In Part I of our two-part series, we talked about companies using creative solutions to staff the industry during the upcoming busy season. In Part II we are discussing the training that candidates receive once they are placed full-time with a title company.
Eric Biro, founding partner and owner of Anderson | Biro, said in general, the title insurance industry needs to do a better job training its employees.
“Training can be very expensive and very time-consuming,” he said. “When you’re worried about pushing out deals at the end of the month, you’re probably not worried about training people.”
Title Alliance, a joint venture title company, didn’t have a true training department for years.
“We have tenured employees that helped each other,” Corporate Trainer Michele Rist told The Title Report. “If an office hired a new employee, that office would train that person. The whole job has changed. The need to train people the correct and compliant way of doing things is so much bigger of a job than what our staff could handle. Plus we’ve grown so much. We recognized we needed a training department, people who can go out there and train new employees and provide continuing education for our existing employees.”
This year, Title Alliance launched a training module in T.A. Connections, a portal employees use on a daily basis for marketing, training, document management.
“It’s all encompassing,” Rist said. “Employees go at their own pace and on their own time. … It’s still growing and we’re still adding a lot of stuff on there, but it’s going to replace (the) old-fashioned employee handbook. What am I supposed to do if this happens? What is my procedure to do this? It’s all in the portal.”
Managers and staff are required to take classes, but Rist said it’s well-received and they are happy.
“Hiring someone, training them and having them leave for whatever reason doesn’t help anyone,” she said. “My goal, especially with new employees, is to make sure they feel they have support, they understand their job and what they need to do. They’re trained on what they need to do. They don’t feel like they’re left alone to figure it out. That’s a huge part of retaining employees.”
Nationwide Title Clearing (NTC), a title clearing company, also has noticed higher retention rates since it expanded its training program last year. The NTC staff completed 4,500 individual training courses last year. Forty employees were promoted to executive positions throughout the company.
“We have a 29 percent increase in our staff count compared to last year,” Vice President of Quality Shawn Sorensen told The Title Report. “We’re seeing more and more people make it to higher levels of training and more longevity. As you’re here several years, you get into the higher levels of management training. I’m seeing those same faces coming in and out of the training room.”
NTC is offering 150 individual training courses, seminars and apprenticeships, a 50 percent increase from last year. There are mandatory training seminars on eight subjects.
“There’s quite a bit of mandatory training but we find we don’t have to enforce that,” Sorensen said. “Our training room is so in-demand we actually have to schedule appointments for people. People really want to be trained. They want to get that training to know what they’re doing on the job. It’s definitely related to advancement at the company. There’s a tremendous demand for training and the gaining of knowledge.”
Each employee goes through basic training, no matter what department they work in or how many years of experience they have. From there, training becomes specialized. Trainers work with employees on specific processes.
“We give them the basics of the mortgage industry as a whole, and then we’ll go deeper into the process they’ll actually be working on,” Sorensen said. “It just keeps getting more and more granular.
“The idea is to train industry experts,” he continued. “They’re not working out of rote memorization. They have a deep understanding of what they’re doing.”
Sorensen recommends title agencies with their own training programs include a glossary of industry terms for their staff. He said title insurance is a complex industry, so a step-by-step approach is best. The challenge is breaking it down for the average person to be able to absorb.
It’s important not to give the trainees too much at the outset, or throw everything at them on the first day, he said.
“If you really, really understand what you’re doing, you begin to really care about it and see a future for yourself and for the organization,” Sorensen said. “If you have that knowledge and understanding, it turns into wisdom. Why would you want to go anywhere else?”