Author: VU Faculty
"Our agency has set up monthly staff meetings. But, it seems to be getting harder to find topics to discuss at staff meetings that will benefit all employees. I would like to know what most insurance agencies do regarding staff meetings. In your opinion, how often should staff meetings be held? Also, what are some good topics for staff meetings that would benefit all employees and what sources are available for this information?"
The above question was recently posed to our agency management experts. In general, virtually all agencies should have periodic staff meetings. Unfortunately, too often these meetings are unproductive. According to one source, 88% of all meetings are unnecessary and 80% of the time is wasted during necessary meetings. In order to get the most mileage out of your regular staff meetings, it is critical to have an agenda and to run the meeting effectively. Below are some responses from our faculty, along with some links to web sites with good information about running meetings.
Here's a sample agenda I've recommended to agencies for a number of years:
SAMPLE STAFF MEETING AGENDA
New Business Written - including agency success stories.
New Business Lost - including reasons and solutions.
Renewals Retained - evaluate account development effectiveness.
Renewals Lost - including reasons and solutions.
Progress on Agency Business Plan - goals and benchmarks.
Latest Company Developments - this is where you get updates on the latest company marketing rep golf handicaps. :-)
Current Competition - what's going on with primary competitors and their programs.
Internal Procedures - discussion of agency procedures (manual) changes.
Monthly staff suggestions - could include (as per Steve Waterhouse):
• What new product or service should we be offering?
• What do you think our clients want us to do for them?
• What might our competition do next that we have not anticipated?
• What do we need to learn to be more effective?
• What tools do you need to do your job better?
• What information do you need to do your job better?
• What do you want to learn?
• How could we improve our agency?
• How could we cut costs?
• How could we serve our clients better?
• How could we be more efficient?
• How could we build better relationships with our clients?
• Who is doing something better than we are?
• Who should we partner with?
• Who are the experts in our agency that others should learn from.
• Who/what stands between you and increased sales?
• Who is stealing our business, and why?
• Where/what should we be advertising/marketing?
• Where should we be selling that we are not selling now?
• Where should we focus our energy for greatest results?
New Company Products
E&O/QC Discussion
Miscellaneous
- Bill Wilson
Director, IIABA's Virtual University
The answer to your question depends on how your agency is set up and how you implement your annual plans. The agencies that we assist have weekly department staff meetings and monthly agency meetings. The agenda for the weekly meeting includes: (1) new business written, (2) lost business, (3) unusual client issues, (4) new company issues (each employee is assigned one company to become it's "specialist" within the agency), and (5) new claims (the number of opened and closed claims and any reaching 'large loss' status). The monthly meetings cover the agency's objectives to inform all employees in all departments how the agency is performing in accordance with its commitments (retention, new business, marketing efforts, cross selling, etc).
- Al Diamond
President, Agency Consulting Group
Over the last 15 plus years we have consulted with 100's of agencies. There is not one who at some point was also searching for the answer to your question. A great deal depends on the size and set up of your agency. There are a couple ways to address the question of meetings.
First, don't have meetings for the sake of having meetings.
Second, there are three different types of meetings, each designed to address different aspects of the agency: (a) department meetings, (b) inter-department meetings, and (c) agency-wide meetings.
In most agencies under 50 employees, sharing information is not as difficult as in larger organizations. We suggest bi-weekly department meetings (unless there is something so urgent it can't wait and a special meeting is arranged). These meetings should last no longer than 45 minutes. Each meeting should have an agenda and the agenda should be followed (this is the hardest part of conducting a meeting). Topics should include: updates on workflow and procedures issues, company information, staffing changes, work in progress, and it really helps to have some type of educational issue (we like to see this assigned to a staff member to research and present, 10 to 15 minutes at most).
