An appropriate training of the staff has therefore become crucial in order to come to grips with the swift changes of the market and most importantly to new technologies. This approach has to go through optimal management of human resources in the first place.
Importance of training for insurance companies
In order to grow, a company has to tap into its environment and human resources. Staff retention, knowledge and know-how transfer, team preparation to meet the different challenges, these are the tasks incumbent upon management.
Corporate strategy has to go necessarily through the management of staff needs in terms of training. The variety of the products supplied compels insurers to develop a whole set of skills for all the classes of business underwritten and tasks accomplished. The establishment of a training policy requires efforts time and resources wise. The development of human capital for an insurance company is a long-term investment. The lack of staff able to bear responsibilities stands as an obstacle to.
Moreover, the challenges surrounding access to training are likely to slow down progression within companies, especially towards executive positions, hence the risk of lower motivation among staff members.
It is, therefore, essential to determine the profiles required in order to meet all the objectives. The company is required to advocate the emergence of a new generation of wage earners having the ability to assume responsibilities. This approach will depend essentially on the involvement of decision makers at all corporate levels. This strategy shall be aimed at:
- promoting leadership at all corporate levels,
- devising evaluation procedures for each staff member,
- drawing up skill evolution policy,
- retaining the best staff members in the company,
- attracting skills.
Insurance training: learning methods
Just like any other insurance activity, training has profoundly evolved in the course of the last decade. New non-conventional, or even experimental, learning methods have emerged, cohabitating with a classical setting that is scrambling to stay afloat.
Coming in various shapes and utilizing numerous aids such as internet, training supply has nowadays become more diversified and better equipped to meet huge corporate needs. Indeed, companies, have a large package of training methods and aids that enable them to meet the objectives set out. The new methods are evolutive, coping with instant requirements thanks to flexibility, velocity and mobility.
Devising a training strategy must take into account a certain number of in-house as well as external requirements:
- Compliance with legislation and regulation: Many countries are imposing compulsory training and minimum skill conditions for access to some positions and functions.
- Standardized transfer of knowledge: The entire staff, headquarters, subsidiaries, agencies must be endowed with knowledge of equal baseline. It is all about setting the stage for homogenous training, with any concept having a single significance and meaning within the company.
- Establishment of learning strategies: This strategy must include permanent knowledge updating tools, with learners being able to quickly implement new regulations and standards as a consequence.
- Management of huge data volume: Information entering the company must be sorted and delivered to learners with all the explanations needed for its understanding.
- Adjustment of training: This requirement stands for all companies that are outfitted with a network. In this case, training must be consistent with the practices and languages used locally by the agencies, branches and subsidiaries abroad.
Conventional training
Traditional training is well in tune with training designed for small groups over specific topics. It is based on courses given in class, requiring classrooms and a high number of coaches.
E-learning
E-learning or distance learning is a training style that is broadcast via internet. Recourse to this learning mode based on new technologies is steadily and gradually growing, especially within large companies. E-learning stands as an effective way of building internal capacity and skills of insurance companies thanks in particular to its flexibility and to the individual monitoring of learners.
The learners undergo a lesson online by means of their computers or tablets. The courses, designed in modules, target well-defined topics that are readily available and accessible anywhere and at any time. Interaction with one or several trainers is also possible while evaluation is conducted by means of online tests or questionnaires.
E-learning is well suited to the needs of entities endowed with networks and employing mobile labor force.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
Massive Open Online Course is an online training style which hosts a large number of participants, a method based on connectivity.
The methodology rests, in part, on the contribution of content networks and that of participants. Peer contribution is equally key, especially through interaction on distribution portals, forums, video conferences or social networks.
This learning is economical and evolving, particularly adapted to the survey of sales techniques of insurance products, regulation and conformity. Learning evaluation is carried out by the learners themselves. This is referred to as self-evaluation.
Solutions adopted by insurance companies
In an effort to meet their needs, insurance companies have set up blended training programs where classroom-based and e-learning styles go hand in hand.
These solutions are a combination of ongoing sequences and shorter sequences, an approach that focuses substantially on training aids upon which the learning is provided:
- classroom-based courses for small groups. Such courses may be video-recorded and may be sent to the company’s in-house network.
- e-learning for mass training with groups being assigned and dispatched into several sites.
- training based on downloaded applications that staff members may follow at their own pace.
- learning through games.
The cost of insurance training
In the area of training, return on investment is hard to quantify while everybody agrees that this method is a secure source of profit and very efficient.
Based on some of the data available, more than one company out of two is now unable to provide accurate figures regarding the amounts disbursed on training. Very few companies are able to measure the fallout of their training actions.