Did you know that even with the government gently (and not so gently) urging employees to return to the traditional workplace, more than four out of 10 office employees are still working from home?

With 91% of employees preferring to (at least) have the option of working from home, employers in the insurance industry need to start figuring out the right balance of their productivity equation vs burning out their employees due to zoom fatigue. 

If managing remote employees, and remote work in general, have been a painful process for you thus far, we've got you covered. 

Keep on reading for our guide on the best ways you can manage your remote employees, without a drop in your work productivity and efficiency rates. 

Managing Remote Work 101: How to Support Your Insurance Talent From Home

One of the greatest advantages of remote work is the sudden expansion of your insurance talent pool to span the entire globe. However, even with the best talents on your team, if you can't properly manage them, then it's truly a waste of your resources and time. 

On the other hand, managing remote employees doesn't have to be closer to rocket science in complexity than your traditional workflow. Of course, it comes with its own special challenges. Thankfully, we'll be taking a close look at the most important steps you can integrate into your management style to bypass these issues. 

Create Structured Daily Check-Ins

The very first step would be either placing a rigid and structured daily check-in or tweak a pre-existing one to better fit your new virtual setup.

Of course, this daily check-in session can vary immensely depending on your company culture and what information you need to get (or give) to your employees at this frequency. 

It can be a series of one-on-one calls with your insurance agents, or the call can be team-based, especially if they're dealing with a highly collaborative project. Regardless of the form your daily check-in should take, as long as they're consistent, predictable, and held regularly, you'll be good to go.

In addition to establishing a concrete structure in a time of confusion, you're also opening the communication channels between you and your employees, so they know that you'll be available to answer their questions or concerns at a specific time. 

Provide Different Communication Platforms

Even before the globe was reckoning with the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, your regular workplace communications weren't only conducted via email. 

Many businesses were already using instant messaging platforms like Jabber, or Microsoft Teams. However, with the majority (if not all) of your workforce now working remotely, you'll want to ensure that your communication channels are "richer," with the ability to have face-to-face interactions. 

Video conferencing will add visual cues to your conversations, as well as provide more visual details when describing projects or if a team member wants to share their screens for extra clarity. 

Train Your Employees for Maximum Efficiency

How can you expect your employees to readjust to a new pace of work without specialised training?

Even if your team is made of seasoned insurance veterans, you'll want to ensure that their training is tailored to the current market conditions. After making sure that the training foundation is solid, you'll want to establish your "rules of engagement."

You can have a simple system, where you inform your team of your communication expectations. For instance, you can have your daily videoconference call, but you'll use a form of IM for urgent announcements, or updates.

Moreover, you can let your team know that during specific work hours, you'll be available for ad hoc conversations. However, they can reach you via text if there's an emergency. This form of rule-setting will ease any communication anxiety your team members might be dealing with, especially with everything going virtual. 

Offer Emotional Support and Encouragement

This factor can be heavily-tied to the previous communication point, but it delves a bit deeper in what sort of conversations you should be having with your employees. 

For example, if you're starting to notice that newly hired employees are struggling to communicate remotely, you can have a check-in with them regarding their remote work situation. Are there any challenges that they're facing? How is the situation working out for them so far?

These are simple questions that can help your employees feel like they're heard, and their concerns are taken seriously. 

Create Opportunities for Social Interactions

The days of casual water cooler conversations are gone, at least for the near future.

One of the few disadvantages of remote work can be its isolating nature if there aren't sufficient conversational structures that have been put in place. There's a type of casual non-work related conversation that can help grow strong bonds between you and your employees, as well as amongst team members. 

A simple way of integrating such essential conversations would be leaving some time cushion before (or after) your team meetings to catch up with each other. Other great ways of making things more friendly would be having virtual pizza (or cake) parties. You can have pizza delivered to all team members around the time of your videoconference. 

Trust Your Team

Working remotely will always come attached with an essential amount of trust to be placed in your employees. After all, you won't be able to keep an eye on your team at the same scale as you could have previously done when they were in office. 

However, you need to keep in mind that this doesn't mean that they aren't getting the job done. One of the biggest pitfalls of remote management is becoming a remote micromanager. 

Outfit Your Business With the Right Telecommuting Management Training

There's no denying the fact that working from home is here to stay.

As with any shift in work routines, the transition to remote work for your employees can be a tad jarring at first. However, we hope that our key management strategies gave you a concrete starting point on where you should begin. 

However, there's no need to go through the process alone. Our claim consulting training can be of great help to you, and your employees. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns, and make sure to take a look at our other strategy-based articles, all available for your convenience on our blog.