The march of the new generation of recruitment technology continues unabated. 2018 has been a record year of investment in the space, and more and more employers are benefiting from the new tools and approaches. However change management, and user adoption are both critical to the success of any software implementation, and it seems slightly strange to me that there isn’t more discussion and debate on these topics in our industry.
My guest this week is Lauren Addy, Director of national recruiting at Colonial Life. Colonial Life is a highly entrepreneurial organization with a decentralised model, and this was something that made their recent national ATS roll out particularly challenging. In our interview, Lauren shares some of the thinking and strategies they used round change management and user adoption to ensure it was a success.
In the interview we discuss:
• The particular talent acquisition challenges at Colonial Life and in the insurance industry in general
• How talent acquisition innovates to keep pace in such an entrepreneurial business
• Building a referral culture
• The importance of over communicating
• Designing bespoke user training
• Measuring success
• The importance of choosing the right technology partner
Lauren also shares some of the key lessons she learnt from their ATS roll out and tells us what she is looking forward to in the future
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation. Since we’ve been using Avature ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart automation and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that, and that’s been a huge achievement. Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience.
Matt Alder [00:02:31]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 161 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The march of the new generation of recruitment technology continues unabated. 2018 has been a record year for investment in the space, and more and more employers are benefiting from the new tools and approaches. However, change management and user adoption are both critical to the success of any software implementation, and it seems strange to me that there isn’t more discussion and debate on these topics in our industry. My guest this week is Lauren Addy, Director of National Recruiting at Colonial Life. Colonial Life is a highly entrepreneurial organization with a decentralized model, and this was something that made their recent national ATS rollout particularly challenging. In our interview, Lauren shares some of the thinking and strategies they used around change management and user adoption to ensure it was a success. Hi Lauren, and welcome to the podcast.
Lauren Addy [00:02:31]:
Hi Matt, thank you so much. Excited to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:33]:
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Lauren Addy [00:02:39]:
Absolutely. So my name is Lauren Addy. I’m currently the Director of National Recruiting for Colonial Life. My background is actually in public relations and marketing. That’s where all of my educational training lies, and I began my career in nonprofit, moved to hospital public relations, and then eventually landed at Colonial Life in the communications department. So I am fairly new to recruiting as compared to many of your listeners, I’m sure. I’ve been working in sales recruiting with Colonial Life for about five years, and our role with the company is to support our territories across the country. We have 47 that cover the United States States. And we help them with tools, resources and training to bring on new salespeople at both the rep and manager level. Building a career in partnership with Colonial Life in the voluntary benefits space.
Matt Alder [00:03:44]:
Fantastic, Leigh. And just sort of picking up on that last point, for those listeners who’ve not sort of come across Colonial Life before, could you tell us a little bit about the company?
Lauren Addy [00:03:53]:
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve been in business about 78 years. Started in Columbia, South Carolina as a small family owned business offering financial protection to people through the workplace. And that is still what we do today. We have grown and are now actually a part of the UNUM Group. What we do is we work with HR professionals and business owners to offer them employee benefits and financial protection services. So the salespeople that we are recruiting on our team are the people building those relationships and going out and working with businesses to help them offer a much more robust benefits package. But we do more, a lot more, than just offer insurance products. We work with those companies to enroll them in their major medical. Even though we don’t make a dime off of that, we really see ourselves as consultants to those business owners in helping them retain employees and offer very competitive benefits packages through our products and services.
Matt Alder [00:05:03]:
So what are the sort of current talent acquisition challenges that you have?
Lauren Addy [00:05:08]:
Sure. So we are recruiting independent contractors to Colonial Life. So it’s slightly different than your typical HR recruiting environment where we are offering a tremendous opportunity to partner with Colonial Life. But it’s, it’s truly an entrepreneurial opportunity. So our sales managers and representatives are independent business owners building a career by offering these products to employers. So when we look across the country I mentioned, we have 47 territories. Each of those territories are an extension of our corporate home office in Columbia, South Carolina. So they are responsible for, for growing and developing people to increase the Colonial Life footprint and protect more people ultimately across the United States. So when you think about that structure and the many different people that are involved in the recruiting process, from sourcing to onboarding and everything in between, for us in the home office, our goal is to provide a consistent candidate experience for everyone, regardless of which market they’re in. And as you can imagine, that decentralized model with 47 different territories, different managers and recruiters, there presents somewhat of a challenge. I think it’s a unique advantage as well because we can really tweak our tools and our technology and our approach to whatever is most suitable for that market. And that’s why we partner so closely with our territory managers. But consistency across those territories is definitely a challenge in pipeline management as well, I think. You know, lastly, I would mention, when you think about an insurance salesperson, the things that come to mind are not always positive. Right. And we know that and we don’t shy away from that. So, you know, knowing the tremendous opportunity that this can be for the right person, a lot of times our recruiters are initially overcoming some objections around the perception of an independent salesperson as well. So the other thing that we try to do is highlight the many, many wonderful stories of the people who have changed their lives by, you know, moving from a 9 to 5 job where they were kind of stuck in their role to really being a business owner and ultimately doing something that is helping protect people in times of need. So I think, you know, our two biggest challenges are probably just consistency and pipeline management across that decentralized model and then just overall attracting people to an opportunity that kind of has a negative stigma around it at times, to be quite frank.
