long-term disability, I, I moved on to managing stay at work programs and really helping to get ours launched and moving so that we can be able to help keep employees at work looking proactively at disability way down the road, trying to be able to help to reduce that, which is something that I think a lot of employers were struggling with 10 years ago. And it's something that I think a lot of employers are struggling with still today. Although now more people know about the A D A than avert, which is awesome. From there, uh, I was the manager of our vocational program, New York Life. We have about 45 certified rehab counselors on staff who work every day in different aspects of state work, return to work and reporting. And now I am responsible for helping to tell our story. I like to say that my job is to outline data people and things in a different way now. So try to understand what is the data and the story behind data so that we can develop better action planning and benefits planning. Where is the story behind the people? How do we help actual people here and how can employees really trust us to have their, a large portion of their benefits, especially around disability? And then things every day we talk about policies and procedures. I have, uh, an extra certification. I'm a senior professional human resources too. And I think that really helps to be able to bring return to work policy and procedure development to employers. Now, I said I was gonna start with a fast story and then I went with a long story.

Pam Shlemon: 8:16

I think the long stories are important to share, so thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. You talked about the importance of transferrable skills in any other profession, counseling profession. Do you believe that other professions have that unique skillset to work with individuals to get them to their employment goals?

Ryan Bruce: 8:36

I think the idea of transferrable skills as it relates to finding, obtaining, keeping employment is completely unique to the CRC community. You have extreme ends where you have industrial organized psychology really trying to help understand and start the understanding with HR teams around essential job functions. And then you have counselors and therapists who might be working with people in individual goals, but bridging that gap, that's really always where I've seen the C R C really come into play. Bringing those two worlds together for the benefit of employees, for the benefit of employers is huge. It's, oh, it's really being able to identify so many wins for so many different people is a really awesome part about CRC life,

Pam Shlemon: 9:24

And I appreciate that. Thank you so much. You also have, think you said 45 CRCs on staff, on your team or through the ho Through the whole company.

Ryan Bruce: 9:33

At New York Life, we have 45 CRCs on staff that are oriented around helping people with their stay at work, their return to work goals, and then helping the claims team to really understand occupations too. That's

Pam Shlemon: 9:47

A lot of CRCs and understand New York Life is a very large organization, but um, to have 45 CRCs on staff is wonderful. Can you tell me how New York Life values that credential as part of their hiring process? Sure.

Ryan Bruce: 10:00

Uh, you have to have one so that guess that's the ultimate value, right?<laugh>, right<laugh> to work as a vocational coach to work in vocational services, what we call healthy working life. Having a CRC is a mandatory requirement for hiring. So we know what we get whenever we hire someone with A C P R C.

Pam Shlemon: 10:18

That's music to our ears to hear that quite a bit of the role you and your team serve is in strategic solutions to employer client needs. How does the C R C provide the knowledge and expertise to ensure both the clients and their employers see favorable outcomes? I, I

Ryan Bruce: 10:32

Think the, there's two parts when you're talking to a prospective client about why this business, why us being able to tell stories around what we do every day, what do our absence managers, our claims managers, our vocational coaches, our nurses, our doctors, what do they do every day and how do they work together? Being able to have that story centered around an employee is a really important part about describing our value. But it's also internally how we describe kind of our value too on an individual level basis. I get to work with all of these people who all do an amazing job all to support an employee on what they need to be successful. And that's what we're focused on. That's a pretty awesome way to be able to tell a story, especially around a team. So new cases, it's great to be able to talk about value and what you're going to get, but it truly is even more fun to be able to talk about, Hey, you want to hear a colorful story about what your vocational coach and your absence manager and your nurse together all worked on for one of your employees? Let me show that to you right now. It's so, from my perspective of not necessarily being one-on-one in operations anymore, being an operational manager, being able to still be in that world to describe that value is still pretty fun. Thank

Pam Shlemon: 11:57

You. I believe storytelling is so powerful in any business. Um, and especially with the work that you are doing, career pathways and rehabilitation counseling continue to grow, including in the insurance industry. For new CRCs coming into the profession that want options outside the traditional pathway, what is a good way for those individuals to break into this sector in the field of rehabilitation counseling,

Ryan Bruce: 12:20

Update your knowledge and practice talking about transferrable skills. Where does someone start? How can you look at a resume? How do you have a conversation with someone about what they've done in the past? We work with a lot of people, maybe they've been a machinist for 15 years, they've worked in warehousing for 25 years. They don't realize the kind of skills that they are bringing to maybe be a supervisor, maybe be a safety inspector, maybe move into project management. That background and that knowledge on being able to be creative and talk to people about what they've done, talk to'em about where their interests are and be able to connect those dots is really important. And when you can tell that story about how you get a machinist who's been out of work for two years, who's been doing it for 20, how you get them talking about what they wanna do and how you make those first couple steps to identify a potential plan with them. That means you're gonna be really successful in interviews and you're gonna be really successful in the job too. And it's fun. I mean, it truly is. It is fun. So we're working in, especially in the insurance world with people on the spectrum of disability moving from, uh, I've never been able to work to now you're talking to people who have worked their whole lives and now they can't anymore. It's definitely a different world. It's a different area, it's a different conversation, but everyone who, who does it that I always talk to, um, really is a fan. And I think it's a really fun place to start. Just have to be ready to talk about jobs, occupations, and transferrable skills.

