I don’t suppose I have to tell any agent in the U.S. that finding “any” employee is difficult. There are many downsides to a pandemic and one of the longer lasting problems is replacing or adding employees. We have all felt the problem when trying to dine at favored restaurants. The parking lots have lots of room and the dining room is open and available – except they can’t find servers to fill the hours and wait on patrons.
Similarly, when moms and dads are concerned with the well-being of their children who pop in and out of school based on government edicts, their work schedules become sporadic and unreliable. And the largesse of governments who offer supplemental payments to people who prefer not to work because of fears of illness has had the nasty side effect of reducing the workforce at a time when industries like the insurance agency industry need staff to serve the on-going growth needs of the client base.
So, we find ourselves in the same “crunch” as other service industries – we have the work and the need but can’t find the staff, experienced or motivated enough to learn our trade.
WHAT TO DO?
Administrative service companies, local and foreign, have been gaining a foothold in service industries like ours for several decades. You certainly don’t have the control over the services that you would with a CSR sitting in your office, but these services are professionally trained and managed in the prevalent Agency Management Systems, do a credible job and actually cost far less than a similar dedicated customer service representative. Most agents don’t even consider outside processing service (leaving our employees for actual customer contact efforts) because we are uncomfortable assigning processing work (that we don’t check or audit in our own offices) to an outside group.
ROLL YOUR OWN
Assuming you are NOT excited about assigning your processing to someone who doesn’t work for you (whether 5,000 miles away or 5 blocks away), and assuming you are replacing or adding customer contact staff, you may want to abandon the hunt for experienced employees for motivated youngsters who you can train and mold into the kind of employee you would like to have working for you. Recent high school or college graduates are still trying to find their career and we know that insurance is actually a very sound, secure industry in which someone can enjoy a fruitful and profitable career. If you are large enough to have experienced people to mentor and train a ‘newbie’, this could be right for you. If you have a small agency and are not excited about training all systems, procedures, and technical skills needed to be a good insurance professional, this may not be for you. Unfortunately, too many agents, shocked at the low quality of experienced people interviewing for agency jobs, are finding that their only credible hires are inexperienced people just getting into the job market. Just remember that without spending adequate time with the new trainee, you may find that you keep the employee only as long as it takes them to find more lucrative positions. There are lots more jobs available now than qualified, quality people to fill those positions.
PARTICIPATE IN THE COTTAGE INDUSTRY
I preface this opportunity with the comment that most of us have NO IDEA of the competency and technical ability of our telephone systems. We are finally understanding that you can use your laptop or home computer to talk to your agency management system from home, client or even on vacation – but we have not yet generally put this capability into the hands of our service or administrative employees.
If you are a medium or larger agency or have a relatively new telephone system, if you read the manual you will find that it can already likely accommodate work-at-home functions automatically. If you have an old telephone system, taking a look at a modern system could influence your decision in favor of work-at-home employees.
Twenty-five years ago, I had a call distribution system that permitted me to send calls to any of my offices to evenly distribute service calls to my employees, where ever that employee resided. I refrained from using this capability for its full capacity because I feared employees not working up to my standards and spending their salaries taking care of their kids or running errands instead of processing transactions and talking to my clients.
A lot has changed in 25 years and my clients now routinely serve their clients from wherever their employees happen to reside. Yesterday I spoke to an agent whose claims manager was 1000 miles from their Midwestern office and did a marvelous job making sure that all clients were satisfied with the claim service and that all claims were being handled expeditiously.
Many of the employees we would like to have working for us are home with their school-aged children, wanting to work part time but still carrying all the knowledge that their career taught them. Newbies would have to be within reach of your office for training purposes, but the many stay-at-home moms (and dads) are proving to us that we need a way to keep them employed, helping their families and our clients.
Consider remote workers, retired, part-time or full time, spending some days in the office and some at home, as long as you have the computer system that permits them to process transactions and the telephone system that can distribute and transfer calls AND send management reports to you and your managers to show you how many transactions, calls, and customers have been serviced by your staff, whether in your office or at home.
Call me (Al Diamond 856 779 2430, al@agencyconsulting.com) to discuss your staffing and management issues. The Pandemic has accelerated an already burgeoning Work-From-Home cottage industry. Your choice is to be overcome by the wave – or learn to surf and “ride the wave” to advance your agency.