As you hire for your insurance jobs, you must hire the people who are right for the position. However, even the best and most knowledgeable employee needs to be trained. How can you make your insurance workplace one where people can grow in their knowledge and understanding?
Define Your Positions
While one person might be in insurance marketing and other is an administrator, insurance jobs have both similar and divergent tasks that need to be accomplished on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. There can be a lot of crossover between jobs as well, especially when it comes to soft skills. Before you look into training needs, consider the full spectrum of both knowledge and skills required for each of your positions. This could include:
- Knowledge about the industry and the products that you offer
- Skills focused on learning software products
- An understanding of processes used while bringing on new clients or checking in with existing ones
- Skills that help people work with the public, such as conflict management skills
- Processes to help employees work smarter and to work more effectively with each other
While the first two items might be in the job description that you post, the others are just as critical to the success of each employee and of your insurance agency as a whole.
Identify Training Needs
How can you identify new training needs at your insurance agency? Here are a few ways to look at your agency and see training opportunities:
- What new areas of content are you exploring as an agency? For instance, if you are moving into auto insurance, everyone at your agency would likely appreciate knowing more about the product and about commonly-asked questions, even if they aren’t working with that product directly.
- Are there any skills gaps? For instance, you may have hired someone who is wonderful at customer service but struggles with your new computer software. You can identify these through self-assessment, your assessment, peer assessment, and client complaints.
- What are your aspirations? Can your employees be trained to meet them? For instance, you may want to move more strongly into social media marketing. If none of your employees focus on this right now, is there someone with the curiosity and skills who would like to be trained to take this further?
- Where do your employees want to go? Your employees could be the ones who identify their own needs and wishes. For example, an employee may be quite interested in graphic design. If you have an emerging need for such design skills, this could be the perfect opportunity to train someone who’s keen to learn.
- Where can you grow and expand upon your strengths? According to SPARK, focusing on how to “maximize your strengths” is even more important than helping employees overcome their weaknesses.
Consider the Value of Each Job
It’s helpful to consider how each job and each person adds value to the company. This helps you understand where you might need to grow and how employees can add even more value to a particular position. In turn, this will direct you to new training opportunities. For instance, an administrator is the person who is the first face of your organization, someone who warms up potential clients and assists current ones. That person has social value to your agency. How can you increase the value of that position by supporting that person to grow within the job?
Is your independent insurance agency ready to grow? Connect with American Agents Alliance. We offer support for your agency. With our many membership benefits and our Alliance Convention, you’ll find the connections that you need to make your agency grow.
