Before COVID-19, telecommuting was already a popular option for corporations throughout the country. This allowed employees to work remotely, usually from home. However, once the pandemic hit, telecommuting became more of a necessity. When managed correctly, a remote workforce can be an excellent solution for all types of businesses, insurance agency’s included!

For one thing, telecommuting brings down overhead expenses by reducing the cost of utility bills and expensive leases. So, from a business perspective, it offers several benefits. For employees, working remotely is also advantageous. This is especially true for those that typically drive long distances to their jobs, as well as for parents of young children. Telecommuting allows them to earn a living and better manage their household responsibilities.

Ways to Keep Remote Workers Productive and Happy

As stated, the key to success is to properly manage your insurance agency’s remote workforce. The following are some helpful tips on how you can do just that.

Establish Ground Rules and Expectations

Before you even implement a program for a remote workforce, you need to establish both ground rules and expectations. Telecommuting requires a lot of dedication and time management skills on the part of the employee. It’s up to you to create guidelines and set boundaries so that everyone is on the same page. With the team up and running, be sure to send out regular reminders. That’ll help avoid any confusion, particularly if something changes in the agency’s policies or structure.

Stay Organized

Regardless of the agency’s size or industry, every remote workforce must stay organized. For you, that entails providing employees with what they need. Not only does that include a desk, computer, phone, and other office items to use within the home but also in how you disseminate information. The goal is to streamline processes and respond quickly when necessary.

Be Flexible

Although telecommuting dates back 20 years or more, it’s somewhat different today due to increasing consumer demand and advanced technology. Along with that, every remote workforce consists of multiple positions, job responsibilities, and personalities. So, you can’t address issues that arise with a one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, you need to have some flexibility to accommodate the various scenarios as they arise.

Structure Meetings

When working in an office and holding in-person meetings, employees don’t typically feel rushed. With everyone in the same room, there’s usually ample time for a Q&A session. However, when managing your insurance agency’s remote workforce, you want to be considerate of the structure of the meetings.

Since people will dial in, there has to be a time limit and a plan that allows the appropriate individuals to address issues in an orderly fashion. You’ll need a moderator who can ensure that every meeting flows according to the agenda. That way, meetings are productive, and the attendees will feel as though management heard what they had to say.

Monitor Employee Progress

As already stated, it takes dedication and excellent time management skills for someone to telecommute. As the person in charge of a remote workforce, it’s important to stay on top of the progress that each person makes. This will go a long way in keeping your employees motivated.

Maintain Excellent Communication

Perhaps the most important factor when managing your agency’s workforce has to do with good communication. Along with regularly scheduled meetings, consider having each employee submit a brief report each week to their managers about their accomplishments and concerns.

Your managers can then have a quick conversation with each worker to hand out kudos, give constructive criticism, and address challenges. With support from your leadership team, not only should you notice an increase in productivity but also employee morale.

As part of the initial plan that you create regarding ground rules and expectations for your remote workforce, make sure that everyone understands that the agency’s managers have an “open door” policy. You want your employees to always feel comfortable communicating.

Be a Good Listener

A key trait seen in the best managers in the world is the ability to listen, which goes beyond normal communication. As a good listener, you can build a strong business relationship and unbreakable trust with your entire remote workforce. For example, if an employee brings up an actionable problem, confirm that you understand and then follow through to achieve resolution.

Get Creative

Sitting at home while working sounds easy, but it’s quite difficult sometimes. To keep your remote workforce motivated, engaged, and dedicated to the agency and specific job responsibilities, come up with some creative ways to show your appreciation. That might consist of a contest or some kind of team-building exercise. Yes, you want your employees to take their work seriously and enjoy being a part of the agency at the same time.

Don’t Micromanage

Especially when overseeing a remote workforce, it’s easy to become a micromanager. However, that’s a surefire way to create big problems. It all starts with hiring the right talent, providing proper training, having great managers, and then trusting everyone to do their job correctly.

This is where a brief weekly report and follow-up phone call can make a huge difference. This weekly review will help you avoid delving into every detail of what the team does. By implementing an excellent plan, you shouldn’t ever need to micromanage your remote workforce.

Celebrate Successes

When an employee reaches a milestone, meets or surpasses expectations, or excels in some other way, make sure you recognize their achievements. Unfortunately, some companies focus too much on missed deadlines, average performances, and other mistakes. While you need to address those things, you also need to celebrate successes.

