Launch Code: How to Earn Staff Buy-In on Tech Changes

You’re ready to embrace new ideas and improve your customer experience by embracing technology. The problem: Your team is resistant to adopting modern strategies.

How do you overcome major tech resistance from your staff [see sidebar]? It all starts with a great plan.

1) Assemble a committee. As an agency leader, you’re probably an active part of industry groups who listens regularly to your peers. But many of your team members are far more isolated.

Don’t forget that you may not even be aware of the day-to-day tech issues that could be holding your team back: a faulty printer or scanner, a dysfunctional bridge between your management system and your carriers, inefficiencies in rating software.

Don’t do anything until you’ve performed a technology audit to identify the biggest challenges your agency is facing. Once you clean up your operation, you can bring ideas to the technology committee for review and consideration.

2) Assign a system matter expert. Your agency needs a go-to person for every piece of tech. This person should be in charge of updates, training and teaching people how to best use the systems.

An expert on the floor who is actively using the tech side by side with the team helps you earn much greater buy-in.

3) Create a launch plan. If you think you can hold a meeting, ask your staff to take an online demo and then expect it all to work flawlessly, you’re wrong (sorry).

You need to invest time in a robust launch plan as a team. What training will be involved, and when? What’s the launch date? How many meetings will you have beforehand?

4) Celebrate! Why have a meeting when you could have a party, complete with balloons and music? When your team is having fun, buy-in follows.

5) Establish accountability and incentives. Every piece of new tech requires routine accountability to determine a) Is it being used? And b) Is it being used accurately? And remember: Nothing gets buy-in quite like incentives. Don’t be afraid to reward people for going out of their comfort zone, learning something new and adopting your way of thinking.

Kelly Donahue-Piro, president of Agency Performance Partners and co-founder of Agency Appeal, presented on the above topic during the March Agents Council for Technology meeting in San Diego.