23 Sep What Are Your 2022 E&O Goals?
In all likelihood, this is a time where your agency is knee-deep in the 2022 budgeting process. Without question, this continues to be a challenge with the impact of the pandemic. Projecting the various components (new business, retention, expenses, staffing, etc.) and the subsequent overall agency growth projections is certainly not a perfect science. There is, however, one area where every agency should have some significant control over what 2022 will look like. This involves establishing some realistic yet challenging goals to strengthen the agency’s overall E&O culture.
As with the setting of most goals, determining “where are we today” is a key starting point. While several agencies do this at the overall corporate level, one of the important issues is to have this E&O goal-setting process performed in each division (CL, PL, EB, Specialty divisions, Claims, IT, HR, etc.). Requiring each division to assess where they are today and where they plan to be by the end of 2022 will result in an overall more robust program. Agencies should monitor the accomplishment of these goals throughout the year.
Some of the agencies I am honored to work with have established an E&O Quality Management Program Committee to complement this further. This committee is made up of representatives from the various divisions. They meet at least quarterly throughout the year and make a report at the agency’s Board of Directors meetings. This type of effort and oversight is extremely impressive and has resulted in substantial growth in their E&O culture.
Since “agencies don’t make mistakes, people do,” achieving a heightened corporate E&O culture realistically involves each person doing their part and improving their focus. Here are some issues to consider:
- Training. A good starting point is to assess the education level of the current staff to determine what areas need improvement. This training could involve technical needs as well as a wide assortment of soft skills and technology issues. Most agency prognosticators agree that a heightened focus on employee training is one of the biggest issues determining an agency’s future success.
- Efficiency. A solid customer service experience has been shown to play a role in deterring problems from becoming E&O claims. Consider dedicating time and resources to evaluating your processes and how it contributes to or detracts from a positive customer experience. Without question, this will provide solid benefits moving forward.
- Strong Focus on Audit Results. This is an area where there are usually opportunities for improvement in when and how these audits are performed and what is done with the results. It is not enough to only do auditing. It is learning from the audit results and determining what action plans are necessary to improve future audit scores. The bottom line, audits should be performed on each division and should be done at least quarterly. The audit results should then be communicated to the immediate supervisor/manager for further analysis to determine what is working and what is not. Individual meetings with the individual staff should be conducted “to thank them for their solid results” or “determine what steps are necessary to improve the results moving forward.”
- New Hires. Look to ensure new staff members get a good taste of your E&O culture. In December 2020, a webinar titled “Do your new hires know what a strong E&O Culture looks like?” was conducted (recorded and stored in Passport in the Links section) to help agencies get their new staff up to speed on key E&O best practices. Your new staff needs to know your firm has high standards and expectations and takes E&O loss prevention very seriously. Many agencies have made this webinar part of the onboarding process for new staff with extremely positive feedback.
2022 is right around the corner (where did the year go?), so look to establish some strong E&O goals.