Professional development at the core
Early career insurance professionals must be mentored in a different way because they’re not coming into an office, and it can be a challenge to do traditional mentoring over Microsoft Teams.
As a manager, I hold daily check-ins, which are important for junior-level staffers, where we speak more casually and ensure each team member is communicating their needs and finding success and fulfillment in their roles.
In addition, I schedule bi-weekly one-on-ones on specific work-related topics, such as how to price business and how to underwrite certain products better. The team generates these topics, and the conversations help to facilitate professional growth, which can go ignored if not addressed directly in hybrid work situations.
Unexpected benefits
We’ve also seen recruitment benefits based on our workplace approach: Argo has successfully recruited employees who had been forced to go back to the office at their previous employers.
Learn more about Life at Argo and working at Argo Group.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about remote work, however. I have a team member in New York who is eager to return to the office. He thrives on big city energy and the office environment. I made sure to respect how he best works and made our New York offices available to him. Providing your employees with the best possible working conditions for their working style goes a long way toward doing the best possible work for your clients.
Hybrid work is here to stay, and the best companies in the world are leading from the front and finding solutions that empower hybrid teams to work even better than they did in the office.
Managers must step up and find new paradigms for work that drive their teams to succeed. It’s not enough to build patchwork networks in the hopes of surviving until the pandemic is over – no one can predict when that will be.
Learn more about Life at Argo and working at Argo Group.