Skills for the Workforce of the Future

Results from Digital Insurance's recent survey of business leaders across the insurance industry to better understand the outlook for the workforce of the future. Areas we'll explore include remote vs. hybrid workplace trends, key investment areas around talent acquisition/retention, roles organizations struggle to fill, skills in demand, upskilling plans, and sentiment around harnessing tech to create new jobs. In this session we will also discuss the extent to which various employee groups are reflected in newly appointed positions and roles requiring high-demand skills.

Transcription:

Patricia L. Harman (00:08):
So for this survey, we interviewed companies across multiple industries in March, 2024, and within the insurance industry or within the insurance sector, 87% of the respondents were from carriers and agents and brokers, and 13% were InsureTechs. So I want to start with a question to you, Kerry, which is based on your research, how confident are insurers that they have the right skill sets in place for their talent teams?



Kerry Gross (00:38):
Thank you, Patty. I'm so glad to be here and to share this piece of research with you and share the stage with these wonderful professionals in the insurance space. I'm Kerry Gross. I do research for digital insurance and of all of our other brands. And so in this piece of research, we had two core questions we wanted to understand about confidence. You'll see on the left hand side of this slide, this is confidence that folks have the right skillset among their current employees. And then the right hand side was among the broader workforce that they draw from, and we wanted to acknowledge that folks, you have people who work on your teams. We also have subcontractors, right? You turn to vendors for different sources of skills and sources of talent, and what we saw is a kind of moderate level of confidence across both of those things.



(01:21)
Higher level of confidence for skillset. Among current employees, we see 40% say they're very confident they have the right skill sets in their own employees, but just 30% say they have the skillset in their broader workforce. And I think that's an interesting contrast to see. I think organizations have a little bit more control about the workforce they have internally and whether they have the ability to do all the things they need, but I would say this is only moderate. About half say they're somewhat confident that they have the right skillsets in place, and I see a lot of nods out in the audience, and I think this probably reflects what folks are seeing in the market.



Patricia L. Harman (01:57):
Great. I'm wondering, are there areas where carriers have specific needs in terms of the skill sets that they're hiring for? How I'm thinking in terms of communications or AI and then even what are the opportunities for upskilling at this point? Kerry, I'll start with you and then I'm going to ask our other two panelists,

Kerry Gross (02:17):
And I'd love to hear from you two too if that confidence resonates. I think in our pre-conference calls, that seemed like it probably resonated with you. We also asked this question, what kind of job roles are folks trying to fill? And we see salespeople as the number one area, but then IT data scientists, customer service and claims. And this is specific to insurance, but I'd love your thoughts, both of you on what the skills that you need kind of underpinning this is job roles, but I know that they're fundamental skills that folks need as well.

Patricia L. Harman (02:52):
Christina?

Christina Parr (02:53):
Yeah, sure. Oh goodness. The skills, they're just so huge. Hi. It's great to be together. You can tell him a talent acquisition like, Hey, let's chat, right? Whatcha going to chat about, well, what is it that we're really needing? In general, actuarial capital modeling, we're looking for all those technical skills that's a given. So we need to reach folks as early as possible in the process, as early in their educational process or in their career looking process. We're actually trying to remove as many barriers as possible for roles in those earlier roles. We've removed actually educational barriers for about one third of the roles that we're offering these days so that we can get folks in early and train them up. And then what we're seeing is promotion rates increase within because we're training within. So that's one way that we're trying to build those skills within maybe where some of that confidence comes in the research. Certainly some of the other skills that we're looking for, and I'm sure you're seeing this as well, would be around basic skills. So business acumen, communication skills. Does anyone look at anyone? Is anyone making eye contact? I mean, there's some basic skills that the recruiting team is telling me. I'm not sure if someone's reading from chat GPT on these questions or is it just, are they struggling? And so maybe you're seeing some of that too.

Lauren Dieterich (04:20):
Absolutely. Hi everyone, so happy to be with you today. I'm Lauren Dieterich, Chief Operating Officer for Arch Insurance North America. And for context, I joined the company a little less than a year and a half ago to build out the operations function and to make operations a competitive advantage for us. And what we've been going through at Arch is actually representative of a macro trend across the carriers right now. So a lot of carriers are going through widespread enterprise operating model change while they are in tandem trying to execute major transformations to drive modernization and digitization. So it's pretty common to hear about underwriting transformation, claims transformation or finance transformations happening all at the same time. And what that means is that the skills we are really needing as we build out our team, hover around change leadership, bringing in people who have an enterprise mindset and can think about the greater good and how to drive common best practices for the enterprise, while maintaining the unique aspects that each business unit needs skills like agility and managing through ambiguity are critical.

