Drastically Improve Your Onboarding Program by Making These 2 Changes
Inevitably, agencies are going to have their new hires sit at a desk and watch another CSR perform his or her/job duties – and they’ll call this “onboarding.” It’s a necessary, but often ill-conceived attempt at a comprehensive onboarding process, but we know that there’s much more to it than that. We see two common mistakes in a lot of the agencies that we work with. For instance, the first mistake is that agencies fail to expose new hires to their job duties prior to their first day observing. This actually would allow the new hire to make connections with their duties on their first day, ultimately paving the way for a more successful onboarding process. The second mistake is that the observation or shadowing process is a one-time process within the agency. It may last several days, but there is no follow up program in place. This greatly limits the retention of information for a new hire, which could pave the way for mistakes, frequent questions, or uncertainty in the future. The absence of previewing or “pre-learning,” as I like to call it, can be easily solved with a little bit of forward thinking at your agency. Your new hire needs to observe individual processes in an isolated environment prior to their job shadowing component of training. Preparing for this is inexpensive and it does not require any specific technology skills. We break it down quite simply in our “Practical Insurance Onboarding Guide,” available for free by clicking here. If you want the quick cliff-notes version, we’ll tell you that your team needs to pre-record the individual processes that your new hire will ultimately watch on their own prior to shadowing sessions. I guarantee that you will have a “why didn’t we do this years ago,” moment after your first new hire completes their training. Now that we have tackled pre-learning, we have to address the 800lb elephant in the room. Insurance is confusing, uses archaic language, and contains about as many exceptions as there are rules. In everyday learning, there is an explanation that shows just how little we retain after our first exposure to new material. This is aptly called the “forgetting curve.” Immediately after learning something, we have an almost immediate and total recall. Unfortunately, as we all know, it’s a quick downward slope from there. This effect can be remedied by reviewing the material within 24 hours, after 1 week, and following 1 month from the initial learning experience. Wouldn’t you be impressed if your new CSR could remember 90% of what they learned during onboarding after the first 60 days? I think most agencies would be thrilled with 80% retention after 6 months! So, what does this look like for the typical agency? If you have rectified the first mistake, you only need to monitor and require the additional viewing of individual process videos at the intervals listed above. Once you implement this into your agency, you will be ahead of most of your competitors and you’ll be well on your way to a best-in-class onboarding program.
About the Author
Justin Goodman has spent the past 20 years in insurance. He is the co-founder and CEO of Total CSR and co-founder and Managing Director of Project 55. By the age of 29, he was recognized as one of the top five construction insurance experts nationwide by Risk and Insurance Magazine. He also was named to Insurance Business Magazine’s Hot 100 and most recently the 2024 Insurance Journal Agent of the Year. Justin has trained over 50,000 CSR’s, account managers and producers through his work at Total CSR. He has a passion for developing the next generation of insurance professionals. When not with his family, he devotes his free time to speaking engagements and advising agency owners across the country.
