Session Title: Insurance & Learning Industry User Group

 

Session: 113

 

Location: Durango 1

 

Session Format: Industry Session

 

Engage in an interactive benchmarking dialogue with other colleagues from the Insurance field in this special MyIndustry Learning User Group.  We will compare notes about how "Learning is Changing", including:

 

  • Organizations within our industry typically experience significant support staff and call center representative turnover, which results in a need to regularly train new representatives. How can performance support speed these new-hires' time-to-competency and provide the contextual support that they require to be productive?
  • Personalization of common content based on role, location, etc.: how can we do this without a lot of redundancy and duplicate effort (i.e. multiple versions of Auto Product Knowledge education)?
  • How can we leverage education initially created for internal audiences for customer/consumer audiences?

 

 

Led by:

 

 

Karen Scott, Allstate Insurance Company

 

Karen Scott is a learning professional with over twenty years experience in consulting, design, development, delivery and management of learning solutions. She has worked with Allstate Insurance Company in Northbrook, IL for the past twelve years in various capacities. She currently leads learning strategy for Allstate’s Learning and Organization Effectiveness team.  Prior to Allstate, Karen worked for three major telecommunications companies and in private consulting. She holds bachelor degrees in English and Education and a Masters in Business Administration. She is currently President of the Society of Insurance Trainers and Educators (SITE), a non-profit organization for learning professionals within the insurance industry.

Mark Wagner, Progressive

 

 

Mark Wagner has served the training and development field for 20 years. His current role is Senior Director, Claims University for Progressive Insurance, which develops the careers of over 14,000 people from over 400 branches and four call centers throughout the United States. Mark leads a staff of 120, developing learning for entry-level, technical, expert, management and leadership programs. He defined the Corporate Claims University strategy and measurement and championed company-wide human performance improvement initiatives to improve business outcomes.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your involvement in our session today.

 

Session Content

 

Insurance IT

 

Is Second Life the next advertising and education place because the next generation embraces virtual environements.

 

  • Yes, can be used for both so it is versatile
    Performance support, and tools can be delivered.
  • Use for on-boarding - give people and avatar when they walk through the door.
  • Wow your audience

 

People have computers, phone but don't all have iPods.

 

  • Want mobile learning for the field, not sure how Second Life supports

 

Technophobia from above needs to be overcome, field will probably embrace

  • Scares the organization.

 

Offers a democratic learning experience.  Could provide instant communication from the field in emergency claims situations.

Need to get past bandwidth and choke points - mostly permission from IT.

 

 

How do you get IT to embrace, support, and help learning that utilizes IT tools and keep data to be collected and analyzed.

 

  • Include them early in the decision making process.
     
  • Leverage their expertise for integration

 

  • Prove to them the shared interest.

 

  • Involve them through out the onership process.
     
  • Utilize a good prototype.

 

 

Miscellaneous topics

 

What talent management strategies are you using to grow your leaders?

 

 

  • Three levels of Leadership (Boot Camps)
    Adjuster to Supervisor
    Supervisor to Manager
    Manager to Executive Candidate

 

  • Talent Management Strategies - Sponsor programs

 

  • Growth------------------------------Acquistion-------------------------------------Retention

 

 

  • Talent Clearing House for Internal Talent

 

  • Talent Acceleration Program

 

  • Career Development/Leadership Development Plan

 

  • Emersion Programs

 

 

How do you manage subject matter experts such as SIU Reps who develop their own material w/o Legal review or a common message.

 

  • All centralized, eliminate redundancy

 

  • Centrally store and get field leadership to agree.

 

  • Performance consulting - Field Training own the process change while Corporate Unversity takes it system wide.

 

  • Central Repository for content - version control

 

  • SME's assist in development and build consensus on the product.

 

  • Use measurment to demonstrate impact

 

  • Have a training manager in each state own the content

 

What constitutes and performance issue versus a training issue? What do you do if they want to respond with training?

 

 

  • Skill vs. Will
     
  • Ask - "If I put a gun to your head, can you do it?"

 

  • What sticks is what is relevant.

 

  • Too much info versus what is retainable

 

  • Analyze the problem - identify.

 

  • Importance of needs analysis

 

  • Speak in their jargon to persuade them

 

  • Look at alternative ways to presnet learning - Job Aids - death to powerpoint.

 

  • Look at their competencies - do they have them?

 

  • Do the training anyway but build in feedback.

 

  • Are there other controls you can put in the workplace?

 

  • Leadership needs to recognize the difference between performance versus a knowledge issue.

 

  • Training for your Training Mnagers to have difficult converstions - articulate the business need or the goal before taking action.

 

Is anyone using collaborativetechnology for agents?  What and how?

 

  • Sharing between company point person and agent.

 

  • Privacy issues have hampered who can post.

 

  • Best practices shared amongst agents

 

  • Issue - Independanet agents

 

  • For Agent Only - Allows access to billing, policy and claims information

 

  • Transact Now

 

  • Transformation Station

 

How do new agents on-board and hit the ground running?

 

  • Benchmarking - mirror a successful agent

 

  • Train a piece at a time

 

  • ID Strengths and weaknesses early and use coaching

 

  • Ongoing assessment of strengths and weakness

 

  • Heavy use of performance support

 

  • Individualized curriculum

 

  • Access to information needed after training

 

  • Two year installation program - success palnning with follow up

 

  • Align incentives with the training program

 

  • Mentorship - structured and non-structured

 

  • Modeling

 

  • Demonstrate the success of others

 

 

How do you design asynchronous distnace learning for groups like sales managers, agents etc.. who prefer face to face?

 

  • Using 3d simulations

 

  • Post Face to Face web enabled stuff.

 

  • Train people in Face to face on how to use on-line.

 

  • Use blended learning strategies - reduce f2f time but keep it where most useful.

 

How do you get IT to support your training environment with the same urgency as a production environment?

 

  • Get on the list  very early
     
  • Management buy-in
     
  • Go outside of your environment
     
  • Stress Business impact

 

  • Soft PM skills - they don't work for you attitude.
     
  • Make a contact of a highly skilled person

 

  • Provide positive feedback

 

 

How do you tailor performance support to an individual need level?

 

  • Quality audits
     
  • Teach to the gaps
     
  • On-line support tools
     
  • Create knowledge portals for the different job functions

 

With the high turnover in call centers, what performance support tools do you utlize to help speed up time to competency?

 

  • Cusomized degree programs

 

  • Knowledge management

 

  • Build partenerships with business lines
     
  • Ongoing training - simulations/scenarios

 

  • Performance support
     
  • Pre-hire assessment

 

  • Job aids

 

  • Manage by Walking around

 

  • Coaching

 

  • Staged and chunked pieces of training

 

 

How are you supporting, structuring and enabling workplace learning in the context of actual performance on the job?

 

  • Geographic distribution - web, classroom, virtual
     
  • Job Analysis
     
  • Assessment or performace checklists
     
  • LMS to track eliminate duplicate work and training
     
  • Through auditing and QA
     
  • On-boarding and the intitial training
     
  • On-demand access to current info.
     
  • Context sensitive help? In call centers.
     
  • Mentorship

 

  • Virtual Paperless environments

 

 

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