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Latest Insurance Talent Perspectives

Building and Maintaining a Strong Employer Brand

In today’s competitive labor market, a strong employer brand is a key differentiator in recruiting top talent, reducing costs, enhancing the candidate pool, and retaining high performers by instilling pride in their roles and company. 

View our latest white paper for tips to ensure your company represents itself as an employer of choice.

Q3 2024 Insurance Labor Market Study Results

The Jacobson Group and Aon conduct a Semi-Annual Insurance Labor Market Study to examine industry hiring and revenue trends and projections. The findings of our Q3 2024 iteration reflect a relatively stable labor market, with modest job growth.

Download the results to explore 2024’s staffing forecasts and hiring plans for the insurance industry.

Combatting the Finance and Accounting Talent Shortage

Faced with a shallowing pool of emerging talent and a workforce nearing retirement, finding qualified accounting and finance professionals has been an intensifying challenge for the industry. A comprehensive multi-prong approach is necessary to cultivate a workforce that can meet evolving demands and ensure operational continuity.

Read our blog post for insights on staying ahead of the growing finance and accounting talent crisis.

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Las Vegas or Bust! Rethinking Employee Engagement

Happy and motivated employees are the key to any successful business. A company will have a hard time being productive and profitable with employees who don’t enjoy their jobs. Yet studies are reporting that anywhere from 66% - 77% of workers in the U.S. are disengaged and unmotivated. So what can we do? There is no exact answer when it comes to motivating individuals. What works for one may not work for all. But creating a company culture where people feel appreciated and recognized for their hard work is a good place to start. Like most companies, Jacobson sets annual goals. Throughout the past 10 years, we have added an incentive for meeting these goals—a company trip. That’s right, we offer our employees (and a guest of their choice) a joint trip, on the company, for reaching our annual targets. At the beginning of the year, we meet with our employees and share with them our objectives for the next 12 months and announce the motivational destination. The goal is then prominently displayed in the break room, so everyone can see how we are progressing throughout the year. Emails recognizing large sales or highlighting hardworking employees are circulated amongst teams, creating a sense of camaraderie and celebrating milestones throughout the year. In the past 10 years, we have taken 4 company trips. In fact, this week, we are taking the company to Las Vegas. The office here at our headquarters is filled with buzz and excitement; and I, too, am looking forward to celebrating our success with each and every employee. A company trip may not work for all companies. However, it is the simple things that often make a big difference. Don’t forget to pat workers on the back for doing a great job or show your appreciation with a catered lunch every once in a while. Whatever the method, employees want to know that their hard work is valued. Show them you care and you will find yourself with a much happier, motivated workforce. What are some employee engagement best practices you have implemented at your organization?

Game On: The Quest to Attract Analytical Talent

It is my pleasure to introduce a guest blogger for this latest post. Patricia Strange is a Fulfillment Director leading our executive search team here at Jacobson. Patty’s expertise provides strong insights that are definitely worth a read. Enjoy… Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a Women’s Insurance Networking Group (WING) luncheon with guest speaker Kelley Buchanan of PwC’s Insurance Advisory Practice. Kelley spoke on a topic that everyone in insurance is buzzing about: analytics and big data. In her presentation, entitled “Game On: How Information is changing the rules of Insurance,” she offers an example of how underwriters are using analytics to expand sales and augment new business capacity. Data is creating competitive advantages for insurance companies that are differentiating organizations and driving success. It’s clear that it’s no longer optional for insurers to build a cutting-edge strategy that incorporates data and analytics – it’s a requirement. So it begs the question – with the world of insurance analytics changing so rapidly, how will insurers keep up with the demand for talent? According to Jacobson and Ward Group’s 2013 Insurance Labor Market Study, for the first time ever, the demand for actuarial talent was surpassed by – you guessed it – analytics. Jacobson has seen firsthand that the demand for analytics talent has sky-rocketed – at all levels including entry-level and staff roles, as well as middle management and executive posts. And, our forward-thinking clients also consider bringing in top analytics talent on a contract basis for special projects or interim roles. Those innovative companies that have begun to dig into advanced analytics beyond that of just traditional business intelligence will have the advantage in the marketplace and will be particularly compelling to prospective talent. Organizations must have an exciting and earnest “analytics story” to share with candidates – what they have done, what they are doing and what they plan to do – so top talent can envision their role as a star player in analytics within said organization. How is your organization planning to compete for talent in the analytics and big data arena?

