In today's highly automated environment, it's imperative for agencies to have a policy or procedure in place to handle the departure of an employee. The key to making sure you have all of your bases covered is to create a checklist you can follow when the need arises. In this document, Steve Anderson and Kitty Ambers provide a generic checklist you can use to create your own agency specific version.
Recent conversations with two agencies have highlighted the need for agencies to prepare for and handle the departure of an employee properly. The first agency called seeking help because they had determined that their system administrator needed to be terminated. They were concerned about that individual doing serious damage to their system resources if the termination didn't go well. As a system administrator, the person had access to every system in the agency. The agency realized it had no way to ensure that it could lock out this person.
The second agency had a key employee leaving to go to another agency in town and needed to make sure that person's access to information was terminated.
In this particular situation, the departure was friendly rather than a proactive or confrontational immediate departure. This gave the agency some time to work through issues that would be much more difficult to confront during a crisis.
In both situations, the agencies did not have a policy or procedure in place to handle the departure of an employee properly in today's highly automated environment. The goal is to make sure you protect inappropriate access to all agency or client proprietary data, whether it resides in the agency computer system or offsite with a carrier or other third-party provider.
It's always difficult to terminate an employee. This task is made even harder in this age of employment litigation and privacy concerns. Even in the case where an employee leaves voluntarily, you need to be vigilant to make sure the employee no longer has access to confidential client or agency information. The biggest concern you should have when an employee leaves is protecting the privacy of client and agency information.
The ability to access agency information using a Web site has made getting the information we need easier. It has also increased headaches in regards to administering that access. Some insurance companies require each staff member to have their own unique user ID and password. Although administering these passwords is a pain, the advantage when an employee leaves is that you only have to change one password.
Other carriers have a single login and password for all staff in the agency, often based on the agency code. In order to restrict access for a departed employee, that login information has to be changed and all employees must be notified of the change. Multiply this process by the number of staff in a typical agency, the number of insurance companies represented, the number of brokerage agreements the agency has in place, and the E&S contracts — and the scope of the problem becomes apparent. Now add other third-party vendors and the problem becomes even worse.
DEPARTURE CHECKLIST
The key to making sure you have all of your bases covered is to create a checklist you can follow when the need arises. The following generic checklist will provide you with an outline you can use to create your own agency specific version.
• Notify all staff immediately when an employee leaves, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. This will help reduce rumors, hurt feelings, and concerns. Keep the announcement positive. Have a plan (or at least be able to tell staff you're working on one) that details how you'll handle the transition.
• When possible, the employee who is leaving should be removed from the office setting as soon as possible. Offering to have the person stay is nice, but might not always be helpful. If you decide to let the employee stay for the customary two weeks, they should be assigned specific tasks that need to be completed. Collect keys immediately and assign someone to work with the departing employee for the duration of their stay.
• Access to sensitive agency information such as accounting, report information, bank accounts, sensitive client info, etc. should be restricted as soon as possible once the decision has been made. Keep in mind any VPN or remote access afforded the employee and limit this access immediately.
• A specific plan should be developed to transition the workload to others in the agency. The rest of the staff is going to be concerned about the extra workload. The sooner you can let them know about the plan, the better.
HOW TO MINIMIZE DISRUPTION
• The employee should review each item on their desk or work queue and write a synopsis of what needs to be done to complete each item. You can then review the items and assign them to others in the office.
• Review all outstanding items and prioritize them with date-specific targets. What needs to be done by when? You will then be able to see what portion of the workload can be reassigned.
• The employee should make a list of all insurance carriers, brokers, E&S markets, online markets (e.g. InsuranceNoodle) that they've dealt with, and their logins and passwords for Web site access. The list should include a brief synopsis of what, in their opinion, the key carriers do best (i.e. carrier appetite profile for marketing purposes, together with detailed contact information). Who at the carrier do they deal with and for what? You want to try and capture as much of this information as possible so you can pass it on to other staff members and keep existing relationships intact. If the departure isn't friendly, a management system generated production report that lists all business placement activity can also give you good insight into this type of information.
• In the case of system administrators, you'll need to know what ongoing system administrator duties the person has been doing. As for a list that details what they do (e.g. regular reports they run, daily processes they manage, how backups are handled, etc.), hopefully, this information is already documented somewhere. You might want to have an arrangement with a third-party consulting group who knows your particular management system so you can call on them if and when the need to change access arises.
The more you think through this process before you have a problem, the better you'll be able to handle an employee leaving your agency. Having an effective plan in place will go a long way toward helping you protect your agency and keeping your private information private.