Vacating the Premises: School's Out for Workers
Insurance Networking News, October 1, 2008
Given the continued improvement of technology and the advent of mobility in today's society, workers can now do their jobs teleworking from a remote location-be it in the comfort of their home office, the backseat of a taxi or even lounging in the sun while listening to lapping waves in a tropical paradise.
But what does the opportunity for teleworking mean for insurance companies? According to industry experts, many workers now have shifted their expectations from being cube-bound to being free to work wherever, whenever, based in large part to the progressive mentality of the incoming millennial generation (workers born approximately from 1981 to 2001). Karen Pauli, research director of the insurance practice at Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup Inc., believes that not only do younger workers demand enhanced work/life balance, they're also more environmentally conscious than older coworkers. And with gas prices continuing to rise and employees looking to save money at the pump along with their hours stuck in traffic, these expectations are transcending generations and the demand for working remotely is higher than ever.
Karen Pauli
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Regardless of this demand, many carriers still are slow to adopt telecommuting, Pauli says, saying it's lagging on their priority list behind legacy system replacement, which is monopolizing their already scarce IT dollars. Some insurers may allow certain roles, such as claims or marketing personnel, to work out of the office because it's traditionally accepted, and some bless specific individual's requests for teleworking, but many companies still have no formal teleworking policy in place and, some insiders feel, insurers need to gear up for potentially losing employees to competitors who allow them the lifestyle they desire.
THE CURTAIN RISES
One company that might as well have tumbleweed blowing down its empty corridors is Midwestern Family Mutual Insurance Co. Its Plymouth, Minn. headquarters is a greatly scaled-down ghost town since the company virtualized everything and sent its employees home.
Ron Boyd, president and CEO of the multi-line P&C insurer, says the company decided back in 2002 that it needed to change due to financial concerns related to statutory accounting. Midwestern Family, which finally sold its 24,000-square-foot office last year, was initially looking to become more paperless and put in electronic workflow methodologies but, as it discussed it more, the employees conjured up a wild idea and asked, "Why can't we just decentralize this and work from home?"
"It was the stupidest idea in the world when we first though of it, but the more we talked about it and studied how the technology would work, and because we had IT guys who were willing to test it and experiment with it, the more we thought it could work," Boyd says of the beginning of the company's radical transformation.
Since then, he's virtualized his entire operation. There's still a physical office, a 5,000-square foot space affectionately termed "the motel" because it's full of cubes that can be checked out on hourly, daily or weekly basis. The facility is kept as a hub for mailings and to store computers, and in case the employee lost Internet access and they needed a place to work. The office is capable of housing all 77 employees, but only two of those people-those responsible for opening and scanning the mail and routing it into the electronic workflow system-are ever present. A couple of employees might wander in for various reasons each day, or management might want to call a physical meeting there (Boyd says this is rare), but everyone is capable of doing their job wherever they choose.
All Midwestern Family employees have company-issued computers, and the key to them working is simply having access to the Internet.
Most of the company's teleworkers work in fixed locations, such as the underwriters, so they receive desktops, but marketing and claims employees use Blackberrys and laptops so they easily can be on the move.
Boyd reports that workers enjoy telecommuting from home, and has yet to lose anyone as a result. "I'm still searching for a downside to having everyone out of the office," he says. "We're starting to develop a 24/7 work ethic. When you can work in your backyard and you're not in a hurry to commute, the company is the beneficiary. There's no beehive mentality where you've got to get in and get out. Now, I see emails sent between 1:00 and 5:00 a.m., so I know there's work taking place at times where there was none before."
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