Although none of the 22 fulltime employees—plus three interns—that make up the IT department at Celina Insurance Group are remote workers, Rob Shoenfelt, senior vice president and CIO at Celina, believes strongly that such an option is important for companies that operate in small communities such as Celina, Ohio (population, 10,400).

As a small property & casualty carrier, Celina has to do everything it can to find talent.

“There are advantages to moving to Columbus or Cincinnati or Cleveland (all within a few hours' drive of Celina), but there are advantages of living in Mercer County, Ohio,” says Shoenfelt. “We've been able to attract pretty bright people that otherwise would have had to go somewhere else. We are the biggest white-collar employer in town.”

It is always the company's preference that employees move to Celina, but the ability to hire good people who prefer a metropolitan lifestyle is alleviated by remote working.

“It has opened us up to hire more people,” says Shoenfelt. “Our sales manager doesn't have to be here. He lives in Columbus. We wouldn't have been able to hire him if he had to move to Celina. We are looking for someone high level for our compliance department. Finding someone with those skills that wants to move to Celina is not easy. Some of that work can be done remotely.”

Today's employees often judge whether they want to work for a company based in part on the company's policy toward remote working, according to Frank Petersmark, CIO advocate in the consulting area of X by 2.

“They always ask…how are we set up for remote working? Can I work from home or do I need to sit in the office?” says Petersmark. “When I was looking for a new job, the standard question used to be about healthcare benefits. Now it is what kind of remote connectivity do we have? If nothing else, insurance companies have to be in the game as they try to recruit younger workers.”

He adds, “The insurance industry isn't exactly the sexiest industry in the world. You need to recruit extra hard because even developing software architecture doesn't sound sexy for some young people. The insurance industry certainly faces some challenges.”

Celina places its trust in employees to get their tasks completed, whether in the office or in a remote location. It remains the discretion of the manager, though, if employees can work out of their home.

“We feel they have enough work to do—you are either going to get it done or not,” says Shoenfelt. “Some people need the structure and we are able to figure that out. Others work just fine. It goes both ways. It has worked well for us. We've been able to be more flexible in our hiring. Even the local people occasionally have the opportunity to work at home. That works very well for us.”

Some millennial workers see remote working almost as a right, according to Laura Kerekes, Chief Knowledge Officer, Think HR.

“They want to be able to work when and where they want to work in order to get the job done,” she says.

Technology company Yahoo is in the process of ending remote working and bringing all its employees back to its office buildings. This action reminded Petersmark of the old adage: penny wise and pound foolish.

“I understand that a lot of ideas and innovation happen spontaneously, but I also agree with the notion that you can't force that either,” he says. “Our industry is a good example of that. How innovative is insurance compared to other industries? For the most part, insurance people have been gathering in the same domiciles for the last 500 years. You work with 1,100 of your closest friends and then you go home.

“My big thing is that [innovation] happens if the environment is right—a stimulating environment where people have time to frankly let their minds wander, to daydream, and talk about ideas. People are sometimes afraid to bring up ideas because they think they will get laughed at or put down.”

Management Issues

Celina implemented Instant Chat more than a decade ago and it remains one of the important communication devices available to the company.

“We were one of the first adopters,” says Shoenfelt. “[The tool] allows management to see if the employees are online or not and allows us to communicate with them, whether they are here or somewhere else.”

That's been a huge benefit in terms of employees working from home, explains Shoenfelt, as it has become the insurer's primary internal communication tool as opposed to the telephone or email.

“You can see if they are there or in a meeting,” he says. “You can just ping them. It has allowed us to work from anywhere. I normally sit with my group, but I also have an executive office so people don't always know where I am, but it allows me to work from anywhere. Each member of my staff has a laptop and they work from home occasionally. If some of my managers are putting out employee evaluations they can do that at home with no interruptions. If they have a kid sick or a repairman coming they can still get their work done”

Shoenfelt maintains remote working lends itself well to the IT department because it is a project-based department.

“[Remote working] is not nearly as feasible for the production staff,” he says. “Some of the underwriters do it. We have 12 claims people work here in the office, but another 20 away from our office.”

Having laptops for employees is necessary to allow everyone to remain connected to the network server.

“We are probably up to 70 percent of employees with laptops,” says Shoenfelt. “We stopped buying desktops. It allows employees to do their email from home at night—even production people. We have found it extends the workday.”

Celina only supplies an Internet connection to employees whose principle job involves working out of their home. For the teleworkers and others, the carrier just began providing wireless access points that are VPN enabled.

“It's our own router so they go right on the network,” says Shoenfelt. “They don't have to log on to the VPN separately. It has improved security and control and allows us to manage it. It's just another device on our network. We have three or people working in Iowa and we can support them easier by giving them the tools they need to have.”

Petersmark hasn't seen many insurers develop a strategy around the benefits of a mobile or semi-mobile workforce and how they leverage that, but he believes carriers should develop a strategy around how to support mobility and whether those working remotely are productive.

“Forward thinking companies look at how to help their employees be productive—virtualization, Wi-Fi access to mobile apps,” he says. “Some companies are doing it strategically, particularly with claims adjusters. There have always been mobile workers, but the difference is they used to have a notebook pad and laptops, now for a few companies they have mobile apps and smartphones that allow them to work in real time. There certainly are strategic ways to leverage mobility and what it can bring.”

Collaboration

Celina has learned to deal with employees not being face to face. The carrier conducts a lot of business over the phone with its agents. Agents can instant message the Celina underwriters.

“Sometime you just have to be there, though,” says Shoenfelt. “At least a few times a year we bring them in for group meetings; sales meets three or four times a year. That's the minimum they are in here.”

