Roughly three out of five millennials, Gen Xers and Gen Zers report that their productivity has been impacted by current events, according to the "Nintex Workplace 2021 Study." (Photo: Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock.com)
As it turns out, I'm not the only American who has struggled to focus on work amid the global pandemic, the country's tumultuous political climate, and whatever personal repercussions may be linked with those two cultural icebergs.
Roughly three out of five millennials, Gen Xers and Gen Zers report that their productivity has been impacted by current events, according to the "Nintex Workplace 2021 Study," for which researchers interviewed 1,000 workers in the U.S. at companies with 500 or more employees to determine the pressing issues facing employees and employers in 2021.
Nearly half of respondents said their mental health has suffered as a result of COVID-19 concerns and restrictions. On the upside, 70% of respondents to the Nintex study said they're adapting better than expected to working remotely, and roughly half are pleased with the new workplace flexibility ushered in by the pandemic.
But it will probably come as little surprise that politics weighed heavily on the minds of many Americans as this year began to unfold. One of my colleagues shared that on the afternoon of Wed., Jan. 6, 2021, as so-called "patriots" unleashed a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, her email inbox became eerily and uncharacteristically quiet. It follows that political polarization is one of the top five issues to watch in the insurance world this year, according to Mark Walls and Kimberly George, hosts of the "Out Front Ideas" podcast and longtime members of the NU Property & Casualty Editorial Advisory Board.
"Political polarization has split this nation for far too long," Walls said during a recent webinar. "This leads to an 'us vs. them' mentality, prevents compromise and undermines public trust in information."
His comment reminds me of one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quotes: "We must learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or perish together as fools."
So while I have no doubt that, like me, many of you have strong feelings about how American politics have taken shape in recent years, try to remember that just like your clients, people on both sides of the political aisle fancy themselves patriots, care about our democracy, and are driven by many of the same motivations.
You can get to know Mark Walls and Kimberly George better by reading through our recent feature highlighting the collection of leaders who make up NU's 2021 Editorial Advisory Board, a group that my team and I will look to in the months ahead to help us make heads or tails of what's happening in the P&C insurance space.
Another group that lends clarity to how we narrate insurance-industry news consists of respondents to the annual NU/PIA Independent Insurance Agent Survey. These results are being rolled out this week on PropertyCasualty360.com and also appear in the January/February issue of NU Property & Casualty magazine, which is our first issue of 2021 as NU goes from 12 issues a year to 10.
The survey results illuminate how insurance agencies are managing challenges old and new, which business pressures worry agency owners the most, the impact of the continued push toward digitization, and just how agencies are faring during the pandemic. It's a meaty data set about the current state of the P&C insurance world and resonates that much more given that our research partner, the National Association of Insurance Agents (PIA), lends key analysis to the survey results.
I'm grateful to PIA for its ongoing support of the Agent Survey and to you for reading it.
And that's what's top of mind for me this month.
Elana Ashanti Jefferson
Editor-in-Chief Elana Ashanti Jefferson is a veteran journalist and communications professional. Reach her by sending an e-mail to [email protected].