Managing Remote Staff Successfully Best Practices
Engaging a global team member before their start date drives an 11% jump in retention and a 36% faster ramp to full productivity. Skip that step, and the pattern repeats: SOPs live in someone's head, in-office staff get blindsided by a new name on the team, and there's no cadence for checking in, so weeks pass before anyone notices something's off.
Kathy Heglin, Commercial Lines Services Manager at George Petersen Insurance Agency, shares what she built when growth outpaced local hiring: introducing every global team member by name and role, setting working agreements from day one, and cutting a month-and-a-half onboarding process down by several weeks. Sarah Hooper, Head of Customer Success at Edge, breaks down the structure behind it, from a week-by-week arc to full independence to a clear escalation path the moment something feels off.
Our speakers
Kathy Heglin
Commercial Lines Services Manager — George Petersen Insurance Agency
Kathy Heglin runs commercial lines at George Petersen Insurance Agency, a $43 million, award-winning agency with 11 offices. When growth outpaced local hiring, she built a dedicated global team through Edge, personally leading the integration and grounding every KPI in her agency's own prior performance.
Sarah Hooper
Head of Customer Success — Edge
Sarah Hooper leads Customer Success at Edge, working directly with insurance, medical, and dental customers to drive outcomes after onboarding. Drawing on patterns from hundreds of onboardings, she helps agency and practice leaders set benchmarks and keep performance on track from day one through long-term renewal.
Highlights
- Why onboarding before a start date drives an 11% jump in retention and a 36% faster ramp to full productivity
- How George Petersen Insurance cut a month-and-a-half onboarding process down by several weeks with SOPs and communication norms locked in early
- The KPI method: benchmarking a new team member against the agency's own prior output, not an industry average
- The week-by-week arc to full independence, from shadowing and daily check-ins to a feedback loop that builds toward autonomy
- When to escalate a performance concern through a relationship manager, and what happens when a replacement is the right call