(05:34)
And really bringing empowered decision making to roles at any level is also really impactful in driving change because each team really needs to have that independence to be able to execute on their goals. And then to some degree, I would say tech savviness, regardless of any position we're looking at is just a table stake skillset that we need today. And then fully agree communicating in the remote world or hybrid world that we're all working with today. I mean, that becomes so key because your body language is somewhat compromised on screen, so you need to really look at someone's ability to communicate both in person and remotely.

Patricia L. Harman (06:22):
That is so important. I agree. And a lot of times I don't think people consider how you project yourself and how you speak and carry yourself, what an impact that can have sometimes. So there are differences in how the various generations communicate. Some are more comfortable with phone calls, others prefer text or email. How does this affect the sales and communication strategies then for insurers? Lauren, I'll start with you first.

Lauren Dieterich (06:51):
So I would say this is a fairly new revelation that we've started talking about amongst our leadership team because there is such a generational difference in terms of who prefers purely text communication and some of the longer standing employees in the business much prefer a phone call. And then you get down to the concept of can I make a phone call without texting somebody or messaging them first to ask if it's okay that I call? So there's a lot going on that we're working through, but I think what we are focused on is trying to make all of those communication channels available so that however people operate best and whatever the preference is, that method is available to them. Right.

Patricia L. Harman (07:30):
Christina, anything you want to add on that in terms of communication piece?

Christina Parr (07:35):
Yes, indeed. No, I think probably we're all experiencing this, right? And I have kids that are teenagers, so that amplifies things. You do not call them without a text first, so they need to have a heads up, they need to be aware. And with all justice side, it's starting to permeate the workforce, right? At the same time, what's really interesting when we're recruiting folks who are c-level folks who've been in the workforce quite a while, I've used texts with them and they've said to me literally, this is the first time I have ever been in a recruitment process and used text. So that just tells you things are changing in very, very different ways because if I sat around waiting and hoping that someone looked at my email or listened to my voicemail, someone else probably just grabbed them right in front of me. So we've really got to move with the times.

Patricia L. Harman (08:28):
Wow. So with the digital transformation, insurers need people who can manage through change and adopt new technology, which we've discussed a little bit based on the survey. How are carriers upskilling their employees, Kerry?

Kerry Gross (08:42):
And so we asked this to everyone, all the industries that we did this survey in, but among insurers, what we see is that offering internal training or workshops, just like you were talking about, is kind of the number one way that employers in the insurance space are upskilling their employees. And we also see a couple of other common methods, access to external training resources, and then identifying the skills that employees need to develop. And I see that kind of as a whole kind of package of three items. You don't usually do one of those three without doing the other two. It's kind of a group of things that most insurers are doing and somewhat less commonly folks are doing tuition reimbursement, mentorship programs, and non-monetary help for the pursuit of specialty credentials or degrees. And what I think is really interesting in this is insurance is one of the places where internal training is what's happening.

(09:39):
That's not the same across all of the industries that we surveyed. Some of the industries we surveyed folks are going to external credentialing. What I see in this data, and I'd love your thoughts about this, is how much special skill you need within an insurance space. That's not necessarily training that's happening out in another field, going to get an MBA or going to get some other, you don't get to go get your CPA credentials somewhere and then be able to work in insurance, right? It's kind of a very specialized niche. And yeah, I think that that's a great thing that I'd love to hear your thoughts on that internal training piece.

Lauren Dieterich (10:18):
So I have a couple thoughts. We at Arch really think about our training programs in terms of where the employees are at in their careers. So we have programs focused on those new entrants, whether it be interns or new hires out of college. A lot of that training is about teaching them the business of insurance. And we can use internal talent to do that very successfully. As you look at emerging talent, existing people managers and on to executive leadership training, we do rely more heavily on the external training partners and even some that then at the end of that offer a credential to the employee. And we get a lot of positive feedback from that. People value being able to put those credentials on their profile. And I think in terms of mentorship programs, that is also at all of the companies I've been at, that is something that I think the insurance industry does a great job of being cognizant about and trying to make those opportunities available because it is a great way to help internal people advance and help build their networks. And so I really concur with most of what you heard in your survey.

