How to Build a Talent Strategy for the Future
Creating the right mix of talent will be key for capturing (re)insurance growth opportunities as transformative trends shape the future landscape.
Key Takeaways
-
The insurance industry is looking for ways to attract people with the right mindset and skills for a fast-changing business environment.
-
Diverse skills and viewpoints are vital to inform business strategy, while future underwriting teams should be more collaborative, blending technical and people skills.
-
Leadership is key to successfully manage talent transformation and create an open, respectful and inclusive culture.
Insurance industry leaders are working hard to understand the fast-evolving business challenges they face, and the skillsets their organizations need to overcome them. But the current rate of recruitment is not sufficient. The industry needs to urgently attract people with the right mindset and skills for a fast-changing business environment. Aon’s recent Transformative Trends whitepaper identified the powerful megatrends shaping the future risk landscape, and their potential to generate billions of dollars in premium. However, to understand the future and fully capture these opportunities, (re)insurers will need the right talent and culture to inform and execute their strategy.
Insurance leaders are fully aware of this talent challenge. After speaking with the CEOs of 20 leading insurers, it became clear that they recognized the industry’s skill requirements are changing, and that new recruitment approaches and career development paths are needed.
It’s also apparent that talent is one of the most important and challenging aspects of their job — specifically, the ability to attract talent from outside the industry. Insurance leaders know they must adapt their businesses to manage transformative trends, while also staying relevant in a shifting risk environment.
Here, we set out five key steps to help create and implement a talent strategy fit for the future landscape.
1. Start with business strategy
Transformative trends require insurers to attract and develop new skills, knowledge and expertise to drive innovation. More than ever, (re)insurers will need subject matter experts across a wide range of risks and industries, and people with the skills to transform their businesses in areas like data, artificial intelligence and business readiness.
However, while the industry is making some progress on attracting technical and subject matter experts, it also needs to focus on finding the right talent earlier in the business strategy design process, and then effectively integrating this talent.
(Re)insurers must first be clear on their strategic direction and growth plans before they get into scaling talent activity. Otherwise, it’s like preparing for a journey without knowing the destination, often resulting in wasted time and effort.
2. Tap into diverse talent pools
To develop an effective strategy in this fast-changing environment, insurers need to bring together diverse viewpoints to understand the potential impacts and define the strategic roadmap. This process should start with c-suite tapping into three distinct pools of talent:
- Insurance practitioners: Experienced technical people in insurance who understand how the business works today and have an open mind to explore the impact of transformative trends and the implications for insurance.
- Industry futurists: Experts who understand where the world is heading across specific emergent risks (e.g., mobility, cyber and climate) who are progressive, challenging and interested in enabling the sector to deliver its purposeful ambition.
- Change orchestrators: Change and transformation practitioners who understand the insurance sector and can facilitate collaboration between practitioners and futurists, bring out the best of people, challenge strategy and enable delivery.
If limited in capability or capacity across any of these three areas, organizations can explore external consulting support for the short term. However, they should also plan to build out this talent as part of their strategic workforce planning and implementation roadmap.
3. Build teams around technical and people skills and collaboration
The ability to leverage different skills and collaborate will also be vital to deliver the future underwriting model. Here too, the emphasis should be on the team rather than the individual. Underwriting teams in the future will require a carefully curated composition of talent, with a balance of technical and people skills.
Integrating a broad mix of skillsets and personalities is not easy, as highlighted by the industry’s experience of integrating data analytics into underwriting. During conversations with CEOs, Aon learned of teams that were often apprehensive — almost resistant to work together — and even operating in separate rooms.
As insurers transition to a new underwriting model that blends traditional underwriting skills with data and advanced analytics, it’s important to manage the integration of multiple stakeholders — each with potentially different mindsets and ways of working — to encourage teamwork, spark innovation, leverage opportunities and embrace change. There is little reason to hire people if they are not given an environment in which they can flourish.
4. Foster an open, respectful and inclusive culture
Insurers will need to attract and integrate a diverse range of new talent into the workplace, while also retaining and developing existing talent.
As new talent enters the sector, existing employees will need to respect and value differences in expertise and approaches. Achieving cohesion and collaboration between colleagues with varied experience and backgrounds is a big cultural challenge, calling for a deliberate and renewed focus on engagement, belonging and inclusion.
Leadership has a vital role to play in creating a space and culture for collaboration, trust and respect. Giving valued staff the confidence to embrace change and try something different is critical for enabling career mobility. It is only human to resist change. In fact, the most established and successful people often feel they have the least to gain from change. And it is up to leadership to encourage these people along.
5. Display a positive industry image
It’s one thing to recognize the need to attract and retain talent from outside the industry, but doing so remains a major challenge. That’s why the insurance industry needs to rethink its image.
Too often, the industry is perceived by outsiders as old fashioned, undynamic and behind on the transformation curve. But those that work in insurance know that it can be a stimulating and rewarding career, and one that often has a deep social connection. Insurance has an incredible story to tell, but it is often seen through the lens of home or motor insurance, as opposed to enabling renewable energy projects or improving society’s resilience to natural disasters.
Workforce intelligence can help insurers align the employee value proposition (EVP) with the evolving expectations of those entering the workforce, highlighting the variety of career and personal development opportunities available, as well as the industry’s dynamic work environment. Aon research found that 65 percent of candidates discontinued a hiring process due to an unattractive EVP and culture. Given the sector’s talent challenge, getting this right is vital.
