Many agencies have closed in favor of all employees working remotely. Others have skeleton staffs, rotating in and out of the office to make certain the office is manned at all times but in such a way that ‘social distancing’ is assured. Still others have remained open for business but have instituted rules for social distancing, the wearing of masks and minimization of group meetings. In most areas we have had the opportunity to make our own rules since insurance is an “essential function” for the sake of claims, alone.
And then, for a surprising number of agencies we have contacted in the last few months it’s been “business as usual” from the standpoint of agency operation with the major effect of the pandemic being in the actions of the clients and prospects. A surprising number of geographic areas of the U.S. have been relatively unaffected from an illness standpoint. The REAL long-term issue will be the affect of the virus on our elderly (over 80) population with pre-existing complicating conditions. Meanwhile the politicians have tried to destroy our economy (the best we’ve had in many generations) and the insurance agencies will be affected as well as all other service industries because we thrive with a strong economy and suffer when our clients are hurt.
So, like many advances in business and in science, NECESSITY HAS BECOME THE MOTHER OF INVENTION.
What we are finding is that a surprising number of the functions of an insurance agency can be accomplished remotely. Over the past several decades most urban and suburban agencies have found the number of physical visitors has diminished severely by as much as 90% as clients have become accustomed to calling for changes and questions and using the internet to view their policies and payment status through agency portals or to the carriers directly.
So, when the coronavirus civil regulations forced social separation and many more remote workers, our industry suffered less than most and we have learned that we can accomplish most tasks remotely – as long as we have established remote access to our databases and have telecommunications networks that permit remote call forwarding and call sequencing to distribute service and sales calls.
Rules of Remote Worker Success:
- ELIGIBILITY – Who is eligible to be a Remote Worker? Employees who deal with customers or processes that can be handled by phone or on a remote “secure” computer can be assigned remote duties.
- AVAILABILITY – What schedule should be implemented? Customer or supplier (carrier) contact positions must be available during normal business hours. If you walked to an employee’s workstation any time during the day, you would expect them to be there for you or for clients and carriers, right? Check in with your employees as you would normally – just do it by phone.
- RESPONSIBILITY – Response Time Expectations? If you currently have response time expectations, keep them even if your employees are working remotely. If you don’t have expected response times by work category, now is the time to implement standards. Even small agencies should have a published expectation of response time of different types of customer requests.
- PRODUCTIVITY MANAGEMENT – How do you know your employees are working if they are not in the office? More appropriately, how do you know they are working effectively to your productivity expectations IF THEY ARE IN THE OFFICE? And then, more to the point, do either you or your employees even know what defines acceptable productivity in their jobs?
If you are a small, informally operated agency, productivity may be as simple as requiring all customer requests (client or carrier) be handled to conclusion or as far as possible in the same day as received by the employee. This can be measured by how many client contacts were received during the day; then how many contact transactions were concluded, how many were set aside awaiting further information, and how many were in backlog (could have been done if more time were available). This information is available within the office and should also be available for remote workers.
In actuality, productivity is just as important for remote workers who are out of sight as for workers who are present in the office. In office, productivity measures will tell you who are your effective employees and who are your “floaters” (doing what is necessary, rather than what is available to be accomplished). This may be a shocking management application for many agency owners, but the advent of remote workers is certainly an appropriate time to implement productivity measures.
- EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE – Does your agency have the right system (computer, agency management system and telephone) to permit remote workers to handle their duties in the same way they would from their desks in the office? If not, now is the time to update your Disaster Recovery Program to upgrade your systems (automated and manual) to allow you to react to this pandemic and other potential disasters (fire, flood, wind, etc) to remain in business and operational for your clients. Use any lack of resources in this pandemic to identify and upgrade your agency for the future.
- TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Most of us have “Computer Guys” or technical support that includes issues that your employees encounter at work. They should be converted to provide their own version of remote support to make sure employees are effective working remotely.
- CLIENT SECURITY AND CONFIDENTIALITY – Many of us haven’t paid enough attention to these subjects within our own agencies. If that is the case, the advent of remote employees is another warning bell that our files and systems must be secured to avoid any possibility of confidential information being available to public view. This could mean a procedure as simple as forbidding physical files to be taken out of the office. It could provide for the prohibition of customer information being printed outside the office. You must make the decisions of how to permit remote workers to manage and accomplish the tasks for which they are hired without exposing confidential client information to their families or public scrutiny. Remember, you remain exposed to liability exposure if you authorize remote work efforts that breach confidentiality.
Remote work efforts can help you retain employees in trying times when children are not permitted to go to school. It can ease tight space situations in your office when customer contact is already done remotely. But remote work efforts require MORE management than in-office work efforts. If you would like assistance in establishing procedures for your remote workers or disaster recovery programs, please call us at 856 779 2430 and we would be happy to help.