Three Tech Tools and One Philosophy to Successfully Manage a Hybrid Workforce in Insurance 

Prior to 2020, many insurance agencies and carriers fell strictly into an in-person or in-office work mentality. Whether you attribute this to historical institutional practices or a perceived necessity of the jobs being performed, the result was a workforce heavily embedded in physical office locations and in-person meetings. 

Insurance wasn’t unique. Studies show that only around 6 percent of the U.S. workforce was working fully remote prior to COVID-19. Compare this to a September 2021 Gallup poll that found 67 percent of white-collar workers were at least partially remote. 

From office, to remote, to hybrid work 

It goes without saying that everything changed in early 2020. Suddenly, anyone who wasn’t deemed absolutely essential for in-person work was quickly moved to a remote-work setup. This included the large majority of insurance agents, agency support staff, and insurance carrier employees. 

For insurance agencies and carriers that were already taking steps to digitize and modernize, the change might not have been overly dramatic. For others, it was a technological leap forward literally overnight when the same types of initiatives had failed to catch on for years, or decades, before. 

As of January 2023, the U.S. has largely returned to normal. Wearing masks isn’t as common, and people are flocking to restaurants and using air travel at higher-than-pre-pandemic levels. Still, employers have found it difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to remote work. At least when talking about employees returning to an office full time. 

Hybrid work, on the other hand, is extremely popular with employees. A report by Accenture found that 83 percent of workers worldwide prefer a hybrid work model compared to working exclusively from home or exclusively in an office. 

Benefits of hybrid work 

Although insurance industry employers have been hesitant to allow remote or virtual work historically, the shift during COVID proved it could work for this industry just as well as it has for others. In fact, McKinsey found that the insurance industry is particularly well-suited to remote work. 

And the benefits aren’t just for employees. Insurance agencies and carriers enjoyed higher productivity, or at the very least no loss in productivity when everyone transitioned to working from home. While some people missed the office environment, the workforce largely indicates they’d prefer a hybrid arrangement. A few of the benefits include: 

A greater sense of autonomy and choice – When given the opportunity to self-direct, employees have proven they can remain productive from a variety of work locations. A hybrid workforce gives people the opportunity to choose when and where they’ll work best on a given day. For the small percentage of people who prefer to work exclusively in an office, a hybrid model gives them the ability to do so. 

A better quality of life – When the whole world went remote, people realized just how much time they’d been spending on unnecessary commutes, and how much of their kids’ lives they were missing out on. The ability to work from home even just part of the time allows people to better balance their personal and professional responsibilities, save time and money on driving, and work during the times of the day they perform their best. 

Higher productivity – It’s a double-edged sword, but there’s no denying that removing hours of commuting from your day can give you more time to engage in productive work activities. At the same time, to prevent burnout, employees who work mostly from home have to be particularly careful not to cram work into every spare moment of their lives. 

The benefits of remote while maintaining a workplace community – Hybrid work really can be a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Employees who prefer to work remotely can do so, while still having an office to come into when the need arises. Whether it’s an important face-to-face meeting or celebrating birthdays together, a physical workplace that complements the remote workforce can add to the culture without making people feel trapped in an office every day. 

While these benefits are real, my obsession with insurance compliance does require me to throw in one caveat. States differ in how they define insurance office branch locations, meaning employees working from home could create the need for new compliance steps. However, as laws evolve, they are becoming increasingly more friendly towards remote and hybrid insurance work. Make sure to get familiar with the laws that apply to your organization. 

Making hybrid work work for the insurance industry 

Changing a company’s culture isn’t something that happens quickly, much less the culture of an entire industry that’s been around for hundreds of years. It’s definitely not something I can tell you how to do in a short blog – but I can tell you a few essential ingredients that, without which, hybrid work won’t succeed. 

These ingredients are a combination of technical tools and a mindset, and your organization needs all of them to truly reap the benefits that are possible with a hybrid workforce. You can invest in all the technology in the world, but without the right philosophy it won’t do any good. By the same token, an organization with the right mindset still can’t succeed with managing a hybrid workforce without the logistics in place to enable that success. 

Three tech tools for managing your hybrid workforce

1. You’ll need a cloud-based project management tool

With a distributed workforce, where people can be working from an office, or anywhere else, on any given day, a cloud-based project management tool is a must. Apps like Asana, Wrike, Monday, and Airtable help teams keep track of everything from the most complex projects to the simplest sub-tasks. Everyone who’s involved in a project can see what’s going on, eliminating countless “just following up” emails, phone calls, and meetings.

2. You’ll need a real-time communication platform

Working in a hybrid environment can also mean working asynchronously across multiple time zones. A communication tool like Slack or Microsoft Teams is absolutely essential to keeping conversations going both in real time and for employees who aren’t around while the conversation is happening. 

While Zoom had its moment in the spotlight at the start of the COVID pandemic, it’s not the only option by far. Many communication platforms include group chat channels, private chats, video conferencing, and voice-only calls to allow your team to communicate in any way they prefer without needing multiple different software. 

3. You’ll need cloud document storage that allows for collaboration

The days of “network drives” are (hopefully) behind us. Cloud-based shared documents are vital for modern collaboration especially across hybrid teams. Examples of these include Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, and many others. One important feature to make sure your chosen solution has is the ability for simultaneous editing. This helps teams work in real-time together and avoids the dreaded “version” problem you get with static documents. 

You’ll need leadership to embrace an innovative, curious mindset that allows for trying new things (and sometimes failing) –  With those tech tools in place, this is the important philosophy you can’t be without. 

Whether you’re a legacy insurance carrier that’s been in business for a hundred years or a small independent agency that just formed, it’s crucial to embrace what might be called a “startup mindset.” 

As the co-founder of an insurtech startup, this means a few things to me specifically:  

Be curious: Be willing to ask questions and encourage your employees to ask questions, all of which might uncover a new, better way of doing things. 

Be innovative: Look at problems from a different perspective. Bring in diverse groups to address challenges. Remember, the best answer might not be the obvious one.

Be willing to try and possibly fail: I’m not saying you should take unnecessary risks, but the saying “nothing ventured, nothing gained” exists for a reason. In the insurance industry, it’s easy to get caught in a pattern of doing things the way they’ve always been done, simply because they’ve always been done that way. 

If you’re going to successfully manage a hybrid workforce, you have to be open to experimenting. You might find employees are happiest and most productive with a set number of days each week that everyone convenes in the office together. On the other hand, they may do better with a more individualized approach to the hybrid arrangement. As you create the future-facing culture your organization will need to be competitive with a new generation of insurance talent, you’re absolutely going to need to try a few things that won’t turn out to be the right answer. 

On top of all of this, it’s worth a quick mention that insurance-specific tools and solutions will also be necessary to power your hybrid insurance workforce. There are a wide range of options to choose from, covering every aspect of your insurance business: agency management, document management, contract management, compliance management, compensation management, and more. In an ideal world, you’d choose the solutions you need to remove busy work and ensure accuracy across every step of your clients’ and employees’ journey. 

However you choose to proceed, the bottom line is that remote and hybrid work are here to stay, and finding ways to successfully embrace and manage this new frontier – as opposed to wasting resources fighting it – can provide lasting benefits to employers and employees alike.