Christina Parr (11:37):
A hundred percent. I'll add maybe just some tools that are different, and Netflix, not our industry, but they just came out today and said, our 125 page manifesto on culture, it's not good enough. We're a better company tomorrow than we are today, and we expect everyone to get better in every day. And they opened up that manifested all the employees, they made thousands of comments and democratized the process. And so that's what we're doing. We're democratizing the process. And one of those tools is Degreed. That's a sample of how do we democratize learning to make sure that they get it in the flow of work. It's not always about that formalized approach. So that's one. We're always making sure that we're connected to the institutes or Triple I, some of these very pragmatic tools and those certifications that help them be more valuable to the organization and own our own skill sets.

Patricia L. Harman (12:38):
Right. I've had an opportunity to speak with a lot of different insurers, and it's interesting because a lot of what you've found in the research is what I've been hearing in the industry as well. So it's nice that kind of validated what we're seeing kind of across the board, what challenges are carriers facing as they build the workforce of the future. And Kerry, I'll start with you on that first.

Kerry Gross (13:03):
Sure. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about upskilling and internal, but then there's sometimes skills gap that you're having that you can't fill internally. And we wanted to understand on the left hand side of this slide, what level of challenge are these insurance professionals having in filling skills gaps at their companies? I see some nodding along at here. We see 19% say it's very challenging to fill the skills gap and 53% say it's somewhat challenging. We didn't limit this to internal or external skills gap. Just how challenging is it for you to fill the roles that you have in front of you? And then we asked a multi-select question on the right hand side to really understand what are the challenges that folks in insurance are having in building their workforce. And then number one most common thing was a limited pool of new applicants with required skills and then tight people resourcing after that salaries are too low or not competitive, upskilling existing employees being a challenge that folks are having in some degree. And then the requirement to be in office 21% say that. And I'd love your thoughts on any and each of these. Maybe we can talk about all of these challenges and then maybe ways to address them. Okay,

Lauren Dieterich (14:15):
Cool.

Christina Parr (14:16):
You're my client typically, so let's talk, shall we?

Lauren Dieterich (14:22):
I would say, especially as I've been building out my team and looking for external talent a limited, we have a large applicant pool, but it's very limited in terms of the exact skills we're looking for. And I'm frequently trying to not only bring in certain capabilities, but I am looking for domain expertise in order to accelerate the transformation that I'm trying to drive. So it does become a very particular sort of profile that we're searching for and we've opted to take our time to wait to find the right candidates. And one of the things I would say in, I know it's scored low in terms of requirement to be in office, but we are very flexible about location because that allows us to canvas the country and get the best candidates for the role.

Christina Parr (15:15):
All of that. Yes, it sounded like Liam Neeson for a minute. I have a very particular of skills. That's what we're looking for with most of our clients. And we often talk about it's time, money, resources, so would you like to pay more so that we can have less time looking for someone because sometimes it comes down to that. Would you like more resources on it? So maybe we can get a wider pool also with 50 different states or many different countries depending upon what you're trying to source. So we really have to talk about those trade-offs. And if you have time, then let's go ahead and train someone from within or someone who has fewer skills and we can hire someone quite quickly. So we're constantly shifting that balance around what is it that we can give or take. And if for example, you have a head of capital that you're looking for right now, I am listening to you for referrals, that's a very particular set of skills, and that's not something that's going to happen typically overnight. We're not going to train that person up anytime soon. That's many, many years of experience as an example.

Kerry Gross (16:35):
I have a question for a second. I'm really curious, what do you do? Who do you turn to evaluate the talent you have inside your company? Do you have formal processes in place? How are you flagging the candidates that you have that are best? Because at least in my experience, the people you already know are kind of your best opportunity to know who has growth. But I'd love to hear, do you have formal processes in place? How are you identifying those folks as your growth performers?

Lauren Dieterich (17:07):
So we absolutely have mechanisms in place at the leadership level to identify our up and coming emerging talent. And so we really try to make sure that amongst the leadership team, we're talking about those people. And as opportunities come up, it's an active discussion about whether somebody can fit into a new role. I think from an internal talent perspective, one of the things I've really tried to do with my team is help everyone understand the career pathing within their verticals, but also see that there are opportunities to move laterally. Because I've actually found lateral moves have been fantastic ways to gain new skills and have ultimately helped advance my career. And I think that sometimes people think too limited around, I need to just advance within the track that I'm on. And so we are really trying to change that mindset at Arch also and help people feel more free to make lateral moves. I think that is a great way to start to build well-rounded talent within the organization and ultimately help fill roles that we need to.