Matt Alder [00:08:11]:
So I’m presuming that to sort of meet those challenges, you need to be quite innovative within talent acquisition. Are there any sort of particular strategies you have to sort of drive innovation in that way?
Lauren Addy [00:08:25]:
Absolutely. You know, I would say we are so lucky to have amazing talent all across the country that my team gets to to work with every single day. And our best ideas for new tools, new ways of approaching things, new audiences to reach out to, almost always come from the field, you know, from our recruiters out there working with candidates. And so we are a very relationship oriented business, not only in recruiting, but across the board. And so each of our national recruiting specialists, which are my team members, they’re aligned regionally. So they have anywhere from 10 to 13 recruiters that they’re working with. And they work with them on a daily basis. They are very hands on. It’s not your typical corporate environment. We’re very close with our partners and we’re texting with them, talking with them, going out and working with them. So the strategy of being a hands on consultant with our field partners has really helped elevate some ideas that we have been able to implement to kind of change the way that we reach out to candidates and attract them to this opportunity. And I would say that that really starts from the top. You know, the biggest factor that helps Colonial Life be innovative in not only recruiting, but across our business areas is our leadership. And everyone from our CEO Tim Arnold, to our head of sales, Bill Dean, are challenging us as the leaders across the business to always be thinking of new ways of doing things. Our mantra is to make the experience with colonial life simple, modern, and personal. And that’s not just for the candidates, but for our policyholders, for our salespeople. And so as it relates to recruiting, we are supported in every way to invest where it makes sense in those innovative solutions. So, you know, recently we’ve made a pretty large investment in an applicant tracking system called avature to help us streamline our process and, you know, everything from that to different organizations to partner with. We do a lot with recruit military and helping military veterans come on board and find a new opportunity after they’ve transitioned out of serving our country in the United States. So, you know, it runs across the board. But again, having that support from the top down and then working with our recruiters hand in hand, you know, not just operating in a silo in the home office, has been a very large advantage for us.
Matt Alder [00:11:21]:
So you mentioned technology, which I want to come back and talk about a bit more in a second. And you mentioned your sort of military program. What other unique recruiting programs and practices are there that you’re. That you’re really proud of that are helping you solve these talent challenges?
Lauren Addy [00:11:37]:
Yeah, so a few more come to mind. If you look at the insurance industry as a whole, not just voluntary benefits, but, you know, across the world, the demographics of our sales force and our employees has historically been, you know, middle of the line people in the mid stages of their career. I’ll say we haven’t always had a ton of millennials working in our industry, not just at Colonial Life, but across the board. So another program that we have implemented is our aspiring entrepreneurs initiat. It involves a lot of different organizations across the country offering professional development programs, internships, and entry points for college students and recent graduates to learn about the tremendous opportunity that this industry offers, not just with Colonial Life, but across the board, you know, educating them on what it really means to be an entrepreneur, to be an independent business owner and help businesses in the way that we do. The second one that comes to mind is our referral culture. Colonial Life, not unlike other businesses, really sees a tremendously higher success rate in those people who are brought to us through personal referrals. They just have, you know, a larger. A greater understanding of the opportunity. They know people in the business who have been successful. So we offer a bonus program to everyone who’s contracted with Colonial Life, either as a rep, manager, or broker, so that they can personally benefit from the success of people that they’ve helped bring on. And we run contests all the Time with referrals. We offer training to our teams to help bring people on that they know or that they run into in the marketplace. And then the last thing I would mention is just our training and support initiatives touched on this as we were discussing innovation. But our team is so field focused, we know that we work for our salespeople because they are the ones, you know, doing all of the legwork to protect more people and bring more clients into the Colonial Life fold. So we offer a lot of hands on training. As we rolled out Avature, for instance, our applicant tracking system and CRM, we created our own customized training program where we traveled to each region, we did one on one training and that’s really helped with adoption. And we take that approach with everything we do. Whether it’s a new tool like Avature or whether it is, you know, a best practice. We’re always having, you know, webinars and calls. And I think that that is unique to Colonial Life. In the other organizations that I’ve worked with that hasn’t been as constant or consist. And I think that really gives our salespeople competitive advantage as they’re looking at recruiting people to their team. And it gives our recruiters an advantage to have more people they can go to for best practice sharing and additional training all throughout their career, whether they’re new with us or been here for five years.
