Recent hiring announcements by privately held brokerage firms may be an indicator of employees' growing discomfort with the business philosophy at some large, publicly held concerns, a consultant said.
Recently, two significant privately held brokerage firms announced the hiring of sales executives who were formerly with Marsh and Aon.
On Tuesday, the Toledo, Ohio-based Hylant Group said Doug Miller was named vice president in the group's Ann Arbor, Mich., office.
Mr. Miller, prior to joining Hylant, was Marsh FINPRO Practice Leader for Michigan. Marsh is the insurance brokerage subsidiary of New York-based Marsh & McLennan Companies.
The same day Kansas City, Mo.-based insurance broker Lockton announced that three executives who previously worked for Chicago-based insurance broker Aon Corp. joined its firm.
They were Mark Holloway, named co-director of compliance services in its employee benefit service in Kansas City; William Butler, who was named senior vice president and producer, and Rodger Laurite, who joined as senior vice president and unit manager, both in Atlanta.
Mr. Holloway is a co-author and editor of "The Coordination of Benefits Handbook."
Early in its formation, New York-based insurance brokerage Integro announced a series of hirings, many of whom came from Marsh.
Joyce Gioia-Herman, president and chief executive officer of The Herman Group based in Greensboro, N.C., a futurist and management consulting firm, said the executive hirings may be an indication of unhappiness with the management strategy being employed by some of these firms.
"As large organizations, in their drive for bottom line profitability, misguidedly choose to move away from a more agent-centric approach to doing business, they will find their agents making other choices as well," she observed.
She said the philosophical changes at these larger firms are causing producers to make choices to move elsewhere to firms they feel will take care of them.
"[The large organizations] think they are doing the right thing for the future of their organization, but they are not," Ms. Gioia-Herman said.
The bottom line is that corporations, if they need to retain people, need to take care of them. When a company does not, employees "wake up and say it is not worth it for me" and move on.
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