For all the trouble and distress it has caused, the COVID-19 pandemic also had the side-effect of accelerating the digitalization of many businesses. With in-person contact being highly restricted due to the risk of infection, many companies have shifted to a hybrid work model – which allows employees to work either in the office or at their homes.
Even the insurance industry was forced to adapt, but the jump to remote work has hardly been a smooth transition. Speaking at an insurance leadership panel hosted by Insurance Business, Cansure president Cameron Copeland shared how difficult it is to establish and maintain a “culture of support” in a hybrid work arrangement.
Copeland is of the belief that insurance companies and their leaders have to go all-in if they are serious about hybrid work.
“I think if you want to make hybrid work long term, you really have to commit to it. You have to burn the old bridges,” he said. “You can’t have two cultures; if you treat staff differently if they sit in front of you or they don’t, gaps and cracks will appear.”
The president also considers hybrid work much like remote work, because “it’s rare to get everybody in the same place, at the same time on a normal workday anymore.”
“So, to make hybrid work, I think you need to treat staff equitably, regardless of where they sit. And their workplace experience with the company needs to equitable as well.”
Cameron believes that the best time to experiment or adopt a hybrid work system is now, while everyone is forced to work remotely.
“The time not to think about this,” he said, “is when half the people return to the office and half don’t.”
According to Cameron, Cansure utilized collaboration software like Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint for its push into a hybrid model. The company has also notably adopted a “camera-on” culture for all of its communications, and has pivoted all of its training and support materials to be delivered remotely.
And true to Cameron’s mission on going ‘all-in’ with hybrid, the company has also made several key changes to the way it presents itself, the president explained.
“We’ve organized our social committee around employee interest groups and employee segments, rather than geography and location,” said Cameron. “We’ve removed office addresses from our email addresses and all of our communications. We post all jobs as hybrid or remote, or office-based based on the maximum amount of flexibility that we can allow.”
Cansure has also added “equity” to its corporate values, Cameron stated, to enable employees to own equity in everything that the company does.
“We rewrote our team charters and we cascade that to individual goals and development plans,” the executive commented, adding that Cansure has also strengthened its leadership development to instill best practices in remote management.
“It takes time to reach out and call all of these employees and to be available to them as they have their questions, so [thanks to the training], leaders can support fewer people to be effective.”
In the end, the best way to ensure a healthy work culture amid a hybrid system is to “live it,” said Cameron. “You have to run effective hybrid meetings. You have to ensure everybody has a voice and they’re engaged, and that you reach out and involve people.”