Matt Alder [00:15:06]:
Before we talk about a bit more about recruitment technology, I’m kind of really curious about how you’re measuring your success. How do you know you’re growing and improving? What does success look like and how do you measure it?
Lauren Addy [00:15:19]:
Absolutely. So as you can imagine, in a sales environment, there’s no limit to the metrics that we’re tracking. We have very hard and fast quantitative goals around our recruiting, and that is everything from the number of people that are contracted with Colonial Life weekly, quarterly and annually. I’m happy to say here at the end of November, we’re sitting at 94% of our annual goals. So we believe, believe that we will hit that. That means we’re bringing the number of people on that we know we need to sustain our sales growth and ultimately offer more financial protection to our clients across the country, both new and existing. So we have our sales goals, our recruiting goals, but internally in our department, in addition to those, we’re also looking at manager engagement. So I mentioned that our sales managers are independent contractors with Colonial Life, which means, you know, they’re entrepreneurs, they’re business owners, they have about 100 different things on their list that they have to do each day. And recruiting is a long term growth strategy in the context of sales. So it’s not unusual for recruiting to, you know, fall a little bit lower on that priority list when you’re talking about other things like customer service and new account acquisition. So we do a lot on our team to drive manager engagement in partnership with our territories. We measure our manager portal usage, which is the tool that we use to distribute candidate leads and manage pipelines to each of our managers. It’s a personalized portal and we just rolled that out this year at the end of January in 2018. And I’m pleased to say we have about 257 of our about 550 managers actively using that portal some point throughout the year. We also look at those district numbers and where managers are in their recruiting this year over last year. Of course we want to see that growth and then we can reach out to them personally and find out how we can help them. So again, that those metrics combined with the qualitative feedback that we’re getting as a result of being so closely aligned with our territories and our managers and really being those partners to them, helps us measure not only the number of people that we’re bringing on, but how many of them are being successful and how quickly we’re moving them through the process. And tools like that manager portal really give us more data around that to be able to measure. So since we rolled that out this year, next year we’ll be able to look at year over year data, how that adoption is increasing and how we’re moving those people through the pipeline.
Matt Alder [00:18:23]:
So in terms of the recruitment technology you use, how important is it for you to sort of choose the right partner and how do you go about doing that?
Lauren Addy [00:18:34]:
Oh, it’s critical of course. I mean, for every organization. I heard a few of your speakers mention this on previous episodes. And you know, technology should enhance the human element when it comes to recruiting. At the end of the day, we are working with people. We are helping them navigate, you know, whether this entrepreneurial opportunity at Colonial Life is a great choice for them, if they’re a good fit for our culture and carry the same values that we do. So our technology partners have to understand our unique process and they have to be offer customizable and adaptable solutions. It can’t replace our people. Our recruiters in the territories are our biggest asset. And no matter what technology evolves and what’s available to us, we want the technology to enhance their career. We want them to feel like Their jobs are becoming more efficient and they’re being able to spend their time doing what they do best, which is introducing Colonial Life to, you know, top candidates and selecting people who are the best fit for their team. So when we look at technology partners, no matter what type of tool it is, we’re looking for those that are customizable, full service. So, you know, a lot of times we need someone to call when we run into something. And with 47 people utilizing a tool, not to mention our hundreds of sales managers that are partnering with them, we need training, support, we need customer service support, you know, at a high level and to be available kind of in all time zones, at least across the United States. So we’re looking for also those partners that eliminate the need for multiple platforms and streamline our process. Right now, there are so many different places that people have to go on our team to post positions to get their applicants. And so we’re really trying to use that new applicant tracking system and Avature to streamline that process and automate all of the administrative work that comes with recruiting and talent acquisition.
Matt Alder [00:20:58]:
So you’ve just rolled this ATS out nationwide. What, what did you learn from doing that? And what would your advice to be? What would your advice be to other organizations who are, who are about to start a similar process?
