In a bid to promote the insurance industry as a career avenue offering variety, professionalism and the chance to make a difference, there is a lot of focus on what insurance represents and how that message can be imparted to a wider talent pool. Just as important, however, is that insurance businesses communicate their internal company culture and emphasise what sets them apart individually as a place to work.
In a recent IBTV discussion debating ‘What challenges do the insurance industry’s rising stars face?’ Yasmin Carter-Esdale, account handler at Risk Management Partners, highlighted that a big driver for younger talent is that company culture piece and how it is conveyed. Looking at first-generation professionals, for example, she said, company culture is a critical factor – they want to be able to see how they’ll fit in with their peers – and companies have to take an extra step to make sure they’re included.
“Company culture is a huge thing,” she said. “That’s something we can always improve on. It’s continuous, there’s no end date. And it’s something that really needs to be strong and conveyed strongly as well.”
Evaluating a strong internal culture inevitably lends itself to scrutiny around the role more established insurance professionals can play through mentoring and sponsoring. Looking at how the collaboration between younger and older generations can be improved, Ola Jacob, broker success manager at FloodFlash said his experience to date had been unanimously positive.
He has been able to foster strong relationships with people of influence in the companies he has worked in, he said, and seen how, as a result, you can learn so much from them and they can learn so much from you. The way in which you can foster stronger teams is by matching up experienced professionals with young people with new ideas, he said, and using both A and B, you can get to C a lot quicker.
“So that could be joining together to come up with new lines of business, new ways of approaching new markets,” he said. “And it’s [about] that diversity of thought… You can talk about [that across] a whole lot of different spectrums but from the ‘old to young’ perspective, I think having that diversity of thought when you’re looking at a particular problem is really very helpful.
“So, I think from that perspective, it’s something that can only enhance [your business]. If you look at classes of business like cyber… or insurtechs… when you give young people a chance to run teams, they do very, very well… So, I think, if a traditional broker or insurer isn’t empowering the right young people, they’re only shooting themselves in the foot.”
