REGARDING: H.R Management Seminar

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Farmers’ Mutual is please to offer a new H.R. seminar to broker principals designed to further develop their people management skills within their offices. This course is designed to start building a foundation for many areas within the employee life cycle, as a job description should be the most sought after employee tool when making changes in your business or planning for the future. Participants will learn what should be included in a job description, how to properly write a job description, and review how the job descriptions can be used in your decision making process. Different evaluation systems will be discussed in detail. Key legislation pertaining to Pay Equity will be reviewed to keep employers up to date.

This course involves a combination of lecture and participatory activities with active involvement required due to the condensed format we are providing.

Please click on the link for the agenda: Agenda

If you you or a staff member are interested in attending please click the link for the registaration form: 2012 02 HR Demystifying Job Evaluations for Small Businesses Registration Form

REGARDING: Account’s Reminder

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The New Year is under way and I wanted to send out this reminder asking that the following information accompany requests sent in to our accounting department:

Monthly Payments

- Please make sure your request includes a void cheque and a fully completed signed authorization form.

Visa/Mastercard Payments

- Please make sure your request includes a fully completed signed authorization form.

NSF Payments

- The payment needs to be received before the date noted in our NSF letter and the payment must be in the form of cash, money or certified cheque.

Tax Exemptions

- If the insured is tax exempt please attached the form with the authorization form.

Please forward any questions on these quick reminders to Melissa Grills:
Phone: 800-461-0310 ext. 2605
E-mail: mgrills@farmerslindsay.com ]]> http://farmerslindsay.com/broker-circular-11-35-accounts-reminder/feed 0 http://farmerslindsay.com/broker-circular-11-34-commercial-residential-inflation-factor http://farmerslindsay.com/broker-circular-11-34-commercial-residential-inflation-factor#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 01:49:53 +0000 Lance Hunter http://farmerslindsay.com/?p=4677 Read more]]>  
FROM: Enrico Mastrangeli, HBA, FCIP, CRM, Underwriting Manager

REGARDING: Commercial & Residential Inflation Factor

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Effective March 2012, the following inflation factors will be applied to renewing policies:

Commercial Packages

The inflation factor of 4% will be applied on the amount of insurance applicable to building(s). The factor has been reduced from the 6% which was applied in the past year.
Inflation is automatically applied on our commercial packages and is also applied on buildings on non-package policies where inflation protection has been requested by you.

Residential Packages

The inflation factor of 3% will remain unchanged on residential packages. The inflation factor is applied on the dwelling component of residential packages on personal lines and farm policies as well as non-package tenanted dwellings that are subject to the 80% co-insurance rating. Please remember there is no automatic inflation on non-packages (with the exception of tenanted dwellings subject to the 80% co-insurance rating), tenant’s packages, condominium packages and farm buildings/outbuildings at this time.

Friday December 23rd Regular Hours 8am-4pm
Monday December 26th CLOSED
Tuesday December 27th CLOSED
Wednesday December 28th Regular Hours 8am-5pm
Thursday December 29th Regular Hours 8am-5pm
Friday December 30th Regular Hours 8am-4pm
Monday January 2nd CLOSED

Wishing you and your families all the best over the holiday season!

In 2011, our two HR Broker Seminars focused on Motivations, Rewards & Benefits, and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), Employment Standards, and Bill 168. These one day sessions provided our broker partners with the fundamentals: legislation information, role plays exercises, and take home materials to help prepare their own policies and programs.

What’s next for 2012? We have 3 seminars planned for next year in February, May and September. While the details are still in the development process, we have identified a few topics that would be worthwhile for Brokerage Management to explore based on the results of our 2011 Broker Feedback Survey:

1. Job Evaluation and Job Descriptions,
2. Training and Development, and
3. Performance Management and Coaching.

Should you have additional topics that you would like considered feel free to email Julie or Liz as we are always looking for your feedback.

Wishing your teams a happy holiday season! Hope to see you soon!

The intangibility of culture makes it challenging to deal with, but try running counter to a culture and you’ll find it will generate very tangible responses! I think of each organization as a bottle. Whether we put anything in that bottle or not, it’s still full of something – water, pop, juice, sand or air. Our choice is what we choose to fill our organization with – not trying to empty it out.

At Farmers’, we strive to pour in performance, consistency and long-term thinking. It doesn’t matter if it’s in our personal work habits, in our relationships with our teammates or business associates or within our whole organization. If we don’t try to fill our bottle ourselves – it will still be filled with culture – but not necessarily that which is best for our organization in the long term.

We want to fill our culture with added value for you – our Broker partners – by performing better, by being consistent and by thinking long term. Let us know how we’re doing! Seriously!!

REGARDING: Internet Service Interruption Update

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Further to our circular on Thursday, December 8th regarding an internet outage at our office, it has come to our attention that email or fax communications between your office and ours on Wednesday and Thursday of this week may not have been delivered. To ensure that there are no gaps in communication, we would ask that you have your team members review any electronic communication sent on December 7th or 8th to any individual or group account at Farmers’ Mutual and resend that communication. We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause.

We continue to investigate the cause of this outage as well as our response to it. We intend to make adjustments that will minimize the potential of such an outage occurring again. As more information becomes available, we will keep you informed of any relevant developments.

Thank you for your patience and support.

REGARDING: Internet Service Interruption

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On Wednesday December 7th, 2011 our internet connectivity was intermittent and by Wednesday afternoon the connection was lost entirely. This loss of internet connectivity was the result of an infrastructure problem with our Internet Service Provider.

The issue has now been rectified and our staff will be responding to your email enquiries as soon as possible. Our CSIO download will continue as normal once again this evening.

We appreciate your patience during this service interruption and we are looking at alternatives to reduce the potential of this service interruption occurring in the future.

REGARDING: Business Development Management

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As many of you are aware our Business Development Department Manager – Helen Dunlop will be on a maternity leave of absence effective today December 5th 2011 and returning January 3rd 2013.

The daily operations of the Business Development Department will continue as they currently are in Helen’s absence however enquiries that would have been made to Helen will now be directed to me (Pat Ryan – Ext 2502, pryan@farmerslindsay.com). Our Business Development Team – Jackie Murison (Ext 2901) and Lance Hunter (Ext 2903) will continue to provide the same level of service in their respective areas – Product Specialist and Business Development Representative.

Also, while Helen is away her role of Complaints Officer is being assumed by our Vice President of Human Resources – Liz Gavin (Liz Gavin – Ext 2108, lgavin@farmerslindsay.com).