Addressing what is referred to as a ‘talent war’ in the insurance industry is one of the top five findings in Deloitte's 2023 insurance industry outlook. And it comes as no surprise. In the last decade, most insurance firms had a staff turnover rate of around 8-9%. Now, it’s approaching 12-15%, with voluntary turnover pushing that number even higher.
Analysts at Deloitte attribute the shift to the forced move to virtualization during the pandemic lockdowns, as it fueled revolutionary changes in employee expectations and upended many traditional employment models.
What’s more, the problem is unlikely to get any better with Gartner predicting a 20% turnover rate for ‘the foreseeable future’, saying that in a hybrid and remote workplace the barriers to job switching are persistently low.
Insurance agencies are being urged to re-assess culture and find ways to make the work experience as attractive as possible.
One way for insurance agencies to achieve this is to take a hard look at how technology may be helping or hindering agents’ daily work.
The pandemic brought about many changes to how we live, but also in how we view the world. One of the results of the lockdowns was the phenomenon of the Great Resignation. This saw workers quit their jobs in droves, many of them to retire or relocate, but a good deal also walked out of jobs because of a sudden and emphatic realization that their jobs were making them miserable (what Harvard Business School referred to as ‘reconsideration’), where workers quit due to burnout and not being recognized for their contributions.
The insurance industry has not been immune to the trend and there was a spike in job turnover at all pay grades.
As the world returned to some semblance of normalcy, the new mindset that a job should add meaning to our lives, remained. This has left insurance business leaders, who have been tasked with aggressive growth targets, suddenly desperate to find ways to hold onto their insurance agents and find replacements for those that have left.
When it comes to frustrations in the workplace, many insurance agencies simply don’t provide their agents with the systems and support required for them to delight their customers and shine at their jobs. Some of these challenges include:
Agents who might have been driven by a passion to help people and deliver exceptional customer service are left spending upwards of 50% of their time capturing data and hunting for information trapped in multiple siloed systems.
It’s clear this situation will have a deeply negative impact on job satisfaction, resulting in high employee turnover. What’s more, agencies are left with error-riddled data that is difficult to access and tech investments that will never deliver the returns promised.
Being a great agent takes a special kind of person. One who is driven to find a personalized solution for each of their customers. To help insurance agents focus on this crucial part of their job, agency leaders must provide the best tools for them to access the right information at the right time.
Synatic’s Data Integration Hub (DIH) has automated data and integrated core insurance systems, thereby allowing agencies to bypass the need for their agents to perform tedious manual inputs or processes. The platform also reduces the risk of errors and duplicate data by eliminating the need for agents to constantly bounce between their AMS, CRM, and quoting systems to manually input data from one of these system to another. By providing the right ETL, Integration, API Management and Warehousing tools, the administrative burden is also lowered.
Using a DIH allows agencies to automate front- and back-office tasks, providing the right data, to the person, at the right time. This frees up to time so insurance agents can focus on their valuable customer relationships, rather than routine transactions.
The result is a team that can easily do their work. When agents have an integrated and streamlined tech stack, productivity increases, and the likelihood of burnout significantly decreases. In fact, studies show that happy salespeople produce 37% greater sales. I in a Data Integration Hub to improve your teams’ work experience could be the biggest return on investment you make this year. If you want to learn more about how you can enhance your team’s work experience and increase employee retention, contact Synatic today.