As far as interdepartmental meetings, we like to see these occur several times per year. Let's start with commercial. If the commercial department meets with Personal Lines, Marketing, Life/Employee Benefits, and sales twice each per year, that is a total of 8 meetings. These should not be separate meetings, but done by invitation to the commercial department by the hosting department at their regular bi-weekly meeting. This provides the commercial department some insight into what other departments are doing, how they handle their meetings, etc. If each department does the same thing, you have 8 additional meetings a year for each department. Agencies practicing these interdepartmental meetings report excellent results and improved communication within the agency.
The agency-wide meeting we have found after much research works best on a quarterly schedule. The meetings usually are scheduled for the first week following the end of the quarter. The meeting is conducted by the President of the agency. The most effective meetings we have participated in are held at the lunch hour. Lunch is provided by the agency (whether it is pizza, or some other takeout) and, when everyone has been served their lunch, the President talks about agency results, growth, profit goals (these are usually well received especially if the agency has bonus incentive plans for employees), upcoming events that the agency will be participating in (bowling tournament for charity, etc.); other topics include any special recognition or rewards the agency may have earned from carriers or community service. The agenda for this meeting usually is no more than 30 minutes with time allotted following the presentation for Q & A.
The most important aspect of the meeting planning is the agenda, sticking to the time frame and providing meaningful info instead of fluff. Planning effective meetings take skill and forethought. The Master Agency Manager provides subscribers with whole sections of material that can be used for effective meetings along with a section on meeting planning. For more information on the Master Agency Manager you can call 1-800-222-8716.
- Judi Newman
President, Phaze II Consulting
I recommend additionally: consider passing the responsibility for organizing and facilitating the staff meeting among all staff members. This provides an opportunity for individual learning, including meeting/agenda planning/leading skills AND focusing on what people want/need business-wise. It can also provide:
• opportunity for the boss to participate rather than lead.
• opportunity for each staff member to learn business priorities
(in designing the agenda, will need to talk with senior staff).
• less cynicism, at least for one person for one meeting (ok, here's your
chance to show how a meeting should be planned & run).
• variety, and possibly business fun.
• new ideas.
• more of an "ownership culture."
I would also suggest using a staff meeting to develop a loose and flexible "general agenda" as a guideline, and setup some ground rules. For example, last meeting leader is the advisor/consultant to the next one -- they can share "lessons I learned," etc. -- and big boss always has a "first five minute option" to deal with urgent (or not so urgent) business stuff.
- Ira Blatt
Consulting Principal of CSC's Financial Services Group
First, with regard to technical issues, I'd recommend having all CSR's, producers, owners, and other technical staff (e.g., claims) subscribe to our FREE bi-weekly email newsletter, The VUpoint. This newsletter provides some excellent topics to discuss from an education and training perspective. For more information, CLICK HERE.
Second, in addition to having an agenda that's appropriate to your agency, it is critical to implement effective meeting techniques so that each meeting is as productive as possible. Below are some tips on running successful meetings, along with some links to web sites with more information on this subject.
Meeting Caveats...if you think a meeting will be a waste of time, don't go (if that's possible), but if you must go, make sure that it won't be a waste of time for you. Remember that an unproductive one-hour meeting of eight people wastes the equivalent of an entire day.
Valid Reasons for Meetings...meetings should only be scheduled when:
Group decision-making/problem-solving is essential and results expected, or
Information must be shared and feedback is desirable, or
Responsibilities must be clarified when coordination is needed, or
Staff suggestions and grievances need to be discussed.
Prerequisites & Criteria for Effective Meetings...
Evaluate the need for a meeting and consider alternatives.
Explain the reason for the meeting to participants and the results expected.
Plan the meeting and provide an agenda to participants in advance.
Provide supplementary information and require participants to be prepared.
Limit the number of attendees to essential participants.
Give specific starting and ending times and stick to them.
Stick to the issues and focus on results.
Don't address individual issues and eliminate discussions between 2 people.
Prohibit phone calls and interruptions.
Keep minutes and disseminate to the attendees promptly.
Minutes...consider having everyone take minutes to make them more attentive to the comments of others, assign to the person most likely to interrupt/talk/dominate, or assign to the last person to arrive at the meeting.