In the age of digitalization, why should risk managers, contractors and insurance professionals pay closer attention to document restoration? What type of work sites or clients require document restoration? What is the technical process to restore documents in a way that these items are later safe to use? The why of document restoration can be divided into three categories: Efficiency, legality and sentimentality, Boris Skoro writes.

“Identifying potential future leaders, mentoring their development, and building a bench of talent for the future is paramount. The degree to which the new consolidated organizations succeed will be determined by the quality and cohesiveness of their leadership at all levels,” Norris Gearhart writes.

Insurance agents get many marketers and salespeople through their doors every day, and they are all saying and doing the same thing. Be different. Be authentic. Be a trusted advisor. 

Jon Isaacson shares a story that points to the power of breathing fresh life into existing assets. “As we celebrate the dawn of a new year, perhaps this year isn’t as much about chasing what is new –manufacturing, remodeling, or accumulating – but discovering what is already there and putting the pieces together just a bit more concisely. The old new.”

“Hideous piles of plastic in our landfills or incinerators aside, containment is never a bad thing. Just like running a HEPA on every job site is never a bad thing, building containment is also never bad, from a purely scientific perspective. These decisions, however, do not happen in a vacuum,” Keith Gangitano writes.

We must resist the subconscious urge to hire people in which we see ourselves — the full gamut of self from physical appearance to hard skills — and instead, map talent acquisition strategies to our deficiencies. This begins with an objective evaluation of your teams’ strengths and weaknesses, and from their hiring to resources that fill the empty spaces on your mantle.

In this column, Laura Spaulding, CEO of Spaulding Decon, shares three of the toughest hoarding cleanup jobs she has worked on in her 15-plus years specializing in crime scene and hoarding cleaning. “The tougher the challenge, the bigger the reward, and I have faced some tough ones,” Spaulding writes.

“I recommend everyone who looks to have a future in the restoration take the ASD course and experience the flood house, especially if you are a hands-on learner. Not only will you learn new drying techniques, and make yourself and your business more efficient. You will also meet an array of extraordinary people with different talents and experiences,” Dustin Resendiz writes.

“As an industry, we must perform at a higher level than ever before with less qualified people than we’ve ever had. That is the restoration industry’s staffing challenge,” Jeremy Reets writes. “Companies that bring on new staff and quickly get them to a high level of competency will be the ones to dominate their market. So, how do you increase the competency of your staff quickly and dominate your market? Hands-on training is part of the solution!”