Brokerages have been working in overdrive over the past month, sorting through a larger-than-usual volume of calls from clients who are cleaning up from record storms and flooding this season.
As brokers absorb the stress and shock of their clients, it is important to maintain a sense of perspective and keep staff morale high. This is important not only in crisis conditions, but in the common, day-to-day operations of the brokerage.
Not surprisingly, suggestions for maintaining good staff morale double as tips for boosting retention at the brokerage as well. Clearly a happy and fulfilled staff will lead to happy clients – clients who prefer to work with the motivated staff at your brokerage.
To this end, Nadia Sartor, who works in the broker relations and insurance support section of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO), suggests the following tips for keeping staff morale high at the brokerage: (continued.)
• Make sure that you clearly communicate with your staff your vision for the brokerage and how each employee fits into that vision.
• Create service standards that are attainable and understood by all, and tie it to a bonus. This could also have a positive impact on your retention levels, since standards could include targets for key performance indicators such as upsells, cross-sells and client contact.
• If you are an executive, owner or principal at the brokerage, make a sincere effort to learn the names of your staff members’ spouses, partners or children, and ask after them.
• Recognize and celebrate a job well done - sometimes a simple ‘thank you’ goes a long way to improve someone’s day. On a more formal level, review and publicly recognize the staff member that has achieved all targets for the month or quarter or year. This tip ties in with boosting the brokerage’s retention as well.
• Make the workplace fun. Arrange “theme” days and award prizes for the best expression of the theme. Keep it simple.
• Keep the lines of communication within the brokerage open. Personal lines staff should be talking to commercial lines staff and vice versa. Not only will this keep employees working together, the sharing of information will also improve client retention as well.
