Time for Insurance industry to change talent management framework:
Attracting high quality talent requires a high quality talent management framework. The Insurance industry has been criticized for failing to have this framework. Anyone who has worked in the industry for any period of time, might understand this criticism.
High quality Millennial talent wants to know it will have opportunity for career growth, advancement, new experiences, better compensation, no stagnation, while helping achieve meaningful organizational goals.
Career growth/experiences
Future leaders need opportunity to grow their careers and experiences in management or leadership that they will need for the future. The opportunity to gain new experiences helps individuals feel like they are progressing – while not needed promotions or job changes every 2 years.
The Industry talent management framework for knowledge workers should focus on new experiences for career growth/progression. If organizations view their people as assets, this would only increase the value of your organizations.
Some of the experiences future leaders will need include:
- People management
- International experience
- Product or P&L management
- New Product development
- Sales/Marketing
- Finance/Accounting/General Mgmt reporting/Budgeting
- Data and Analytics projects
More varying experiences will help future leaders understand, plan, and prepare better for their future. If you can see the responsibilities of future leader, you will know how to prepare or where you will have the most success or interest in pursuit.
Fast Track career path
Identifying high potential, high talent young professionals and tagging them for a Fast track career path would help on many fronts.
Retaining talent, developing talent, and attracting talent. High performers or high potential employees want to stay where they are being recognized, as well as being rewarded for their efforts.
This requires more skills and resources by the senior leadership for recognizing top talent and being focused on talent development as well as results.
Other industries have Fast Track career paths and don’t suffer from the same issues as the insurance industry with recruitment, retention, and image.
Mentor programs
High quality and top performing employees will want access to senior leadership. There should be a corporate mentor program, where the senior leadership or executive team embrace future leaders.
The time spent with top talent, will be paid back 10x.
Thoughts
Very few companies in the sector have a Fast Track career path. This needs to change. A slow moving industry, with a slow career progression or talent management framework, will lag behind other industries for attracting talent (except in recessionary periods – which was the 2nd best industry recruiting tool in last 30 years behind family/nepotism)
Current leadership should step out of the way and focus on developing these future leaders. Give them experience based development tools.
It is in their best interest for a couple reasons, but from a financial – stock based executives should be focusing on developing the next generation of leaders to protect their investments.
