In this hour-long live session, part of February Insurance Careers Month, a panel of experts shared insights and best-practices for engaging top young talent from non-RMI backgrounds and optimizing recruitment, onboarding and retention to better contend with emerging disruptive forces (Insurtech, virtual workspaces).
By Lynne McChristian, I.I.I. Non-resident Scholar and Media Spokesperson
The first slide of my presentation to a group of college students on Valentine’s Day last week was an image of an “I Love Insurance” button. Absent the foresight to bring such buttons for all, Plan B involved bringing heart-shaped chocolates. It fit in a way many of us in this profession would understand, as pathways into insurance are often a Plan B. Many universities are interested in helping students make a career in insurance their A-Game Plan, and that is exactly the type of student group I met with last week at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
More than 20 students are participating this semester in the University of Illinois’ AXIS Risk Management Academy. In a partnership with global specialty insurer/reinsurer AXIS Global Holdings, UIUC established the Academy to interest students from various disciplines in the myriad of career paths available in the insurance industry. Students in this year’s Academy are studying actuarial science, math and finance, financial planning and atmospheric science. Bringing professionals into their meetings to discuss jobs and career paths helps them see the opportunities, and it demonstrates how someone with a degree outside of insurance and risk management can put those skills to work within the insurance field.
I typically start a presentation to insurance newbies with the negative perceptions of the industry. It’s the “elephant in the room” that needs to get out of the way. Using images from various recent natural disasters, I talk about what happened, who was affected, how much it cost, what we learned – and spend time pointing out what is obvious to many of us but not so much to neophytes; simply, that too often people are surprised by the devastation because they are in denial about their risks. With that message conveyed, I can show that insurance is a people business, in which we help people recover from whatever disaster befalls them.
Insurance is personal, and that is a theme that resonates with Gen Z. How do I know? It’s not deep research on my part, but when students come up after a presentation with spark of light in their eyes that shows you’ve got their interest? That’s proof enough.
Lynne McChristian is the director of the Office of Risk Management & Insurance Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is also a senior instructor teaching insurance and enterprise risk management classes.
Each year the I.I.I. hosts a conference called the Property/Casualty Joint Industry Forum. This unique event assembles key figures from the business, policymaking and media spheres to explore topics of vital interest to our industry.
This year we were fortunate to have four-star General Stanley McChrystal as keynote speaker. General McChrystal was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and International Security Assistance Force. He shared crucial lessons on leadership which he acquired while leading the effort against Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Al Qaeda used smartphones and the internet to coordinate attacks; they were “lightning fast and constantly changing.” The elite JSOC was daunted by the terror group; “we were losing” said McChrystal. In order to beat Al Qaeda some of the old rules had to be thrown out, and radical new leadership techniques had to take root. Here are some of the lessons corporate leaders can take away:
Violate the chain of command. Giving everyone in your organization the information you normally only give the C-suite leads to “empowered execution”. In our fast-paced world there is not always time to let everything trickle down a long chain of command.
Give employees the freedom to use their own judgement. “Execute the order, but if the order is wrong, execute the order we should have given you.” Don’t allow “just following procedure” to be an excuse for actions that are wildly inappropriate for the situation.
Think of the role of leader as akin to that of a gardener. A gardener does not grow plants, only plants can do that. Instead, a gardener feeds, weeds and protects the plants thereby allowing them to do what they do best. By enabling the organization you will be sure to see a positive outcome, concluded McChrystal.