Pam Shlemon: 14:13

And we all know that today mental health is a, a large issue. And we also know that mental health is a large component of individuals with disabilities. Certified reup counselors have the knowledge and experience and education, um, in that mental health space. Can you talk a little bit about mental Health First Aid and why that training is a great additional knowledge source for certified reup counselors that work with disabled individuals? Yeah,

Ryan Bruce: 14:40

So Mental Health First Aid is an, is an awesome organization and a training that enables the trainees to be able to be confident in approaching someone to ask, are you okay? And then being able to be given tools in practice when that person says, no, I'm not. Okay, life is really hard right now. To be able to come out of a training equipped with that knowledge reduces stigma in the workforce. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, it better equips managers, HR business partners to have good time limited conversations. I talked to a lot of managers before Mental Health first aid training, and we talked about what do you do if someone says they're not okay? Well, I listen to them, how long? Whoa. As long as they need. Could be, could be an hour or two sometimes. Are you a part of that conversation or are you just listening to someone? And we're usually met with some silence at that point. I thought it was part of the conversation, but now that you say it, I don't think that I ever said anything. What did you do after that? Well, I gave them an e a P flyer and we went our separate ways and I never talked to them again. So we see a lot of that evidence that's coming through with employers who just don't know. And as a rehab counselor, we kind of know how to have that conversation. We especially know how that impacts essential job functions. So partnering with an organization like Mental Health First Aid at New York Life, we have, uh, a, a couple, I think we have five certified instructors now where we go out to our, our clients, we go out into the community and we talk about mental health First Aid. We certify and train individuals in mental health First Aid, the National Council of Mental Wellbeing, and we enable them to go back into their work sites and have good conversations that are targeted. There's a very counselor like agenda to a mental health first aid conversation, a framework that enables you to be a part without diagnosing, without treating, to play a role in helping someone to identify what's wrong and then help them to find out what kind of options might work in their life for them in that moment, for that issue that they're dealing with to be successful.

Pam Shlemon: 17:09

That's a wonderful program and it just adds more to that, uh, to that individual's knowledge. It sounds like your job brings you and your team to many different organizations and companies and all sectors. What are the unique challenges in today's world that makes the knowledge of A C R C vital to companies across every industry? There's

Ryan Bruce: 17:27

So much going on. There's so much going on that you can never plan for. It's all about trying to make adjustments. And when we're talking about initially covid, Ooh, we have to work from home. Now what happens? Like, how do you even get that set up? Well, we've been dealing with that forever as a crc. We know that's a great accommodation in some cases where it really might make sense. We know how to get people set up and how to make sure that's effective, make sure that they're productive, give them what they need. So I think the one thing that we always talked about, if it was our clinical nurses, our doctors, our vocational coaches that we had on staff and we talked about covid, we're always kind of the questions around like, how do you, like, how do you think about your role now in a covid or post covid environment? It, it actually hasn't changed. We're not, we don't deal with the diagnosis when we're trying to help someone. We use empathy. We wanna know where they came from. We don't necessarily have to agree with them, but we have to know how they got to us, why do they need help, and where are they coming from? When we can know that, when we can understand, I've said it before, limitations and restrictions. So things, people that are keeping people from being able to do their essential job functions, maybe permanently, maybe temporarily. We have to understand what that is. So if it's covid, if it's chronic fatigue syndrome, if it's a broken leg, if it's depression or cognitive side effects from medication, if we can approach people and truly understand where they're coming from, we can help them deal with anything. And I think that's a really important part about what a CRC can bring to an employer. We've worked with a lot of employers who have an ADA team set up that have CRCs on them too, and they are fantastic to work with. Really working everyone in the same direction with that employee really has fantastic results.

Pam Shlemon: 19:31

What would you like to see, you've been in this profession for a while now. What would you like to see improve or how would you elevate the field of, uh, certified rehabilitation counselors?

Ryan Bruce: 19:45

I would love to see HR departments, especially with larger employers, start really considering a C R C designation in addition to S P H R P H R to be able to identify the really amazing work that A C R C can bring, especially to a leave organization. There is a lot of change going on, paid family leave is happening everywhere. And as we look at increased statutory benefits, as we look at different kinds of company leaves that are coming online, those all actually also highlight ADA needs. You can't just look at additional company plans without also looking at how you're accommodating individuals. And we know CRCs are the best at accommodating individuals, so I would love to see HR departments really start to recognize more the quality work that A C R C can bring to their internal teams too.

Pam Shlemon: 20:51

Lastly, we'd like to ask everyone this question. Many say that working as a C R C is a calling. What brings you joy in the work you do as a C R C?

Ryan Bruce: 21:03

So at first it was those really neat stories that you are able to impact these individual lives. Uh, but then as I got more into management, it really became more about hearing what everyone else on my team was doing that was quite frankly, always better and more creative than anything I was ever doing when I was doing the role too. There are so many extremely talented CRCs out there, uh, New York Life for sure, everywhere out there. Being able to listen and partner and hear those stories, and now I get to tell those stories to make sure they resonate, to be able to bring those to life in different ways. I, I think telling those stories and really being able to, to advance the work that other people have been doing. That's my favorite part today.

Pam Shlemon: 22:00

Thanks again to Ryan, Bruce for that engaging conversation. If you have any takeaways or insights on topics covered in this episode, email us at contact us@crccertification.com. Be sure to subscribe to this show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to us today. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn at CRC Cert, and our website is crc certification.com. Until next time, I'm CRCs Executive director, Pam Schleman. Thank you for listening to Inside Rehabilitation Counseling.