When It's Time for Your Staff to Retire..

 

Help Them Retire the WAHVE Way
By Sharon Emek, WAHVE LLC (Work At Home Vintage Employees)

Do you know that one of eight Americans is 65 or older? Do you realize the average age in the insurance industry is 58? Our industry is facing a huge boomer retirement trend that presents a wonderful opportunity for insurance firms and their retiring staff.

Retirement today is not an end game. People retire from the office but not from work. They want to work differently as they phase out of the 9-to-5 workforce and create a better life-work balance. They also know that if they continue to work, they will stay healthier, live longer and have greater financial freedom.

When I travel around the country attending conferences, some agency principals and HR managers tell me they have people working for them who they know are ready to retire -- but they don’t know how to help them take the plunge. Some of their staff people tell me they would love to “sort of retire” but are fearful of closing the door. They are afraid that after being home for a few months, they will be bored and/or realize they need to earn some money to supplement their retirement income. They worry that no one will hire them ever again, or that they will end up as a greeter at Walmart and their CIC or CPCU designation will lose its value.

But now there’s a solution to the conundrum: a new way to help your retiring employees create a new career after retirement. It’s called “Work At Home Vintage Employees” (WAHVE). WAHVE was created to solve two of the industry’s major imminent problems: 1) The shortage of qualified talent and 2) the loss of the industry’s institutional knowledge as boomers retire.

When you help a staff member retire by having them register with WAHVE, you are helping everyone because:

·      You are keeping the institutional knowledge in the industry and making it available for others who need it. 

·      You are enabling a transition for your staff.

·      You are providing the industry an alternative to outsourcing insurance jobs overseas.

Today’s technology enables people to work remotely from home, and today’s retirees are tech-savvy. According to the latest research, 50 percent of soon-to-retire baby boomers are prepared to work from home. They have high-speed Internet connections, up-to-date computers, smart phones; they surf the internet and use computers to video chat. Now all they need is a job working from home!

WAHVE is the perfect opportunity for you to help your employees who want to retire have a soft landing as they leave the regular workforce.

WAHVE has been capturing the insurance industry’s retiring baby-boomer population (“vintage employees”) who want to continue to work and then outsourcing them back to insurance firms (agents/brokers, wholesalers, insurers, and vendors), on a full-time, part-time or project basis. We have many insurance firms’ approaching us with work assignments that can be a good fit for retiring insurance agency employees.

Invite your current and past retirees to visit the WAHVE website (www.WAHVE.com) and apply to become a wahve.

Sharon Emek, Ph.D. (Sharon.Emek@WAHVE.com) is founder and CEO of Work At Home Vintage Employees LLC (www.WAHVE.com), which provides remote outsourced workers to independent agencies and other insurance firms. WAHVE was named winner of the “Insurance Entrepreneurial Award” by the Insurance Innovation Alliance for its service providing insurance agencies, wholesale brokers, and carriers with skilled insurance retirees who work from home. Emek also is a partner at CBS Coverage Group, Inc., an insurance agency in the New York metropolitan area.

Advocacy

Products & Services

Networking

Education