Lauren Addy [00:21:13]:
Oh, goodness. That could be a whole other episode of what I have learned with, with this process. It’s been a tremendous change management opportunity for our company just to kind of tee this up and give you the background in a few seconds. Colonial Life did not have an applicant tracking system or a CRM system for recruiting. So the process was very siloed in each territory. It was very manual. You know, it was not unusual for us to print out resumes to call on them. And so the movement to, or the transition to a very robust, robust applicant tracking system with a lot of different moving parts from what was really, quite honestly just an Excel spreadsheet and perhaps some printed candidate contact information was a tremendous change for our teams. And of course, there are many challenges that come with that. And we made mistakes along the way, certainly. And so there are a lot of things that I learned, but I think, you know, just a few of them off the top of my head is when you roll something out like this, you know, Avature had a tremendous amount of resources for us. They had templates, they had team members that helped us configure everything and offer training. But we really had to take what they established and adapt it to Colonial Life. Every organization is Different. Every training process is different. The culture, the experience with technology is all different in every company. So I think, you know, at first I was a little bit hesitant because the technology was new to me to make changes to what Avature was recommending. Not that those recommendations were wrong, but I think adapting it to your culture and how your team learns and what you know is a priority for them was critical. And that was some of the learning that we had. I also, you know, our team had to stay organized and consolidate feedback again with 47 different offices and different levels of input, even something as simple as creating an email template was a vast undertaking because everyone had different opinions of what that needed to be. So we really had to take the, you know, 50,000 foot level and think about what would benefit everyone. And luckily the solution was customizable so we could create templates that could be edited. But we also wanted to keep it simple and provide one thing at a time. So that combination of really getting the feedback, consolidating it and making a decision that kept things as simple as possible was a learning process for sure. And then lastly I would say, you know, communicate, communicate and communicate again. That’s my background, of course, and my previous career was public relations that put together lots of communications plans. And that skill set became invaluable in this rollout because, you know, with, with people supporting a sales organization, our organization is extremely fast paced. So doing one national webinar and saying we communicated something was never enough. We had to focus on what was in it for them, how this tool was going to change their lives for the better, make their process more efficient and set expectations of, you know, doing some initial work and training on the front end to truly benefit long term. And we’re just now, you know, a year and a half later from rollout, starting to see those benefits come to light. So it’s been a lot of, you know, over communication, a lot of one on one training as I mentioned earlier. And so I think if you’re embarking on any new process, it’s critical to have those communication plans in place. Consider all of your audiences. So not just the end user, which for us was the recruiter, but the territory manager, so their manager and getting their buy in to allow them to spend the time necessary initially learning it. So, you know, making it work for you, staying organized and consolidating feedback, keeping it simple and over communicating where really the lessons and the adaptations that we made along the way in our rollout of Avature.
Matt Alder [00:26:09]:
So final question, what’s next? What Excites you about the future of talent acquisition at Colonial Life?
Lauren Addy [00:26:17]:
Yeah, well, you know, there’s so many things. And first of all, I would say what gets me excited and up every morning is the fact that, you know, at Colonial Life, what we do is really changing lives. We see people coming from careers that they are very unhappy in and not fulfilled in, and coming here and thriving and being able to run their own business, make an income that they never could have dreamed of, and, you know, do something that ultimately is helping people. So outside of talent acquisition, just overall, you know, my personal fulfillment and when you ask it that way, of what excites, I mean, getting people into this business is. Is what excites me. But from more of a technical side, of course, there are many things that are a means to getting there. So in order for us to accomplish our goals and bring those people on and truly change lives, we now have so many things at our disposal. With the new technology that is out there over the past, you know, 10 years or so, it’s just incredible. It’s almost overwhelming what is available to us as talent acquisition professionals. So being able to marry tools like Avature that’s going to give us the data to make educated investments and wise decisions on the vendor partners that we’re investing in that are assisting us with sourcing these candidates, giving our teams the power to see where their pipelines truly are in this consolidated manner, and taking that to the next level is going to make us so much more of an efficient organization. It’s going to enhance the candidate experience. So, you know, this one tool in Avature has so many opportunities for us to improve what we’re doing and like I said earlier, give our recruiters the time back to do what they love to do, which is talking to people about this opportunity. So I think, you know, after this implementation, we’re really on the cusp of taking recruiting to a whole new level with allowing technology to enhance what we already do so well. And that’s, you know, bring people into a career with Colonial Life that, that truly can change their lives, change their family’s lives, and impact more people across the country who are protected financially when they really need it the most. So I’m blessed to be in this position, be able to work with so many amazing people, and just thrilled to be able to have some sort of impact on offering them tools and training our teams on how to do this more effectively, especially in this competitive environment. I think everyone, all your listeners can probably relate to that. The number of people who are employed is greater, which is very positive for our economy in the United States. But it also challenges us to find people in a unique way and, you know, almost kind of sell them on the other opportunities that they could be missing out on personally and professionally. So it’s a thrill to be engaged in an organization that cares so much about changing people’s lives and impacting them for the better. And I’m just honored to be in this position and be able to take that to the next level in the years to come.
Matt Alder [00:30:04]:
Lauren, thank you very much for talking to me.
Lauren Addy [00:30:06]:
Thank you, Matt. It’s been a pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:30:09]:
My thanks to Lauren Addy. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
