Get in Touch with Gen Y

Why the Modern Workplace Is Important for the Next Generation of Professionals

Today’s senior ranks of insurance professionals are retiring at the pace of approximately one every 10 minutes, taking a wealth of experience and knowledge out of the profession at a startling pace. Agencies and insurance carriers alike now face a major challenge to attract, hire, train and retain Generation Y replacements, all while continuing to service an increasingly complex and pressured marketplace.

Gen Y is clearly the most tech-savvy generation to enter the workforce to date. Their lives have revolved around technology from the beginning with LeapFrogs, Nintendos and Gameboys. During the last decade, classrooms have filled with computers, and the social lives of Gen Y revolve around texting, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, instant messaging and iPhones. It’s a real-time, multi-media, digital world. Technology is an integral part of how this generation learns, works, plays, interacts and sees the world.

So naturally, Gen Y workers have a somewhat evolved view of business and what they expect in a work environment. They gravitate to companies doing business with technology, faster, smarter and easier. The paper-bound processes, green-screen systems, cabinets full of policy files, in-baskets and the assembly-line of manual processes present in many agency environments are not going to win their interest or loyalty. That means in order to attract talented, in-demand Gen Y workers, the processes and archaic systems of the past must be left behind and the insurance industry must get with “the new century.”

So, what kind of technology is going to attract Gen Y to your company? Agencies utilizing a Web 2.0 system that offers tools that enable true collaboration between agents and insurance company underwriters are most likely to get a second look.

Imagine a real-time environment with a shared platform between agents and insurance company underwriters, a technology that makes it much easier for agents to do business with carriers, and one that reduces turnaround times to help agents be significantly more productive and engaged with the carrier. But remember, both parties need to be onboard in order for true collaboration to be achieved, so partnering with the right carrier who is already in tune with today’s technologies can be an important first step.

Real-Time

So, what’s a real-time environment anyway, and why will Gen Y like it? It’s where data can be recorded once and then sent wherever it needs to go real-time, minimizing touch-points for agents and underwriters using the system. It’s where outputs are user-friendly PDFs that can be distributed, forwarded, and viewed as needed. This environment is truly multi-media — documents, spreadsheets, pictures, videos, and even voice files can be added to your accounts so everything about the account is available online, and in real-time.

The new world is networked, with real-time Internet access from anywhere. So, communication will be ubiquitous. Anyone can communicate with anyone they want to reach, online and in real-time.

Once you have ubiquitous communication, you can use “push” technologies to leverage chatting, instant alerts, e-mail notifications, the digital yellow-sticky notes, and even shared screens with shared updating to streamline collaboration and minimize the frustrations of hours or days of back-and-forth delays.

In addition to a real-time environment and true collaboration tools, what other features should such a system have in order to be complete and to help you compete?

Agency upload and download should be provided by leveraging ACORD XML standards to push and pull data from the agent’s desktop into the carrier’s underwriting system and back, eliminating re-keying.

Knock-out and risk appetite rules, supplemental data, and completeness edits should be available right on the agent’s desktop to eliminate wasted time and unwanted or incomplete submissions.

Agent access to applications, proposals, shared notes, and attachments as allowed by role is also important.

The ability to leverage collective intelligence can help agents share information with insurance company underwriters using context-sensitive, wiki-like repositories.

The new world enabled by technology is equipped for multi-tasking. It’s user-driven and intuitive. Gen Y doesn’t expect a system to just do one thing for just one account through a tightly-scripted screen flow. They expect to use insurance systems the way they use technology in their everyday lives. Using Web 2.0 rich Internet technologies, it is possible to have multiple sessions open and to have the ability to jump to the most immediate task or message. And, an intuitive nature is important for new technologies. Gen Y workers won’t sit down and read a user manual for hours to figure out how to use a system, they will just start clicking.

Technology offers great opportunities for both agents and carriers to have more productive, higher quality, and more intuitive workflows and systems. It’s not going to be your father’s insurance process, or even yours. It will be the new generation’s process. And it will be a change for the better.

Can you adapt and leverage the new technologies to create the modern workplace? Or will you hang on to the traditional process and watch the next generation pass you by?

Topics Carriers Agencies InsurTech Tech