Christina Parr (18:19):
I love that. Instead of the ladder, right? We have the Jungle gym and we're just, that's so fun. Still today I get on the jungle gym anyway, totally with you there. Specific tools, we have cadence, talent review, so we're talking about talent. You might have your nine box, your four box, I mean talent reviews happen. We're calibrating talent, so you're going to have calibration sessions within that succession planning. So you're constantly, if not from within, then you're doing a market map and you're identifying people in the market who might take that person's place, should they win the lottery or something else less desirable. So yes, that's typically what we're, in terms of specific tools on a cadence, those are the things we're looking at. One last thing is when they're coming in, none of us are very good at interviewing. We're just not, and I'm even a trained therapist and I'm bad, just we're all bad at it. The stats prove that the data proves that. So what we do is what is determined to be the best tool, at least per data, is the realistic job preview. So that means people are getting questions from the experts. If you're in this situation, what would you do? Tell us about your process. So this person's going to tell us is this person qualified technically, and do they have the right attitude and skillsets to fulfill that role? So those are the tools that we're using with folks coming in and then the folks from within.

Patricia L. Harman (19:53):
And that makes a lot of sense to do that because you really do need almost a team because everyone's going to be looking and have different questions in a different bent. And so it's doing that collectively, that really kind of gives you a more accurate picture of an individual, I think. So going along with that, how are insurers finding and recruiting new talent then? And Kerry, what did you find as far as the survey?

Kerry Gross (20:17):
Yeah, so this is pretty universal across industries, not particular to insurance. This data is from insurance, but we saw this across all of them. And number one, we're seeing recruiting on LinkedIn. 66% of insurers are saying that's how they're finding new talent, followed by employee referral programs, posting on job boards, working with recruiters and offering internships, really rounding out the top five. And I was fascinated, sorry, personally, to see employee referral programs come up so high on that list. I just didn't, my own previous job searches, general job boards and recruiting came up to the top and that, it was interesting to me to see that come up. But Patty, I don't know your thoughts. Well,

Patricia L. Harman (21:00):
It's really interesting you would say that because the last two jobs that I have gotten were employee referrals from people who were in those companies. So I am excited to see it be that high up on our survey. Cool. Christina, do you have anything else that you want to add to that?

Christina Parr (21:18):
Not a surprise. With employee referrals, it's something that I think two ends of the spectrum. It's awesome and it's not so good because it's awesome that yes, we're a small, insurance is not enormous. You go into specialty insurance, which is where I am, and the pools start to get smaller. And so the challenge is we are also trying to be diverse. So we have had to partner with a group like Diversity Jobs now circa, so that jobs are actually going out to hundreds of different job boards to reach diverse folks. Otherwise we just get the same folks referring the same people and we're just churning through and that's not doing anything for us, for our future. So we love them then. So it's difficult. I think, yes, on all of that. Of course, internal promotions are big, but we're also balancing that with feedback that we get.

(22:20)
We happen to have eight employee resource groups, and so with those employee resource groups, they're informing us, what are you doing to reach out to folks who have pride? What are you doing? This is pride month, what have you done to reach harder to some of those populations? And so we have to be accountable to those employee resource groups of the working families group. And I haven't done a good job of job share. I don't feel like everybody's talking about job share. I would love to know if anyone has a really great job share program where there are mothers trying to come back and the job is shared. And I think the concept is beautiful. I don't feel like we have tackled that well. So maybe other companies have and would love to learn, but we haven't done it. It's not just on me. Obviously it's a company initiative, but when people ask me where is that, it's under review. So yeah, when it's new sometimes to your point, that change, it takes time.

Lauren Dieterich (23:24):
It does,

Patricia L. Harman (23:24):
It does. Lauren, anything you want to add on that in terms of how you're recruiting?

Lauren Dieterich (23:29):
I think LinkedIn is our biggest channel for recruiting, but amongst our leadership team for hiring interns and graduates from college, we are really discussing whether we want to boost our presence on college campuses. It hasn't historically been a major channel for us, but a lot of the underwriting leadership feels like we could source great talent through that. So I would say that's an active discussion to boost that channel. Yeah. Okay.

Patricia L. Harman (24:05):
Alright. So as you're doing your recruiting then, what tools are you using to kind of help? Oh, I'm sorry, I went. You can hit the back button there. Okay, there we go. What tools are you using to help recruit and train your talent? Are there certain things that you're using? Christine, I'll start with you first.

