By Nik Ellis
Only 4% of millennials are interested in working in the insurance industry, this indicates a huge talent crisis for the future. How might the industry adapt to these potentially disruptive changes to maintain a consistent influx of talent in the future?
The pandemic reversed employer controlled recruitment to today’s ‘talent crisis’. Employees are now in control, enjoying the choice of the wealth of vacancies out there plus the ability to leverage exponentially increasing pay packages, benefits & deals.
Industries with price sensitive products like insurers find their profits diminished by an increasing bottom line, particularly as salaries are often one of the most expensive costs on a balance sheet. So what is the smart alternative to the so called ‘Great Resignation’
The Smart Alternative
We are seeing an accelerating trend to automate many aspects of life; humans in the workplace are no exception.
Many roles within companies are administrative based, performing ‘if this, then that’ type operations; a flow of work with various factors that influence the route & end result. These work flows can be automated to produce the same outcomes as a human, when given rules & parameters to decision making.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is amplifying the quality & efficiencies of automated work flow platforms. We’re even seeing self awareness of when the AI is unconfident, for example with the occasional irregular case; without ego, it simply refers to a human, making a failsafe system.
Making an existing system more efficient is a positive aspect, but the sheer amounts of data producing salient management information allows leaders to make informed decisions that can allow a company to become more effective.
It could be suggested that computers are taking the jobs of humans & to a certain extent that is true. I would argue that tech is replacing the more routine & mundane processes allowing humans to concentrate on the more creative & abstract roles, often leading to a happier work life balance. One could pontificate that the talent shortages are simply because roles that can be done by machines are not very fulfilling.
Automation creates a greater customer experience; it runs 24/7/365, typically produces instant results, it can help consumers without any intervention in the vast majority of cases, and whilst there is an initial investment, the ROI is incredible thereafter.
We are seeing a drift towards re-skilling, particularly into tech based subjects such as AI, coding, big data; subjects that continue to grow rapidly and require a myriad of tech talent.
Businesses with their eye on future growth are embracing automated work flows to fulfil the vast majority of traditional roles more efficiently than ever whilst augmenting the effectiveness of their service. The smart ones are attracting talent that can work with contemporaneous tech today & ensure that they are trained & developed to cope with the somewhat unknown tomorrow.
Reproduced with kind permission from Modern Insurance Magazine