Around the turn of the century, the insurance industry entered the war on talent.

As boomers began aging out of the workforce, succession planning took on a pronounced urgency.

Insurance leaders feared they would be replaced by naïve, social media obsessed young professionals unprepared for the realities of the workplace.

We're all familiar with this narrative at this point. Millennials, or young professionals typically identified as having been born roughly between 1980 and 2000, have much different expectations and norms around work and careers than their parents' and grandparents' generations.

Not satisfied to merely follow the well-worn path towards promotions and career respect, they want ongoing feedback, clear rewards and a sense of community and meaning. Therefore, this current talent development milieu isn't just a matter of replacing retiring people; it's a matter of reimagining the workplace and integrating different styles of learning and working while responding to an overwhelming demand for smart, new talent.

Battles on multiple fronts

But why is it a war on talent? Combine these retirement and recruiting realities with an insurance industry demanding a greater diversity of skills and the accelerating pace of technological development and the composite challenges are daunting. Those tasked with recruiting, developing and supporting young professionals are feeling like they are truly waging a war, with battles on multiple fronts that must be won for the future of their companies and the industry.

The number of jobs available in the insurance industry is expected to grow over the next five years. Today's up and coming young professionals are the natural successors to fill those jobs, assuming they can be recruited and retained in time.

All companies must learn — and should want to learn — to evolve talent management to help young professionals thrive in the modern insurance workplace. Now isn't the time to disparage younger workers; now is the time to engage them.

Here are four tools to arm yourself with to win the war on talent:

older man helping young colleague

The youngest workers among us are digital natives — they have not known life without the internet — and view technology as an enabler of their lives. (Photos: iStock)

1. Understand what young professionals want.

Millennials and their generational successors, Generation Z, have different expectations for their work-life balance than previous generations. They have been raised with a great deal of structure, but one which blends work and play. At the same time, they have a deep conscientious streak; they want their employers to join them in fighting a worthy cause, support their volunteerism and help them work in teams with their co-workers.

They also have different learning and working styles. The youngest workers among us are digital natives — they have not known life without the internet — and view technology as an enabler of their lives.

Young workers can be fast, creative and short on patience; hierarchy creates a roadblock to decision making because they need to wait for approval. If promotions take too long in coming, they will jump ship.

At the same time, younger workers are oriented towards long- and short-term goals and meaningful work. They need quick, clear and ongoing feedback that helps them fit their work into the big picture.

Crave confirmation

That is, young workers crave confirmation that they are making a purposeful contribution towards something that matters. Helping them grow will require a renewed focus on talent development and engagement, which became a victim of the economic downturn as companies were forced to consolidate jobs and job functions.

For the sake of tomorrow's insurance leaders and to the benefit of all insurance professionals, we need to rethink how we model employee careers: rather than climbing the corporate ladder, employees are now scaling a rock climbing wall. They are making lateral moves when step-ups aren't available, all in the pursuit of a strong and meaningful career.

Related: Using tech to win talent

young potential employees

In order to develop talent appropriately, you need to know how your business is going to expand and strategically plan for what skill sets your employees will and will not need. (Photo: iStock)

2. Know talent management best practices.

Over the years, our perspective on recruiting, developing and retaining professional workers has changed with the jargon, from personnel management to human resources to human capital to talent management. Many descriptions of the younger generations reflect much of what we consider current best practices in talent management.

Integrated talent management is an organizational approach to leading people by building culture, engagement, capability and capacity through talent acquisition, development and deployment processes aligned to business goals.

Meeting the challenges of the modern insurance workplace requires several practices working together for talent management. These are your specialized forces in the war on talent: acquisition, team and individual development and engagement, succession planning, organizational development, career planning, retention and performance management.

Talent management must focus on both the big picture and the minutiae of day-to-day activities. In order to develop talent appropriately, you need to know how your business is going to expand and strategically plan for what skill sets your employees will and will not need. Will this require you to hire or redevelop the employees you already have? How does this align to their career goals?

Succession planning is a big focus of talent management in the insurance space, considering current challenges. Say you have 10 years until the owner of your agency retires and 10 C-suite positions to fill. Who do you want in those positions — in the pipeline towards becoming CEO?

