Helping new employees get off on the right foot when they come to your agency is not only critical to their long-term success, but also contributes to how likely they will remain with the organization. Training is a vital component to making sure those early days for a new employee go as smoothly as possible.  

What should agencies do to create a training plan that sets new employees up to succeed sooner?

Make it a Team Effort –

Placing all the responsibility for training an employee on one person is very likely not going to be an option that generates the right results for the trainer or trainee.  Not only does it place a huge time constraint on one employee, but it could also create training burnout for one employee.

Deploying a “Divide and Conquer” method will work more effectively as:

  • Every employee has different strengths.  When an employee trains a new team member in the area where they are the most comfortable and proficient, the new employee will benefit from the trainer’s expertise.   
  • Allowing a new employee to learn from different staff members them provides and opportunity to get to know and build relationships with all members of the team.

Agencies can segment training between The Agency Management System, Carrier Systems, Department Workflows & Other Agency Processes.  Or in any other format that makes most sense to the specifics of the role and the operations of the organization.

Develop A Process & Procedure Manual –

Every agency needs a guidebook that everyone can reference.  While some more seasoned employees may have steps memorized and just “know” what needs to be done, procedures should be documented.  New employees will need a process handbook that they can easily reference, especially after they begin to work more independently.

Go Digital –

Gone are the days of heavy procedure manuals that require employees to read through pages and pages to find an answer.  There is a good chance that new employees coming into the agency are accustomed to digital learning as they have been consuming video their entire lives.  

Invest in a decent microphone and a software like zoom and have your team start recording procedures on video.   While this may seem a little uncomfortable for your team, there are significant benefits including:

  • Digital resources are easy for new employees to reference on their own whenever they need to meaning they will interrupt other team members less.
  • Documenting processes with video provides a new employee consistent information 
  • Video workflows can be easily updated as processes change

Taking the time to create digital workflow resource will save everyone time and support consistency.   

Training new employees can be time consuming and frustrating for everyone involved.  These 3 steps will help ensure your agency is able to significantly reduce the friction in the process and set new employees up for success in their role.

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.