I am writing this to announce that we have completed our report on the State of Learning in Insurance. I’m excited about this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s the first big thing that I have worked on since coming to Insurance Journal’s Academy of Insurance. We set out to find out more about the people that care about the Academy and you delivered.
Rather than give you a bunch of the details of the report, which you can get by CLICKING HERE, I thought I would use this week’s post to help you to decide that you needed to download and read our report. This is one of our most important projects this year. That’s why we have gone to great lengths to make sure to get into the hands of the right people, which is you. So, who needs to read our report? Good question; we just happen to have answers.
Agency Principals need to read the report. We understand that you have very limited training budgets. More than that, many agencies have a small staff. Maybe a producer or two and a few customer service representatives. You need to make the most of your training dollars and the time that your people are away from their normal duties. You have to maximize the impact of training by making sure that every scheduled training event adds value and meets all of your needs.
Insurance Company executives need to read the report. Can we be really honest here? It’s been our experience that when company budgets get tight, one area that finds its way to the chopping block fastest is the training budget. We’re hoping that the details of the report will help you to understand that the ROI on insurance training is in improved understanding, improved customer service and retention and improved employee engagement.
Human Resources leaders need to read the report. You’re trying to build and retain a team of high performing people. One way to do that is to provide them with the training that they need and want. You are looking for ways to bring that training into your organization to keep your high performers in their seats on the bus. You are well aware that you are saying good bye to more quality talent than you’re saying hello to. Providing the right training at the right time in the right way will help you to attract and retain that talent.
Learning and Development teams need to read the report. We almost didn’t put this in here, but it is important to say. You need to read the report so that you can help to provide the training that your teams need and build yourselves as their trusted partners. You need to be aware of the objections to training that people may bring to you. If you know why people struggle with training you can remove the objections. When you remove objections, you can “sell” your training to your audience in a way that they will “buy” it.
Insurance Leaders need to read the report. Your team needs training. It’s possible that your team has a growing number of new people on it. It is even possible that you have new people that need training but they don’t feel the liberty to ask for it. Let us be their voice in this. They need to be trained. Do you remember your early days in insurance? You didn’t know the difference between a deductible and a self-insured retention. You couldn’t tell an aggregate limit from an occurrence sub-limit. You didn’t know why an exclusionary endorsement existed and couldn’t tell someone else why the policy read the way it did. Neither does your team.
Insurance professionals need to read the report. If you don’t fit any of those other categories, you fit this one. You work in insurance and as smart and knowledgeable as you are, you don’t know it all yet. You do your best. You read Insurance Journal (obviously), but there’s so much more than you can read in the five minutes between the tasks that you’re working on. You need training. You need to be able to communicate your need for training, the available options for training, the cost of training, and the training formats that are available and how all of these meet your needs of continued learning and meet your company’s needs of world class, high-performing team members.
So why do all of you need to read the State of Learning Report? The report will give you the information that you need to properly prioritize, plan, and purchase insurance training. It will give you the data that you need to budget the money and time for the training that you and your team need. We wrote it to support you and your team’s learning needs. You need to read it.
What do you think of the report? Did it help? Is it useful to you? We would love to hear from you.
Topics Training Development
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