More than ever, you need a professional website. However, that goes beyond how it looks. More importantly, you want to focus on performance and navigation. With the pandemic, online business is booming. Whether doing research, shopping, reviewing statistics, or planning a trip, people expect a positive experience from the websites they visit.

Regardless of the industry, online competition is fierce. So, if you want your insurance agency to stand out and become an online leader, you need to take the necessary steps to make that happen.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

When it comes to Core Web Vitals, there are two sets. From a consumer and company standpoint, the first set includes:

1. Visibility
2. Traffic
3. Sales
4. Content Consumption
5. Brand Awareness

However, there’s a second set specifically used by Google to determine or rate the kind of experience an online user has when visiting websites. Its Core Web Vitals include:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• CSS and JavaScript that block rendering
• Slow server response time
• Client-side rendering
• Slow loading resources to include video and image files

This measures the time for a web page to load once a user clicks on the link found in search results to the time the page fully opens. Unlike the way other metrics measure page speed, LCP views things more from a user’s viewpoint. That includes both loading speed and page interaction.

First Input Delay (FID)

• Long JavaScript execution time
• Large JavaScript bundles
• Long tasks
• Render-blocking JavaScript

FID measures the amount of time it takes for a user to interact with web pages. For example, it would begin when someone chooses an option from a drop-down menu, clicks on a link as part of the site’s navigation, enters their email address into a field, and then opens the text on a mobile device.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

• Ads that change the site layout
• Dynamically injected content
• Web fonts that cause FOIT/FOUT
• Cookie banners/notices – images with no dimensions
• Embeds and iframes with no dimensions

This has to do with a page’s stability as it loads. An example of a bad CLS is if other elements on a page move around during the page-loading process.

Unbelievable Discovery

Google’s Core Web Vitals are the most important because they’re part of an updated algorithm. According to recent research and analysis, experts found that fewer than 4 percent of all current websites pass this Google test. That means most sites are potentially leaving business on the table.

The company that conducted this research and analysis reviewed more than two million URLs. Then to come up with the 4 percent result, they crunched numbers and did correlation analysis that stretched across the top-rated organic search positions according to Google.

This helped the experts better understand how various websites performed before Goggle updated its Core Web Vitals algorithm. Along with the three factors mentioned, they analyzed 12 other ranking signals to gain more insight into which websites perform the best. Ultimately, the study uncovered multiple areas where online business can improve.

Succeeding Online

When customers visit your website, the experience they have determines two things. First, whether they’ll come back, and second if they’ll recommend your insurance agency to others. At the same time, a customer’s experience (in part) determines how Google ranks your pages.

A positive experience will help boost your agency and your Google page ranking, whereas a negative experience does the opposite. A poor customer experience will decrease the amount of traffic to your site. In turn, you would lose both customers and revenue, not to mention the risk of damaging your agency’s reputation.

Another Google Algorithm Change

Google frequently changes its algorithms to streamline and improve the online experience. Last May, it modified its ranking algorithm, as well as other search metrics used to measure and rank two website factors that appear in search results. The factors are responsiveness and experience.

As someone who operates a insurance agency, it’s crucial to get your web pages up to speed with Google’s new algorithm. This isn’t something you want to overlook or delay considering it’s a game-changer. If you don’t make the necessary changes, you’ll see a significant and quick decline in traffic.

Falling in Line with Google’s Core Web Vitals

The good news is you can modify your site pages to prevent issues with the updated Google algorithm. Start by focusing on the four things that Google considers the most critical for a positive online user experience.

• HTTPS (for higher security)
• Mobile-friendly web pages
• Lack of or inadequate interstitial pop-ups
• Safe browsing (pages void of any malware)

With those factors in mind, you and your website provider can devise a plan to improve them. Since Google’s Core Web Vitals account for the largest chunk of your web page experience, you need to get it right.

