Heffernan Gives Back, Gets Silver Award Recognition
More than three decades ago, Mike Heffernan wrote a simple mission statement.
“Have fun. And answer the phone.”
Heffernan believed in the value of creating an enjoyable work environment when he launched Heffernan Insurance Brokers in 1988. Today, he still believes in its importance. That belief has molded his company’s ethos — and guided it to a 2022 Best Agencies to Work For recognition by Insurance Journal.
Heffernan earned the Silver Regional Award for the West region based on employee responses to the annual IJ survey. Mike Heffernan said that recognition from his staff feels great.
Creating a good work culture has been at the front of his mind from the very beginning.
His organization has grown from a small agency in the San Francisco Bay Area to a company with a nationwide presence. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, Heffernan offers comprehensive business insurance, personal insurance, employee benefits and financial services products to a wide range of businesses and individuals across the country.
Employees who completed the IJ survey praised the company’s fair and transparent performance reviews, growth opportunities and overall feeling of community.
“Heffernan provides a family like atmosphere and makes coming to work fun,” wrote one respondent. “In all of my other jobs, I would dread coming to work because of the office dynamic. I can honestly say that the people who work at Heffernan are extremely talented and make coming into work easy.”
Added another: “We are a large agency with small agency relationships. It is exciting to work at a place where you have so much capability. The leaders care about the employees as people.”
According to its website, the Heffernan’s reputation and success was “built through niche practice business such as nonprofit, construction, healthcare, transportation, hospitality, food industry, real estate and technology. With offices coast-to-coast and approximately 600 staff, Heffernan’s reach spans virtually every industry.”
Heffernan’s growth has primarily been organic — with very few acquisitions. As the agency continued to expand its reach, its leaders implemented an acquisitions strategy to complement the organic growth and boost the organization back into the double-digit growth arena. “And it’s worked,” Heffernan shared. “So that’s been exciting. That is our focus moving forward.”
Maintaining the culture that has become such an integral part of Heffernan’s success will continue to be a focus, too.
A common theme many respondents to the IJ survey touched on was the importance Heffernan places on giving back. According to the organization’s website, the agency is a leader in its commitment to philanthropy. Since 2003, Heffernan has been recognized as a top corporate philanthropist, and, on average, has donated more than 10% of profits to charity each year. “That’s important to me,” Heffernan said of his company’s giving, “and it’s important to a lot of people that work here.”
Helping those in need motivates him. So do his colleagues. “It’s just fun to succeed together … that keeps the passion going. Just having them here and helping kind of get this thing to where we want to get it to. But doing it all together in a very collaborative way,” Heffernan said.