The global COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in economic challenges of historical proportions across the globe – adding significant stress to businesses as well as their employees.
But for Rhys Mills (pictured), managing director of Solution Underwriting Agency located in Melbourne, the coronavirus crisis’s impact on his business operations was solved with the activation of his “business continuity plan.”
“The biggest change that COVID-19 has had on our business is mainly in how and where we now work,” Mills said.
“We were in a fortunate position prior to the restrictions where all of our underwriting, operations and claims staff were in a position to work remotely already, so it was just a matter of setting up our broker support team. We also had in place a tried and tested business continuity plan which we enacted, and which worked perfectly.”
Despite these efforts being made to enable the continuous financial stability, efficiency and ongoing operations of the company, Mills says it’s even more important to support and promote physical and psychological wellbeing among his staff.
“We are promoting mental and physical wellbeing to our staff during this time in a number of ways. We have bought equipment (such as office chairs and monitors) for people to work safely and effectively from home,” Mills said.
“We have arranged working from home and wellbeing sessions with an external personal and business coach to help our staff maintain their mental health during this time and, to help maintain our staff’s physical health, we have arranged online personal training sessions where each staff member receives a tailored program using day to day items in their home, which is then performed under the supervision of a qualified PT online.”
Mills says the personal and business coaches have helped his staff by providing tools to help navigate these uncertain times.
“We are providing them with mental ‘tools’ to assist with the different stresses and anxieties that come from working from home and the disconnection that comes from that with your colleagues, as well as the tools to ensure that their physical being is healthy as well,” he said.
“We are firm believers that by looking after your staff, you are looking after your clients and brokers. Therefore, by ensuring that our staff are mentally and physically ‘happy’, that translates through to keeping our clients and brokers happy.”
The motive behind these measures was to ensure that staff members who live alone and are more vulnerable to loneliness and anxiety are well looked after.
“We have some staff that live alone which adds a certain level of anxiety given the potential for loneliness during this time resulting from isolation,” he said. “The tools that were imparted by our personal and business coach really helped relieve this anxiety and show the support that we can all provide each other.”
In addition to the business and personal coaches, Mills says he also hosts friendly staff catch-ups to ensure the social connection is maintained.
“We also hold Friday afternoon drinks and daily underwriting and broker support team meetings via Teams to ensure that everyone stays connected,” he added.
These health and wellbeing measures are vital during this unprecedented time because of the strain the novel coronavirus has placed on certain divisions of the company, according to Mills.
“Our accident and health and claims teams who look after our corporate travel product have felt the brunt of COVID-19 in terms of queries and questions from brokers,” he said.
“They have done an outstanding job in keeping clients and brokers updated with the ever-changing situation. In addition to our clients and brokers, looking after our staff has been extremely important to us and we have undertaken a number of measures to ensure they’re safe, well and happy.”
Mills, however, accepts that his business is luckier than most. Because Solution Underwriting Agency had been prepared for remote working, he admitted there were very few additional operational changes that needed to occur.
“Other than setting up every staff member to work remotely, we haven’t had to make a great deal of changes as a lot of staff were already set up to work in this manner,” Mills admitted.
“We have had to change the way we communicate with each other, so we have daily (sometimes several times a day) video chat meetings to have that face to face time which is really important at this time.
“We’ve also encouraged our staff to pick up the phone and call brokers just to see how they are going. We’re also doing everything we can to support our insured clients and do whatever we can to help them trade through this tough time.”
His top priority outside of the business – that is, supporting his staff – is to ensure his company is also supporting its clients, including brokers.
“… We are doing everything we can to support our clients at this time,” he said. “From reducing premiums and extending credit terms where we can, we’re also looking into other steps that we can and will implement shortly to support out insured clients and brokers through this time.”
