In a world of heightened competition with emerging threats and general business environmental changes, the “war” for talent takes on a special urgency. Millennials make up almost half of the US workforce and Gen Z is starting to graduate from college, meaning that understanding the younger members of the talent pool is crucial.
The processes and structures which may have been effective in building organizational capacity in the past likely won’t be able to sufficiently address current market changes. Acquiring, developing, and retaining new talent in today’s rapidly changing landscape requires insurers to rethink existing approaches, including:
- Talent acquisition: Understanding the Gen Z and Millennial populations based on real data will be crucial to the business outcomes companies are striving for. Human capital management is becoming a real challenge, and IT organizations should recognize the need to apply some level of “marketing” and understanding of what younger working generations are looking for in a job.
- Development for the future: Training and developing new hires looks very different now than it did for their more senior counterparts. Feeling professionally supported, learning transferrable skills, and having access to new and innovative technology are all top of mind for young workers coming into IT organizations.
- Skills portfolio: For younger generations, each job represents a chance to grow or refine skills that will provide a foundation for future development. Carriers may need to adjust for flexibility and job-hopping, or alternatively incentivize young employees to stay for longer tours of duty.
Building and retaining talent is a mission-critical activity for any organization that hopes to be high-performing or improve competitive position. For more on approaches to a new generation of talent, see Novarica’s recent brief, Next Generation Talent in Insurance.
This blog entry has been reprinted with permission
