Hybrid versus Remote: WDC Insurance Community
I have been consulting with two of my best clients during the past week on the topic of remote work environment versus hybrid work environment in the WDC regional insurance brokerage community.
As such, I reviewed our searches and placements along with our internal notes obtained during our candidate and client interactions within the past two years.
I am happy to pass along these findings to my loyal readers in form of questions I have been receiving:
Are firms gravitating back to a full-time work environment? Absolutely not, but there is a movement from remote to hybrid with the split being approximately 67%/33% in favor of hybrid. Amongst the hybrid work environment clients, 72% have two days in office and three days at home.
Do you see more change coming in the accepted form of work environment? I would say no. Now that we are three years removed from COVID, most of the insurance brokerage agencies I work with have now settled on the work environment model that works best for them.
I believe the 67/33 split between hybrid and remote will hold for the long term. For sure, workers are not going back to the office five days per week. If firms force this issue, they will have a mass exodus of top talent on their hands. I’ve seen it happen.
What are the critical success factors of a remote work environment? State of the art remote technology related to security and employee collaboration is critical. One small independent insurance client tried to do this on the cheap last year and it was a disaster. They lost a significant number of clients due to continual IT issues, operational inefficiencies, and low account manager morale. They recovered only when hiring a national consulting firm to come in and fix their systems and work flow processes at great cost.
The other critical success factor is to set expectations with remote workers that they will most likely not experience the same promotions and high-visibility projects as those workers coming in to the office several times per week. Most understand there is a tradeoff to working remotely.
Who are the winners and losers? Winners have included experienced workers/executives with a demonstrated track record of success who can be trusted to perform their duties remotely.
Winners also include those who reside in rural areas who have traditionally been underpaid (local wage scale) and too far to commute to a city-based office. They are now being paid urban wages to work remotely for the larger firms in the cities.
Winners also include those who have unique family obligations which require them to be home to get the kids off to school or be present with the family at 5pm.
Losers include those working remotely who find they are falling behind in promotions and/or not getting the opportunity to work on new and challenging projects. Those present in an office, at least part of the time, are getting the benefit of this.
Add those who continue to have their souls crushed on a daily basis commuting 90 minutes plus in heavy WDC Beltway traffic.
How has this affected the talent acquisition and retention of account managers and producers? Significantly. Based on placements made in the past 24 months in the WDC region, we were able to complete 78% of our remote searches with 60 days versus 19% of hybrid searches within the same time period.
A lot depends on where the client office is located – the closer to WDC metro, the more of a challenge even a hybrid work environment becomes. Commutes can easily be 90 minutes each way door to door in to downtown WDC these days.
Producers have not really been affected as they have always worked mostly remotely due to their prospecting requirements.
Every firm is in a unique situation with regards to their location, worker profiles, and talent requirements.
I can honestly say that most of my clients have been able to successfully navigate through the complicated maze of exactly how to structure their work environment in alignment with the needs of the top-talented Post-COVID worker.
One thing for sure is that firms with the more flexible work environments are the ones that are most effectively acquiring and retaining their top talent necessary to compete in the insurance marketplace.