Christina Parr (24:27):
Oh goodness. Well, I mean I think AI for many of us is an area with which we need to explore the old Boolean search for those of you who have done all of that fun business of getting the right word and putting it all together, and this is joyful, maybe going away as we can actually just give a sentence, I'm looking for someone who has underwriting talent specific to writing the legs of a particular performer for their dance show, that kind of thing. That's specialty Indeed. And it's actually insured, right? So that's one of the things that we would need to be very, I think different in our approach. So how do you then test for that acumen, right? That's a new bit of skills that if each of us here have a ChatGPT account, I hope you do. And if you don't go out and go get it right now or get a competitor if you don't want to do ChatGPT, just put competitors to chat GBT, there's a bunch of them, but explore it because I do think that it's valuable for us to as professionals figure out how can we utilize that and maintain the integrity of course of the organization and the roles.

(25:49)
We have some work to do to figure that out.

Lauren Dieterich (25:53):
Completely agree. I think the opportunity to leverage AI in sifting through the hundreds of resumes that come in on any given role is incredibly powerful. And without that, we're really reliant on just human power to get through all of those resumes. And frequently I find with the number of roles we're trying to recruit for, at the same time, it is overwhelming for the recruitment team. So I think there's amazing potential to leverage the tools that are getting built into LinkedIn and other platforms.

Patricia L. Harman (26:28):
Any other tools you found that are particularly help, particularly helpful and either helping you train or recruit your talent too?

Lauren Dieterich (26:38):
I mean, for certain roles we are doing case studies so that you really can get a sense of that technical acumen in the interview process. And then from a training standpoint, what we have done for certain areas of my team is really identify the core capabilities that we need with that vertical. And then we are very strategically finding training modules around those concepts and often partnering with external vendors to help us do that. But it's been a very successful program and helping ramp up our existing workforce and upskill very quickly. So I would encourage you to really break down what capabilities you need for certain roles, evaluate an individual's acumen against those, and then from a team, as you roll that up and look at the skill set across your team, think about where you can augment skill sets by bringing in external training. Great.

Patricia L. Harman (27:44):
So we've covered a lot in the last 30 minutes or so. Is there anything that I haven't asked you or closing thought that you have? Maybe Kerry, I don't know if there was something as since you had the ability to look at this research across multiple industries, was there anything that surprised you, encouraged you or you thought, oh wow, that's really kind of cool because that's the same in multiple industries or whatever?

Kerry Gross (28:07):
Yeah, well I think the number one thing is that there is a skills gap across all industries too. And just that confirmation I think is useful for folks who say, I'm not alone in this. And then thinking about innovative ways to fill the skills gap. I love what Christina said about taking away education requirements for the roles that you realize that was just a barrier in for folks and maybe other types of testing into things. Do people have the communication skills you need? You don't necessarily need to have gone to college to be a really good people person and thinking about what are the end goals and states that I actually need. Lauren in your last statement made me think about when you take a step back and think about, not that you like the person, but what's the end goal I'm trying to get to, right?

(28:54)
You might have roles that you don't actually need to be able to feel warm and fuzzy about that person. You don't want to hire jerks, but you don't need to be able to have a long conversation about your weekend if the end goal that you need is a great actuarial process and thinking about what's the end state I'm trying to get to as a bigger business, where do I try to go? And then what are the ways that I can fill that? And thinking kind of outside of the box is kind of my big takeaway.

Patricia L. Harman (29:24):
Christina and Lauren closing thoughts

Lauren Dieterich (29:29):
May be because of the seed I'm in, but I really feel that change is the new constant for all of us. And so in thinking about building a workforce for the future, I really do believe change agility and change leadership are the skills that you need regardless of what technologies are going to come in and out of our workplace. So I think that's the enduring skillset that you need in your workforce to help move the company forward. So I would encourage you all to think about how you hire for that mindset and also upskill your existing workforce.

Patricia L. Harman (30:04):
Great. Christina, I'll let you have the last word.

Christina Parr (30:07):
Oh gosh. My philosophy, we didn't practice this, so I'm just going to say choose different. Choose different. Choose something different. And what does that mean? Choose something different for you. Something different you're interested in. Choose different people on your team. Choose a different friend, a spouse. My husband couldn't get any different from me, frankly. He's a bull rider and I like to keep my head intact. So just saying. But in general, choose different. I think that will serve us all

Patricia L. Harman (30:37):
Well. Okay, great. Well thank you so much ladies for sharing your insights. Our panelists are not going to be taking any questions, but we're going into a 20 minute break. So if you have a burning question that you just have to ask them, you can probably connect with them during the break. We're taking it for about 20 minutes. Don't forget, you can get your head shots taken too out in the lobby and we'll see you back here at 11.05.