When Omaha National president and CEO Reagan Pufall thinks back to how COVID-19 has affected recruiting and hiring at the workers’ compensation insurance provider, his main verdict is: not much. The key characteristics that have enabled the managing general agent (MGA) / insurance carrier to grow from eight to 200 employees in a little over five years remain steadfast amidst all the workplace changes affecting the insurance industry.

“We very rarely hire people who have previous experience in the workers’ comp industry,” Pufall says. “Most of the people we hire don’t have previous experience. We hire them as trainees and we train them ourselves, which means of course we make a big commitment to having a very strong internal training program.”