If there is a positive to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic it may be that the crisis has allowed businesses throughout the world to genuinely understand which processes and procedures are most essential to business continuity. And, as highlighted at a recent BDMA webinar, beyond the need for effective disaster strategising and the role of digitisation and innovation, one of the clearest indicators of success for an insurance business is how it cares for the wellbeing of its staff.
For Matt Field (pictured), head of marketing and development at Direct Insurance London Market (DILM), being part of the organisation’s efforts to support its people has shown how the insurance industry can lead the way.
The range of COVID-led initiatives DILM crafted actually kicked off before the lockdown, he said, with a £20,000 investment into laptops to allow staff to work from home about a week before the lockdown became official. Having piloted how this remote working would look, when the shutdown became official the team was already accustomed to working in this manner.
“It’s strange times for everybody,” he said, “so if there was anything that we could do to make your home working environment more comfortable, staff could just ask. For instance, one guy had blinds fitted in his window because the sun was in his eyes and he couldn’t work effectively. People were equipped with chairs, desks, new monitors, really anything they needed to help them through this.
“Another good thing was that the executive committee and the board of the business kept us all up to date through weekly updates on business performance and the impact of COVID and always with that reminder – do you need anything, is there anything we can do?”
From home deliveries of baked goods to adapting a pre-existing staff benefits package to allow people to use time out of work to take part in online Zoom personal training sessions, to holding nutrition and mental wellbeing seminars, there were a variety of support initiatives which DILM was proud to be able to offer its colleagues. An early Zoom quiz had a particularly positive response, Field said, and this was followed up by a second quiz, hosted by the comedian Lee Nelson who provided some substantiative energy to the evening by finding great mileage in ribbing the business’s board members.
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“We had a record April and May,” Field said, “so, at the end of May, the board decided to make a permanent switch to completely flexible working. This was not a knee jerk reaction but very much made with the longer-term focus in mind that this was clearly working. Of course, the key thing is people - no two people’s situations are the same - [DILM] wants to make sure that those who want to go back into the office can return to a safe environment and that those who want to work at home, and are actually benefiting from not having that hour-long commute each side of the day, can continue to work at home.”
Some want to balance the two, he noted, and combine time in the office with time at home and this has also been supported. The crisis has really highlighted the diversity innate to DILM, he said, which encompasses a team which includes people of every age from a huge variety of locations. When Field first joined just over four years ago the company was a £30 million business in terms of GWP with maybe 30 staff and since then teams have been recruited on a global scale, with offices now located in New Jersey, Texas, Mauritius, Hong Kong, Brussels, as well as London.
“We have such a range of people coming into the business,” he said. “From school leavers, right the way through to people who are more at the tail end of their career, there is something here for everyone and all [our initiatives] have been very inclusive and offered to everyone.”
With so much uncertainty in the world at the moment, and given the amount of time people spend at work, he said, it is essential that people feel comfortable in their working environments. Field feels very strongly that the support he has been offered has directly fed into his willingness to work hard and to keep pushing. These initiatives have created a huge amount of goodwill across all the teams and they have been driven by DILM’s management team, who are leading by example.
“If we can create a culture that this business is seen and felt by the staff within it as one that is standing by them during a difficult period, then I think that’s a huge achievement,” he said. “And for me, making sure that we have a sharing culture that gives the staff visibility on how the team’s performing and also checks on them individually is key… I think this has made us all a little more caring about looking after individuals, as well as looking after the business.”
When something closer to ‘business as usual’ returns, Field is looking forward to getting back out and spending time with both customers and his colleagues. As the lockdown eases, and as it becomes safe to do so, he said, it will be great to get back into bigger groups and spend time face to face with people because “that’s what I miss the most.”
