Insurers get ready for workforce re-entry

The past few months have shown that insurers can be remarkably flexible and imaginative.

Insurers should take a holistic approach to determining when and who will return to a physical office space once the COVID-19 risk has diminished. They should incorporate both business and personal factors as they set their plans. (iStock)

Managing risk is what insurers do for a living, so it’s not surprising that they are proactively planning for workforce re-entry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Re-entry planning, however, is a complex task that involves defining how and where work gets done and re-imagining how the employee and customer experience will likely change.

The past few months have shown that insurers can be remarkably flexible and imaginative, finding ways to keep their people productive and connected while most work from home. Many of these changes are likely to last for at least several more months, and perhaps quite a bit longer, depending primarily on how the outbreak is being managed by local authorities where an insurer’s offices are located.

It follows that more than half of the 100 senior financial services executives with responsibility for crisis management and business continuity planning recently surveyed by Deloitte were considering more than three months of COVID-19-related operational contingency planning.

Some of the changes being made today to adapt to the outbreak might become permanent. This can be seen in recent insurer announcements. For example, Nationwide, which moved nearly all its 27,000 employees to a work-at-home model in early March, announced plans to keep a substantial number there and shrink its 20 physical offices to just four. Others will likely apply lessons from areas that have already reopened. The Canadian insurer Manulife increased its in-office employees in China from 25% to 75% within four weeks of reopening.

Who should return to the office?

Re-entry is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Each insurer should categorize roles based on business and personal factors. Both will come into play when deciding which roles must be performed in an office and which can be done remotely.

Business factors relate to the functions, work, and roles that need to be on-site. One proprietary tool used by Deloitte — Future of Talent Optimization (FOTO) — uses machine learning algorithms to determine the proximity (virtual versus in-office) needed to perform each role down to the task level.

Personal factors should also be taken into account, such as remote working environment, health considerations, and safety concerns — to name just a few. For example, when looking at an individual worker’s family context as a personal factor, consider issues such as caring for school-age children or elderly relatives. In this context, summer camp cancellations, delayed school openings and closed eldercare facilities might have a big impact on specific employees. Insurers should take a holistic approach, incorporating both business and personal factors as they set their plans.

A bell curve can help visualize the role-evaluation process. At one end is a set of roles that likely should remain in the office — these most likely are the central roles in the office today. At the other end of the curve are roles than can likely be performed remotely. Roles in the middle of the curve are where companies should focus to investigate the appropriate work location.

The acceleration of tech-enabled remote work is also reshaping this analysis. Claims adjusters, for example, historically have been required to travel, either locally or across the country, to assess damage on-site as part of the settlement process. However, new tools have been deployed that often allow for this to be done remotely. In contrast, certain aspects of the underwriting process may need to be in a central office because of security or data privacy requirements.

Somewhere in between are many other roles. For instance, a large part of a marketing staff’s work can likely be done remotely, although insurers can space out their on-site presence if they need to be in the office for group meetings. For such roles, some carriers could consider select in-office days or staggered work hour options.

Insurers are also exploring alternate talent models as they evaluate permanent remote work for a certain proportion of their talent. Contract workers and freelancers could be a larger part of the mix. In addition, should insurers decide to allow or mandate more of their people to work from home, that potentially widens access to alternative talent pools. If someone can work from home a mile away from their former headquarters office, why not consider hiring future staff elsewhere in the United States, or even around the world, rather than require relocation to a central site?

As companies consider re-entry planning, scenario modeling can be a very useful tool. Deloitte is helping many insurers explore their options in returning varying proportions of their workforce to the office by certain dates. As part of this process, Deloitte has developed a decision matrix that illustrates the dimensions and factors that should be considered for those decisions. There’s also the challenge of how to respond if some workers want to return to an office, versus those who would prefer not to or who don’t want to take the risk, at least for the time being.

Modeling can help insurers consider various threat scenarios, such as a sudden closure of some facilities if a new COVID-19 outbreak were to occur, or if a future pandemic were to strike caused by an entirely different virus.

Preparing the workplace

Employees understand the business considerations of returning to work. But first and foremost, they must be willing, ready and able to come to the office. As noted earlier, many may have new responsibilities at home such as childcare or eldercare, or concerns about staying safe during their commute or while working in an office building.

Insurers, of course, must comply with federal and local government regulations for space readiness. In the United States, for example, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration guidelines list a wide range of hygiene, cleaning, sanitation, safety and social distancing measures that companies are expected to follow to minimize COVID-19 exposure in the workplace. That said, the task of gaining employee and customer confidence while urging them to return to the physical space falls squarely on management.

Insurers will need to implement social-distancing measures, such as staggering work hours and using large meeting rooms for smaller groups.  To support social distancing, some companies may also deploy contact-and workspace-tracing apps.

Social distancing measures will differ for offices in campus settings, such as those often found in suburban areas, compared with those in urban skyscrapers. For the latter, moving people in and out of the building while keeping distancing measures is expected to be a challenge. A recent simulation revealed that it can take as much as 2.5 hours to move workers into and out of a fully occupied downtown office tower.

Efforts to enhance health and sanitation will extend to building operations. Many companies are considering the use of smart building management capabilities such as predictive maintenance solutions, air quality sensors, ultraviolet cleaning, infrared temperature cameras, and high-efficiency particle air filters for both owned and leased spaces. Companies should also increase the frequency of cleaning, especially of common areas and meeting places.

Managing a remote workforce

Meanwhile, with more people working remotely, most insurance companies will likely need to reorient all levers of employee engagement, including work protocols, training, well-being, team effectiveness, rewards and recognition, as well as connection to their work, team and organization.

The goal is to help people be productive in a remote environment, whether they are working collaboratively or individually. Some companies may need a new set of performance indicators to make sure their people have the right skill sets to work effectively. For leaders, it will likely mean managing in a different way.

Indeed, performance takes on a new meaning in this environment. Health and productivity can combine to help ensure workers thrive rather than simply deliver on objectives. There is expected to be a shift in focus to changing work priorities and routines, such as new schedules, combinations of on-site and virtual work, and different team assignments. How insurers prepare and support their workforce for this shift will likely be a key driver of performance.

Culture is another important factor as companies explore workforce changes. As more people work remotely, insurers are considering how to take their on-premises culture and transfer it to an off-premises work environment. They are also looking at strategies for long-term talent development when activities such as mentoring and sponsorship must occur outside of an office setting.

Workforce considerations should also be extended to an insurer’s distribution force, including independent intermediaries. Carriers will likely need to help ramp up the digital interaction skills of their agents, brokers, and financial advisors to increase client engagement and enable remote sales and service in the post-pandemic world.

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused tremendous disruption, but many insurers may see that it can create opportunities for innovation as well. Using their long experience in risk management, insurers can take steps to respond and recover from the immediate crisis effectively while positioning their workforce and business to thrive in what’s likely to be a very different future.

(For a more in-depth look at this topic, see the Deloitte Insights report: “COVID-19 return-to-the-workplace strategies: Emerging lessons and key questions for financial services leaders.”)  

Former NU Property & Casualty Editor-in-Chief Sam J. Friedman (samfriedman@deloitte.com) is insurance research leader at Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services in New York. Follow Sam on Twitter at @SamOnInsurance, as well as on LinkedIn.

Tina Witney (twitney@deloitte.com) is a managing director in Deloitte Consulting LLP, as well as Deloitte’s COVID-19 re-entry market offering leader.

These opinions are the authors’ own. This piece is published with permission from Deloitte. See www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about Deloitte’s global network of member firms.

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