When describing the actions of CEO Marissa Mayer to end remote working for Yahoo, Kerekes uses words like “bold” and “courageous” to go against the grain of current thinking about remote workers. But Kerekes is not sure it was the wisest move, even in the tech friendly Silicon Valley.

“Was it the right thing to do? She's probably been given a charter to go in and change things,” says Kerekes. “Some feel Yahoo has been complacent and not keeping up with other companies to stay fresh and on top of things—so she had to do some bold things. This was clearly bold. Is it going to work? I don't know. Could it backfire? Possibly. How was it handled from an HR perspective?

“I would have done it differently if I were head of HR. Don't send a memo that anyone could pick up and the media could get hold of. Have town hall meetings. Have community discussions to explain why you are doing it.”

The decision with Yahoo and with other companies—including insurance carriers—is to get sparks of creativity back, to be more innovative, and collaborative.

“That's possible when you have impromptu meetings in the lunchroom or in cubicles,” says Kerekes. “That is why many Silicon Valley companies offer great benefits and services for their employees to keep them at the office so they can hang out and chat over the proverbial water cooler and bounce ideas off each other. That can't happen with teleworkers even though the current thinking is teleworkers in some industries are more productive because they don't have the impromptu distractions in the office. For some companies, teleworkers are a good thing, but if you are trying to change the culture—make it more collaborative or innovative—you need the people in the office to play off each other.”

Collaboration tools have been around for a while with Google Apps being popular today or dating back to when SharePoint was considered “cool,” according to Petersmark.

“It's almost like a matter of perception or perspective,” says Petersmark. “I remember using SharePoint early on and it seemed cool, but if you grew up at a certain time you are more hard-wired on the way you collaborate with people mostly face-to-face or by extension on the phone. If you are millennial or a Gen X, they are quite comfortable—and maybe even more comfortable—working non face-to-face. Another challenge coming for IT involves smaller private clouds. People literally creating their own clouds with people they work with and collaborate that way. Then the question is where does the data end up and how do we reconcile that sort of thing.”

Getting Work Done

Kerekes explains the current thinking—at least before the Yahoo surprise—was for more mobile working and telecommuting, particularly with the tools that are available to free people from a desk and a time of day that has to be worked.

“So much can be done via electronics,” she says. “If there were concerns of liability or from a work comp perspective, it was still less expensive than an office, You also hear about allowing people to work a day or two from home to help balance work and family life. If I was a betting person, I would say this change in thinking might be temporary. Some of (Yahoo's) top talent might leave and it is going to change the culture and create a different company.”

Most companies are moving away from supplying their remote workers with Internet access as they have become wiser to the fact that for the most part Internet service providers and Wi-Fi is pretty ubiquitous.

“We started [supplying remote workers] at Amerisure with a discrete Internet connection via VPN or some type of protocol,” he says. “There's still a fair amount of that around, but more companies are looking to virtualize their own infrastructure and let people connect to the server. There are many ways to authenticate. From wherever they are they can connect with the home office and do their thing.”

Petersmark remembers the days when remote workers would bring in their monthly telephone bills to the office and highlight some for reimbursement.

“Companies have figured out there are easier and less expensive ways to do that,” he says.

Celina has found both ends of the spectrum when it comes to the productivity of remote workers.

“We have found some people who won't let work go,” says Shoenfelt. “They go right to their computer when they get up and don't stop when they are supposed to. We also have some employees where we wonder if they are really being effective. There's a balance, but you get that in the office, too.”

Remote working also tends to extend the workday, points out Shoenfelt.

“It used to be like a factory here—8 to 4:30,” he says. “You would walk out of here with nothing under your arms. You would come back the next day and pick it back up. We've changed that paradigm. Now it is work anywhere. We push things to their smartphones so people can pick up their email anywhere.”

The negative side of that is the lines have blurred between employee time and company time, adds Shoenfelt.

“For IT employees, that's more of the norm; they are used to that,” he says. “For other employees it's been a bit of an eye-opener. The agents can get to underwriters anytime. There's no wall anymore. “

Of course, that means no one has to show up at the office on Saturday morning to wait for calls.

“We can support the employees even if we are not officially there,” he says. “We are available by phone, email or chat. We've been able to do that without requiring people to be in the office on Saturday morning.

Measuring the productivity of remote workers depends upon the business itself and the kind of culture within the company, according to Kerekes.

“Some businesses that are numbers oriented or where the work is repetitive—such as a call center operation where it is easy to quantify and pull the stats—there is concern about keeping employees on task,” she says. “The numbers are softer for knowledge workers.”

When Petersmark served as CIO at Amerisure, the discussion over remote workers settled on who can and who can't. Fortunately, much of that discussion has been resolved to the satisfaction of many of the managers that were nervous about “letting the genie out of the bottle,” he explains.

“That has loosened quite a bit as companies have discovered the data supports the idea that on the whole, employers tend to get more work out of people that work remotely than if they were sitting in the office all day,” says Petersmark. “That's not to say there shouldn't be some guidelines, but we had people that worked remotely and they might not be working all though the day, but they might still be going at it at 1 or 2 in the morning.”

Petersmark believes today's discussion of remote workers should center on what tools are remote workers using and how the IT department can support that.

A Harbinger

Is the public move by Yahoo a harbinger? Kerekes believes the actions at Yahoo won't change the way other companies do business.

“Other employers may step back and see what the fallout looks like, if it makes a difference, and whether they are trying to reinvent their products,” says Kerekes. “They may consider it, but will it be a wholesale move back to the office? I'd be surprised if that was the case. In today's war for talent the competition is so great that anything an employer can do to get a leg up on the competition, whether it is remote or teleworking, it's one more arrow in the quiver of benefits or services that you can make available to employees. So why not use it if it makes sense.”

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