Happy Employees
We’re seeing more and more around the title industry about staffing and employee engagement. For example, our friends at ALTA hosted a webinar on the topic recently. We wrote a blog about the Great Resignation and its impact on the title industry in 2021 as well. Plus, coming off of a huge refinance market, order volume—although remaining strong—will be coming down from its lofty heights. Our industry has traditionally taken the approach of cutting expenses, including, unfortunately, staff, during times like these.
And yet, that slightly deflated order volume will involve a great deal of purchase orders. Traditionally, the purchase transaction requires more effort and attention (and staffers) than a typical refinance transaction.
Add it all up, and it’s likely that when many title agents need qualified staff the most this year, they’ll be tougher than ever to find.
So expect retention, engagement and recruiting to remain hot topics for title agents through the year.
We’re not necessarily experts about recruiting, or even retention. But we do subscribe to the principle that happy employees, more often than not, don’t have one eye on Indeed.com. They’re not looking to jump ship. We also believe that employees are happiest when they’re engaged and empowered, as well as appreciated. In our experience, an employee is most productive when he or she feels he or she is part of solving problems and building the company.
So it stands to reason that the employee charged with a fairly mindless, routine, repetitive task as a significant part of the job description isn’t always the most engaged employee. Yet, when that employee leaves, we hire someone else to do it.
One of the great fallacies out there is that tech costs people their jobs. That’s not true. Executive decisions—like utilizing people to handle simple, repetitive tasks begging for automation—cost people their jobs. Tech actually empowers people.
Wouldn’t it be easier/better/cheaper to apply a technology to simplistic tasks, and redeploy said employee into a more complex and engaging part of the business? Like closing sales? Or more complex customer service? And if you could redirect your staff from answering phone calls/emails/faxes two hours a day to repeat the same routine answers to the same routine questions, isn’t it likely those employees would become that much more engaged?
If only there were such a technology to manage routine tasks. Perhaps a conversational AI technology. One versatile enough to manage any number of simple tasks so that you could engage your staff in more meaningful ways.
Anyways, we may know of one such technology. Drop us a line or give us a call to learn more!