Asteron Life launches pilot programme

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Asteron Life has launched a pilot programme to support the emotional needs of those in its workforce facing challenging interactions with customers.

Thursday, December 8th 2022, 9:28AM 2 Comments

by Kerry Meadows-Bonner

The programme will offer some of the life insurer’s case managers, customer support employees supportive workplace practices such as resilience workshops, mentoring, individual training and monitoring to help them in their emotionally challenging roles.

Asteron Life claims and customer solutions executive manager, Seema Bangera, says like customers, employees who interact with customers are too in need of emotional support and can benefit from additional skills, tools and support to assist them with their own mental and physical wellbeing.

“The work our teams do daily to support customers is work recognised as having challenging impacts on their physical and emotional health. Vicarious, or secondary trauma, can occur as a result of their work helping others cope with traumatic events, reviewing distressing information and learning of serious injuries or in some cases death.”

The pilot will be designed to give customer claims handlers the opportunity to reflect on their case management and continuously improve their approach to help manage work-related stress and alert the insurer to risks that may otherwise go unnoticed.

“With this work recognised as being intrinsically difficult to cope with, the additional support, skill building and professional development the insurer is offering should be beneficial to the wellbeing of its people.

“This kind of secondary trauma can impact very negatively on our people, and we hope the professional practices, skills and support delivered through this pilot programme will go some way towards mitigating these impacts,” says Bangera.

In addition to better supporting the psychological health and wellbeing of its people managing customer claims, in offering its people the additional support, Asteron Life is also enhancing the employees’ ability to support customers through their challenges.

Asteron Life claims and customer solutions manager, Jo Unuka has extensive experience assisting customers off work due to a period of sickness or injury and, through interactions with these customers, has experienced the impact this work can have on an employee’s wellbeing.

“This pilot programme aims to help our teams build their resilience to continue being able to be their best, both in and out of work.

“Having external qualified support to help me work through a tricky situation or cope with an interaction that is confronting has allowed me to learn new strategies to better equip me for the next time I find myself in a similar situation. The sessions have had a significant positive impact on me and make me feel more supported by my employer.”

The pilot programme will run for four months and will back up a range of other employee support Asteron Life offers, including online learning programmes, the insurer’s employee assistance programme sessions and existing training modules focused on mitigating the psychosocial risk and building the psychological health and wellbeing of its employee base.

For advisers, Asteron Life continues to offer eligible advisers (those with in force business) the benefits of the Best Doctors service, providing easy access to leading specialists and mental health clinicians via telehealth.

The complementary service is designed to support users with diagnosis, treatment and information when facing medical uncertainty all from the comfort of their own home. Once qualified, advisers can get in touch with Best Doctors directly at any time through their website.

Bangera says “At this stage, Asteron Life is offering the pilot workplace practice trial to our life claims teams. Participation in the trial is voluntary and around 75% of our claims team have taken up the opportunity to participate in the trial so far. The service is delivered to our claims teams during their usual work hours.
 

Tags: Asteron

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