The industry will also need to tailor its message to attract specific talent. For example, Aon’s Centre for Innovation and Analytics (ACIA) has been working with a STEM focused portal1 to raise awareness of opportunities in the insurance industry for analytic and data science professionals. By showcasing projects, people in similar roles, and ACIA’s culture and diversity, there has been encouraging success in recruiting, as well as exceeding industry benchmarks in terms of gender split.
Futureproof Your Talent Strategy
Transformative trends are shaping the future landscape and creating opportunities for (re)insurers in a wide range of areas. Winning organizations, however, will be those that are deliberately orchestrating talent through an integrated business and people strategy as a key part of their wider transformation program.
Insurance industry leaders need to move from awareness to action, to futureproof their talent strategy.
Discover More: Contact Louisa Blain to learn how you can make better informed decisions to build a talent strategy for the future.
General Disclaimer
This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.
Terms of Use
The contents herein may not be reproduced, reused, reprinted or redistributed without the expressed written consent of Aon, unless otherwise authorized by Aon. To use information contained herein, please write to our team.
Aon's Better Being Podcast
Our Better Being podcast series, hosted by Aon Chief Wellbeing Officer Rachel Fellowes, explores wellbeing strategies and resilience. This season we cover human sustainability, kindness in the workplace, how to measure wellbeing, managing grief and more.
Aon Insights Series UK
Expert Views on Today's Risk Capital and Human Capital Issues
Construction and Infrastructure
The construction industry is under pressure from interconnected risks and notable macroeconomic developments. Learn how your organization can benefit from construction insurance and risk management.
Cyber Labs
Stay in the loop on today's most pressing cyber security matters.
Cyber Resilience
Our Cyber Resilience collection gives you access to Aon’s latest insights on the evolving landscape of cyber threats and risk mitigation measures. Reach out to our experts to discuss how to make the right decisions to strengthen your organization’s cyber resilience.
Employee Wellbeing
Our Employee Wellbeing collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team. You can also reach out to the team at any time for assistance with your employee wellbeing needs.
Environmental, Social and Governance Insights
Explore Aon's latest environmental social and governance (ESG) insights.
Q4 2023 Global Insurance Market Insights
Our Global Insurance Market Insights highlight insurance market trends across pricing, capacity, underwriting, limits, deductibles and coverages.
Regional Results
How do the top risks on business leaders’ minds differ by region and how can these risks be mitigated? Explore the regional results to learn more.
Human Capital Analytics
Our Human Capital Analytics collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team. Contact us to learn how Aon’s analytics capabilities helps organizations make better workforce decisions.
Insights for HR
Explore our hand-picked insights for human resources professionals.
Workforce
Our Workforce Collection provides access to the latest insights from Aon’s Human Capital team on topics ranging from health and benefits, retirement and talent practices. You can reach out to our team at any time to learn how we can help address emerging workforce challenges.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Our Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders to help dealmakers make better decisions. Explore our latest insights and reach out to the team at any time for assistance with transaction challenges and opportunities.
Navigating Volatility
How do businesses navigate their way through new forms of volatility and make decisions that protect and grow their organizations?
Parametric Insurance
Our Parametric Insurance Collection provides ways your organization can benefit from this simple, straightforward and fast-paying risk transfer solution. Reach out to learn how we can help you make better decisions to manage your catastrophe exposures and near-term volatility.
Pay Transparency and Equity
Our Pay Transparency and Equity collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team on topics ranging from pay equity to diversity, equity and inclusion. Contact us to learn how we can help your organization address these issues.
Property Risk Management
Forecasters are predicting an extremely active 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Take measures to build resilience to mitigate risk for hurricane-prone properties.
Technology
Our Technology Collection provides access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders on navigating the evolving risks and opportunities of technology. Reach out to the team to learn how we can help you use technology to make better decisions for the future.
Top 10 Global Risks
Trade, technology, weather and workforce stability are the central forces in today’s risk landscape.
Trade
Our Trade Collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders on navigating the evolving risks and opportunities for international business. Reach out to our team to understand how to make better decisions around macro trends and why they matter to businesses.
Weather
With a changing climate, organizations in all sectors will need to protect their people and physical assets, reduce their carbon footprint, and invest in new solutions to thrive. Our Weather Collection provides you with critical insights to be prepared.
Workforce Resilience
Our Workforce Resilience collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's Human Capital team. You can reach out to the team at any time for questions about how we can assess gaps and help build a more resilience workforce.
More Like This
-
Alert 7 mins
Client Alert: Responding to Heightened Risk in the Middle East
The current operating environment in the Middle East is increasingly complex and multifaceted, characterized by ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon and neighboring states, alongside significant changes in the business and insurance environment.
-
Article 8 mins
Florida Hurricanes Not Expected to Adversely Affect Property Market
Hurricanes Helene and Milton insured loss estimates are expected to fall between $34 billion and $54 billion. Healthy, well-capitalized insurance and reinsurance markets are positioned to absorb those losses.
-
Article 17 mins
Q3 2024: Global Insurance Market Overview
Buyer-friendly conditions continued across much of the global insurance market in Q3, painting a largely positive picture as we head into year-end renewals.