professionals are looking to supplement their retirement income, redefine their careers, head in new directions with their skills, or gain more freedom in their work-life balance. For them, working into retirement means gaining a freedom from the commute, the stress, and the long hours.
For agencies, this talent could be the best approach to addressing growth and workload needs. By drawing from a pool of retiring or retired workers who are committed to working remotely, agencies can locate the best fit at a significantly lower cost than traditional hiring arrangements. Most retiring and retired workers, or pretirees, come with decades of knowledge and skill that may not be available locally. Also, the remote arrangement allows agencies to tap into this talent pool without straining the budget.
There are plenty of benefits to hiring a skilled older worker under a work-from-home arrangement. A pretiring remote worker can:
Free up staff time. Imagine a situation in which your inhouse staff had the time needed to serve customers and grow the business. It can happen with a remote worker. Those administrative tasks your staff spends way too much valuable time on can be handled by a skilled insurance professional.
Reduce staffing costs. Adding to your employee pool usually comes with additional expenses – benefits, dedicated office space, training and the like. Remote workers remove nearly all of those costs, and require minimal training, usually just a few days to a week learning your management systems, if they don’ t already know it.
Be a consultant. If you’ ve hired a truly experienced remote worker, you have at your disposal a consultant who has worked in the industry and can advise on complex issues. And because many of these industry vets have decades of knowledge and experience, they can even help train your current staff on better ways to handle certain situations.
Improve processes. Some of the insurance professionals we’ ve placed in remote work arrangements have proven to be invaluable in helping agencies find better ways to handle the business processes. The benefit to you is better productivity and happier customers, all of which translates into a better bottom line.
In an atmosphere of stiff competition and increasing demands on the agency to differentiate, a pretiring insurance professional can offer the most bang for the payroll buck. Whether one’ s needs are minimal – a few days a week for a few months – or longer term, agencies can increase staff productivity by adding remote workers to the mix. The level of talent available from a national pool of committed, skilled workers could be the differentiator that helps your agency meet its growth and profitability goals.
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| March- April 2017 | KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER
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