Booz Allen Hamilton Booz Allen Hamilton PMOLink - New Orleans ...

Photo by Tracie Morris Schaefer
From left: Hartwig Moss Insurance Agency employees Stewart Sheng, Laura Biggs and her mother Holly Biggs, and Stacey Giardinn serve up bread pudding at a company office party.
T H R E E - T I M E H O N O R E E
Hartwig Moss
Insurance Agency
Having a flexible schedule has paid off for
Stewart Sheng, who started training to
become a producer with Hartwig Moss Insurance
Agency last year and joined full time in June.
But during his training, Sheng worked full
time as a teacher and helped his wife Cynthia
Lee-Sheng campaign for and win a Jefferson
Parish Council seat.
“They were very understanding of my personal
situation during that time, and they
worked with me on my time allowance,”
Stewart Sheng said. “It’s really the intangibles
that impress me the most and the relationship
I have developed with the Moss family.”
Hartwig Moss is has been family-owned
and operated by five generations spanning
three centuries.
“It’s the only job I ever had, and I would
never go anywhere else,” said Cleve Daigle,
vice president of Hartwig Moss Insurance
Agency and an employee since 1976, when he
began as a sales trainee.
Cleve Daigle’s father, C.J. Daigle, also served
as vice president during his 40 years with the
company.
In 1871, Hartwig Moss founded the agency,
which provides commercial and personal property
and casualty insurance. Robby Moss, who
represents the Moss family’s fifth generation,
now runs the company as president.
“The company has a strong reputation and
history as a family business with close-knit ties,
and it was brought up in a time and era to get
business done the right way for your clients
and treat your employees right, and those traditional
philosophies have stuck,” Daigle said.
Employee longevity is a byproduct of being
a family business, said Daigle, with employees
averaging 10 years of service.
“We really give employees every tool they
need to be successful. It’s just a matter of
how hard you want to work,” he said. “Every
day we are investing in our staff and encouraging
further certifications and payment for
education for employees to pursue those designations
to better serve their clients and to
better themselves.”
The company pays the full cost of employees’
health, dental, prescription, vision and
short- and long-term disability insurance and
offers tuition assistance, continuing education
reimbursements and paid mileage.
Nature of business: insurance
Where based: New Orleans
Employees: 45
Average starting salary: $38,851 for staff, $168,000 for
producers
Median salary: $44,500 for staff, $172,000 for producers
Average employment time: 10 years
Benefits: health care plan with 100 percent coverage, dental,
prescription and vision plans, paid maternity leave, 401(k),
continuing education program, flexible hours
Wait time for benefits: 30 days
Paid days off: 28
Web site: www.hmia.com
Hartwig Moss also has several employee
gatherings throughout the year, including an
annual state of the union address on how the
business is doing; in-office holiday parties in
which upper management does the cooking;
an annual Rock n’ Bowl event to mark the
Hurricane Katrina anniversary; and community
activities with employee volunteer time and
money going to organizations such as the
Louisiana Children’s Museum, Touro Infirmary,
Freedom Alliance-Support Our Troops and the
Gulf Restoration Network.
“It seems like we’re always getting together
to do things, either just to be with each other or
to do things for each other,” said Amber Hebert,
a customer service representative who has been
with the company for six and a half years and
commutes an hour and a half from Raceland.
“We have wedding showers, baby showers,
showers for employees to replace things they
owned that they lost after Katrina,” she said.•
— Tommy Santora
December 14, 2009 61