For more than 50 years, Vertafore has built insurance technology to simplify and automate the insurance lifecycle so that customers can focus on what matters most to them – people. More than 20,000 agencies, 1,000 carriers, and 23 state governments rely on Vertafore to streamline their workflows, improve efficiency and drive productivity. Through a fierce devotion to customer success, a continual focus on excellence, and a commitment to delivering modern, innovative InsurTech solutions, Vertafore is delivering results that make a difference for the entire insurance distribution channel.
Interview with Kristin Nease, Head of HR for Vertafore.
“These times are so dynamic, it is sometimes hard to fully appreciate what has happened to our world in just a few short months. I am incredibly proud of our employees for so quickly adapting to a complete work from home model. We’ve been able to continue to deliver on results across departments and locations, and that is because our team members are rising to this new normal! “
How has this pandemic shifted the way your business operates, and how have your people responded to the crisis?
“At Vertafore, we have a dedicated COVID-19 Task Force that meets at least daily, and sometimes much more than that, to discuss changes to the situation and considerations for decisions that may impact our employees and our business. Our workforce from our 12 global offices is 100% working from home right now. This shift happened nearly overnight and I’m so proud of how our employees and our IT teams made this happen! We are taking advantage of our collaboration and videoconferencing technologies, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom. People are engaging with each other virtually, keeping conversations going and keeping our spirits up! Our team has so much resilience. I’m proud of them for their dedicated responses to their work and to ensure our customers can keep their own businesses running.”
Are there any guiding principles that you or your company live by?
“At Vertafore, we have six guiding principles, called The Vertafore Way. They are central to our culture, describe how we show up every day, and are a rally point for our team!
The six guiding principles are:
- Bias to Action
- Win Together
- Show Up Curious
- Say It, Do It
- Customer Success is Our Success
- We Love Insurance.
I appreciate The Vertafore Way because it provides the opportunity for our teams to recognize each other as examples of the attributes and actions that we see boosting our business and culture every day. Our employees have really embraced it, and I love that everyone sees and feels how strong it makes each of us and brings us together. I often hear from our new employees that they clearly understand what the culture looks like and how they can expect their colleagues to work together as a team. Our employees can recognize one another for displaying the Vertafore Way through an online tool, which continues to drive our culture!”
What are some of the best practices you and your staff do to stay connected, in general and in times of crisis?
“Deciding to go 100% remote was a huge decision, but our teams rose to the occasion with resilience. They are very engaged with people from other sites and teams. We’re using our resources to reach out and to self-serve their questions with our intranet and our IT knowledge base.
- We have created a ‘Working Virtually‘ email campaign for all employees and a ‘Managing Remotely’ campaign for our people leaders. So far, we’ve featured videos and training, digital toolkits, new Teams channels for cross-functional collaboration, and taking pulse surveys to gather feedback.
- We have enabled and encouraged the use of Teams for collaboration, quick conversation video meetings and calls, and social connection.
- Having as much fun as possible has been crucial and we have done this by creating entertaining team meetings by using themes, dress-ups, trivia, and fun discussion topics. Keeping it light-hearted is important because many people are experiencing more stress and anxiety—so we want to make work as engaging, helpful, and as fun as possible.
- We are inviting ‘at-home co-workers’ to stop by, including people, pets, and plants. We recently celebrated ‘Take Your Kid to Work Day’ by posting fun at-home activities for our employees to do with their kids. This was one of our favorite days in the office and we wanted to capture that spirit though every day might be “Take Your Kid to Work Day” right now.
- We are also putting extra emphasis on our core values with our usual programs for employee recognition. This keeps everyone focused on who we are and what we want to accomplish. It is a roadmap for ways we ‘show up’ and this hasn’t changed as we continue to deliver on commitments to our customers and each other.
- We are having fun with the rollout and are crowd-sourcing resources while engaging our managers directly to be the champions of this new principle. We held our first 100% remote all-hands meeting with 2000 employees worldwide using our technology (Zoom) – which turned out to be a huge success!
- Leaders are leaning in to keep conversations going – both work collaboration as well as virtual morale! They are getting creative and we’re seeing employees join in the fun and bring their own creativity.
I’m really proud of our teams for leaning in!”
