Survival Of The Smartest
Whether you are with an insurance company or agency, or in a risk management department, the mantra is the same: "This is a knowledge business, and human capital is our most valuable asset."
However, without a firm commitment to continuing education and training, those who chant this mantra are merely talking the talk, not walking the walk.
It's easy to cut training and education budgets in a tough economic climate. But those who make such cuts believing there will be no negative effect down the road are like a farmer who stops seeding his fields to limit expenses, and then wonders why he has no crop to sell come harvest time.
Perhaps there are no sacred cows at a time like this, when every penny spent must be justified. But as a number of articles in this edition of National Underwriter point out, there are creative solutions to train those who can't afford to be out of the office or spend a lot of money on travel.
Training can be done on-site, particularly with the help of the Internet. And with laptops and CD-ROMs and the Web, agents, underwriters and risk managers are certainly capable of learning on the run, as this week's cover suggests.
People in insurance and risk management thrive when they continue to learn, not only from their own experience, but also from that of colleagues and experts. Failure to make time and money available to keep your staff up to speed will cost you a lot more time and money in the long run.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, October 21, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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