What strategies may help insurers adapt to hiring trends

The insurance industry needs help to keep up with changing expectations of workers and companies. The biggest challenge is balancing flexible work arrangements with meeting company goals and providing a quality company culture.

Many employees prefer flexible work arrangements and hesitate to return to the office full-time. As such, insurance companies must find a way to provide these arrangements or risk losing the next generation of talent to other industries.

With 90% of insurance companies planning to hire this year, understanding and adapting to these trends and challenges will shape the industry’s success for years.

Talent

While the insurance industry needs fresh, bright minds to drive its growth and innovation, there’s an issue – employees aged between 25-34 tend to leave their jobs much earlier than their older colleagues.

Ensure access to a highly-skilled labor force by taking proactive steps to modify current recruitment strategies. You can take steps to compete with larger firms for this talent by offering competitive compensation and benefits packages, emphasizing professional development and growth opportunities, and highlighting work-life balance and flexible work arrangements.

Though these solutions may seem unconventional compared to traditional recruitment practices, they’re essential in helping the industry attract younger talent and inspiring them to stay long enough to make an impact.

Remote work

Embracing remote work has revolutionized the insurance industry, enabling smaller companies in remote locales to tap into a vast and diverse talent pool via online recruitment. Before the pandemic, only 2% of insurance jobs posted via Wizehire were remote, now 16% are. It’s a significant jump, but still far behind many other industries.

Despite the challenge of maintaining a cohesive company culture with a dispersed workforce, providing remote work opportunities can bridge the gap and attract high-caliber individuals from across the country.

Company culture can be maintained by regular communication through virtual meetings, team-building activities, and informal check-ins. You could also implement mentoring programs to connect remote employees with experienced team members.

Providing access to online training resources and professional development opportunities allows employees to grow in their careers. It’s also important to keep strong connections with remote employees. This can be done by recognizing and rewarding employee achievements, regardless of the location. However it’s most important to establish clear expectations and performance metrics for remote workers so that nothing is lost by the fact that people aren’t in the same location.

Market changes

Fluctuations in capital markets and pressure for profitability are forcing insurtech companies to downsize or consider consolidation deals. This presents an opportunity for businesses to attract and recruit top digital talent such as data scientists and machine-learning engineers drawn to the industry.

It’s an optimal time for business owners and operators to strengthen their digital talent pool. Proactively recruiting skilled professionals seeking new opportunities can keep your business ahead of the curve, allowing you to adapt to emerging technologies and maintain a competitive edge.

The downturn in insurtech presents a unique opportunity for engineering and data analytics professionals to access more job openings in traditional insurance companies.

Insurtech companies are now focusing on enabling the insurance value chain and cooperating with insurers, offering engineers and data analysts the chance to work on collaborative projects and build innovative solutions for the insurance industry.