Talent management allows us to figure out what work needs to be done to develop people along paths that fulfill them professionally and ensure the business is prepared for the future.

boss viewing young employee's work

(Photo: iStock)

3. Engage through performance management practices.

As part of talent management, performance management is the process that aligns employees with the work needed to meet business goals. Think of this as the day-to-day of talent management, addressing short- to medium-term goals that work in tandem with your succession plan.

We can divide performance management into four distinct practices that work together in a yearly cycle:

Setting expectations – At the beginning of the financial cycle, managers can work with each employee to review business goals, set expectations in terms of daily work and goals and create individual development plans for building skills and competencies that relate to their work and their next job.
Providing feedback – Managers should communicate regularly and fluidly with team members about their performance on a day-to-day basis, but they must also make time for more formal feedback. These feedback sessions should occur at least quarterly and take the form of a dialogue. The manager can help the employee stayed aligned with business goals, while the employee can help to drive the feedback by tying it to their career goals.
Evaluation – Evaluating employees isn't just about assessing their performance; this is also about realigning their development with goals at the end of the performance management cycle. Core to this conversation is knowing your key messages about performance and future expectations. Those messages may be short, but they must be meaningful to the employee. Document their performance in the last period, share key performance messages and discuss their career.
Recognition – The most obvious example of recognition is merit pay and bonuses, but do not overlook non-monetary forms of recognition that are meaningful. Meaningful recognition will look different for different employees. Some people would prefer to be recognized in public, while others would prefer a quieter reward, like new work-at-home privileges.

What sets this process apart is not only the cyclical nature. It also strengthens employee engagement, so their expectations are aligned with business realities. It connects them to the goals of the business and their department, so they feel they can have a positive impact and contribute to the organization in a meaningful way.

Related: Why mentoring is critical

The performance management process also puts the employee in the driver's seat, so they can own the results of their work. And it actually translates to improved business results, with everyone working together towards common goals while ensuring their professional goals and needs are met — a crucial practice for managing an increasingly diverse and younger workforce that will inherit the business.

young professionals in a conference room

SMART goals help employees see where they fit in the big picture. (Photo: Shutterstock)

4. Start with SMART goals.

Young professionals, talent development, succession planning, performance management — there are many fronts on which to fight the war on talent. Much of this requires a big-picture, strategic perspective best tackled in conjunction with senior management. But managers can win skirmishes on a day-to-day basis, and SMART goals are an excellent place to start.

SMART goals are a favorite topic of everyone from personal development bloggers to school teachers. But they are a powerful tool for beginning to align employee performance, individual career goals and business goals. SMART stands for the characteristics of strong goal-setting habits:

Specific – the goals specify what will be achieved, when it will be achieved and how it will be achieved
Measurable – the goals include quantity, quality and budgetary considerations
Attainable – the employee has the necessary resources and authority to reach this goal
Relevant – the goals are tied to a strategic and/or departmental goal
Time-bound – the employee has benchmark dates and a deadline for the goals

Here's a goal that meets those specifications:

Increase new business policy count by 62 percent by year end. Accomplish this by:

Monitoring and tracking progress vs. territory goals – reports built and distributed by the end of January.
Monthly meeting with sales teams that address action plans and pipelines that are documented and distributed – in place by end of Q1.
Pipeline reports distributed to sales staff on a bi-weekly basis – Crystal Reports built and distributed by end of February.

If you have identified goals for your department or team for 2017, take a fresh look at them through the SMART lens and see if you can define them more concretely. SMART goals — and their context within performance management and talent development — help employees see where they fit in the big picture, help managers ensure their team is making an efficient contribution to the whole and help eliminate sources of waste in processes.

As we have watched the insurance industry undergo significant changes through the recent recession, the emergence of the next generation of professionals and technological advances, it has become clear the war on talent will not be won on a single front. We must address the succession planning concerns of boomers, the development needs of millennials and the business goals of the organization in order to create lasting change that strengthens the insurance industry rather than just reacting to change.

Ruth Sencio, vice president of Global Talent for New York City-based ReSource Pro, has 30 years of financial services experience in the U.S. and abroad. She can be reached at ruth@resourcepro.com.

Special Reports /

4 ways the insurance industry can win the war for talent

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