Employee engagement is about ensuring that everyone in the organization has the right conditions to inspire and motivate them to do their best each day and to ensure their full commitment to the company achieving its goals and their own personal goals.
Engaged employees are emotionally committed to the organization and want to see it achieve its goals, and give their all to contribute to that happening. They care about the company they work for and take pride in the work they do. They aren’t there just to get paid, or as a stepping stone to a better job in another organization.
Since Covid-19 struck, Insurance firms’ relationship between employer and employee has changed. It’s had to. Everything that we took for granted pre-Covid, such as: travel to and from the office or clients, face-to-face meetings, team events, physical signatures, etc…has temporarily and possibly permanently been changed.
Whether you are in underwriting, claims, loss and risk controls, finance, client service or broker sales, your interactions will have changed and you will have unique things to consider. You have some very targeted areas to consider and to think about: 1) Mitigation of operational risks to ensure the safety of your employees, and supply consumers and agents with services and knowledge 2) Regulatory Requirements 3)Changed methods of communication and collaboration with employees, clients, and partners.
Ultimately though, this is a period of time, where we can reimagine employee experience and engagement from a much different lens. As we are living in this virtual world, you can truly reflect on what will drive the best employee experience going forward based on detailed employee knowledge, or personas, and analyzing the employee journey.
Given this period of heightened awareness, can you reimagine the future employee experience in a less physical and more digital world. Technologies such as: Robotics, Wearables and Sensors, Machine Learning, are driving innovation in employee experience areas, sometimes radically, and sometimes progressively. Business Insider predicts that by integrating all of our modern day devices with internet connectivity, the IoT market is on pace to grow to over $2.4 trillion annually by 2027. IoT will lead to a 15 percent productivity increase in delivery and supply chain performance. What better time than now to imagine how these technologies will unleash your employees in the future.
The possibilities are to some degree limitless so you’d be unable to explore them all now, but think about things like: 1) Given so much more work from home, employees are possibly moving less. Increasingly we will see smart clothing that will have sensors embedded in the material that tells you if your posture is right. 2) AI-powered chatbots driven by predictive analytics and natural language processing – can communicate with employees and clearly and adapt employee plans to an individual’s unique needs 3) How do you not only deliver but also attest to its compliance if transactions and interactions are based on deeply integrated systems in which machine learning and artificial intelligence continuously change decision-making? Remember that the individuals who will succeed in the economy of the future will be those who can complement the work done by mechanical or algorithmic technologies, and can ‘work with the machines.’
Driving employee engagement and creating a sense of belonging with each employee requires more than free lunches or interesting work perks, which right now, are not available or very limited. Rather it’s a commitment from the leadership team to focus on the specific and individual needs of every employee. It’s a commitment to reimagine how you deliver on the needs and wants of the individual employee from a lens of safety, flexibility and continuing emphasis on the tools, technology and processes that drive the passion forward to get beyond COVID-19 and build towards the future.