However, remember that aligning your pages with Google’s Core Web Vitals doesn’t automatically mean your insurance agency will show up in the number one spot of search results. After all, page experience is among some 200 factors that Google uses when ranking websites. It still plays a pivotal role in your online success, though

Helpful Solutions

Below are some recommendations on how you can improve on Google’s three Core Web Vitals.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• Remove unnecessary third-party scripts
• Set up lazy loading
• Eliminate large page elements
• Upgrade your web hosting service

First Input Delay (FID)

• Remove non-critical third-party scripts
• Minimize or defer JavaScript
• Use a browser cache

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

• Give ad elements a reserved space
• Use set size attribute dimensions for all media, including images, video, infographics, and GIFs
• Add new UI elements underneath the fold

Make Changes Today

Google’s updated Core Web Vitals algorithm has a direct impact on the success of your online business. If you don’t have IT staff qualified to make these updates, find out how we can help.

People born during different periods fall into unique categories. For instance, baby boomers consist of individuals born between 1946 and 1964. So, there are a lot of baby boomers, most now reaching retirement age.

Then, there’s Gen X, which came after baby boomers but before millennials. These individuals have birthdates that fall between the latter part of the 1970s and the early 1980s. After Gen X came millennials, also referred to as Gen Y. The birth years for these people are between 1981 and 1996.

There’s one more demographic that’s important: Gen Z. Often called “Zoomers,” this category includes people born between 1997 and the early part of the 2010s. That means, currently, Gen Z people are between the ages of six and 24. So, what does the Gen Z generation have with insurance agencies? Well, quite a bit.

As you know, time passes quickly. It won’t be long before more of these individuals start to drive, work, and buy homes. That’s when they’ll need quality insurance coverage. As an independent insurance agent, you have to look at success as both short- and long-term goals. That means you still need to provide your current clients with exceptional service and products but also prepare for the up-and-coming Gen Z.

The other thing to remember is that most Gen Z individuals were born to people in the Gen Y category. More than likely, the agency has a lot of Gen Y as clients. Providing an incredible service to those adults could have an effect on how well your agency connects with their children.

The Value of a Cutting-edge Insurance Agency Management System

All of this is why it’s so critical to implement a top-of-the-line insurance agency management system into your operations. Selecting one that’s scalable to your agency’s growth but also capable of retaining accurate data plays a huge role in how you approach the Gen Z demographic down the line.

Here’s an example. Say you have a wonderful client born in 1982. That individual now has a 10-year-old child, making him or her Gen Z. Inputting accurate information into the system about the client, including data on family members, can help tie everything together.

When that child needs to buy insurance, you’ll already have an advantage in the connection to the parent and by knowing their name.

Further Preparing Your Agency

Using the right insurance agency management system is just one piece of the puzzle. Since many people in the Gen Z category will become adults in no time, everyone in your business needs to understand their ideologies, goals, and even communication style.

In reality, Gen Z individuals are part of a unique culture. As someone who sells insurance, your focus is on retaining clients, not losing them. So, unless you get a handle on what Gen Z individuals are all about, that’ll become a huge challenge.

The key to getting Gen Z individuals interested in what your insurance agency can offer is to use methods and technologies they find attractive. Rather than wait a few years to get started, this is something you should do now. This generation is smart and savvy. As such, they pay close attention to the decisions made not only by their parents but by others as well.

As an example, if the agency isn’t up to date from a technical perspective, it’s time to invest in cutting-edge solutions. Along with a superior insurance agency management system, that includes options for sending messages, photos, videos, and documents digitally and easily.

It’s also about marketing products differently. That means coming up with a plan that adult prospects, current clients, and individuals in the Gen Z category will find compelling.

Stay Authentic

Among people in the Gen Z category, one word stands out: authenticity. These people aren’t interested in watching cheesy commercials with animated figures, a funny dressed gecko, or a talking duck. If an insurance agency is going to get their attention, it’s important to find authentic and genuine ways to accomplish that.

For this demographic, authenticity, excitement, and energy is what it’s all about. So, the ideal time to start getting agents trained is now. As stated, people who fall in the Gen Z category pay close attention to just about everything. Although these young people aren’t old enough yet to buy coverage, they’re watching what they see about the insurance industry.

The Takeaway

There’s no time like to present to start making changes that’ll attract the Gen Z demographic in just a few years. That includes implementing a state-of-the-art insurance agency management system and website for both current and future clients.

Also, everyone in the agency needs to get a good handle on how these young individuals think and respond. With that, they can start to formulate a plan to capture and retain their attention. Steer clear of ridiculous advertising and marketing strategies, opting instead for something that’s exciting, new, and authentic.