Keep a Watchful Eye on Your Partners

Ok, so fair warning: the title will be the most intriguing part of this post. What I am really talking about is contract compliance, specifically as it relates to staffing firms. First though, allow me a brief divergence to reminisce about the good old days… I was Project Lead for a Data Center Consolidation project in Minneapolis in mid-January of 1997 when my father called to recruit me to join the small family business. It was Minneapolis; it was January; my father was a great recruiter – timing is everything. About six months into my tenure at The Jacobson Group, I took over the sales role for the provision of interim services to property and casualty carriers and agencies. We were about 18 months into the interim service offering and the business was starting to grow. I don’t tell this to our new salespeople, but I really had it pretty easy. When someone needed a PIP adjuster, a CSR or an underwriting assistant, they told me what they needed, I asked a bunch of questions and we sent someone over. Sometime during the post dot-com bubble recession things changed. First came requests for resumes, then came requests for interviews, then came contracts on every assignment… and then every acronym you could think of: MSP, VMS, VoP, etc. Personally, I think a lot of these changes were the marketplace’s natural reaction to mistakes the staffing industry, as a whole, made in the ‘Roaring 90s’ (the 90s were very good to the staffing industry), but that is a different story for a different day. The end result (for now) is that we have a market that is contract-focused. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though the people who sell staffing services might be hard to convince. The real issue I have is in what those contracts mean… or don’t mean. A contract without a strong process to ensure that the clauses of the contract are clearly understood, tracked, implemented and audited, as they say, isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Only if both parties are truly committed to living out the words written does a contract provide real value. That sounds fairly easy, but what if every significant client has its own standards they expect you to meet? There are lots of variables at play here…. Our typical pre-employment screening includes education verification, employment verification, criminal background checks (some combination of state, county, federal and municipal), for certain positions a credit check, for certain clients a drug screen, an MVR check and insurance verification if the employee will be driving for the job or even to and from the job, OIG search, GSA search, Social Security search, OFAC Watch List search, and, of course, I9 eligibility verification. We have our strict standards and then some clients want other specifics. Whew! How do staffing firms do it? Well, sadly not all do. So here is my unsolicited advice to all of you staffing service buyers out there. Let’s call it Rick’s Rules for Engaging a Staffing Firm: Beware of anyone who doesn’t negotiate the contract and simply rolls over! I know we all like to win. I get it. I like to win – ask my kids, who have never beaten me at Hearts (well, almost never). The problem is that if a staffing firm accepts all of your language as-is, this is a major, major red flag. In almost all of these situations either a) the business is very small and they feel the risk of losing the business is worse than the risk of non-compliance or b) the business doesn’t intend on complying so will just say yes to anything. There is a real cost to compliance and any company who simply rolls over is likely not complying. If they aren’t complying with your contract, are they complying with the THOUSANDS of federal, state and municipal employment regulations? Do they know that staffing services are subject to sales tax in OH, CT, and PA? Do they know how the background check laws differ in each state? Are they experts in the application of the FLSA? Do they know that San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Portland; Jersey City; and many other cities and states now or soon will have employer mandates for paid sick leave or leave accommodations? No matter how your contract is written, most of these laws call for joint and several liability; and if your staffing firm isn’t paying, you might be – with some fines and penalties on top. Unless you are an employment practice attorney or a very senior and wonkish HR executive, your staffing firm should know more about employment laws, regulations and standards than you – after all, they are professional employers. This does not fully apply to the salespeople – though if there is a culture of compliance at the firm the salespeople will be able to ‘talk the talk’ – but the firm better have pretty hefty HR and compliance functions. Test them and rely on them. Negotiate as a partner. Partnerships are a win-win. Your partner should have your back, and you theirs. This might sound naïve in a business environment, but we have grown through 42 years by believing in and committing to our client partnerships. If your staffing firm is negotiating in good faith, many of their suggestions will be based upon best practices that will ultimately protect you. Trust but verify. I am truly disappointed in the low volume of audit requests that we get. Many of our contracts call for audit rights on the part of our clients. I will never negotiate against this concept – I view it as one of our differentiators. When we do get targeted for the rare audit, we always ask for the client scoring – and then I post it internally so everyone can see how we did. We aren’t perfect, but I’ll proudly put our results against any of our competitors’.

A Data-Driven Look at Why InsuranceTalent Seems so Hard to Find

It seems that 8:30 AM Eastern Time on the first Friday of the month has become the most newsworthy moment of the news cycle. This is, of course, the exact moment (in most months) when the BLS releases its Employment Situation Report and the market goes into a temporary frenzy… albeit a weird one these days where bad news (non-improvement in the unemployment rate) typically leads to a rally and good news typically leads to a sell-off. So lately the news hasn’t been so great – a 7.6% and seemingly unbudging unemployment rate and a labor participation rate at or near multi-generational lows. The broader U6 rate (which includes discouraged workers who no longer actively seek employment, marginally attached workers and part-time workers seeking full-time employment) puts the unemployment picture in stark perspective. Here is the tough thing to explain. We’re busy. Really busy. Like 2007 busy. And it’s not just us. If you've seen our July Pulse, you no doubt noticed that insurance industry employment is nearing its mid-2008 peak. Meanwhile, our clients are telling us that roles requiring knowledge and experience are getting harder and harder to fill. Well, as Paul Harvey would say, "here’s the rest of the story..." First, you all no doubt know that unemployment and employment measure very different things. The widely reported U3 rate (7.6 percent, currently) measures “…the proportion of the civilian labor force that is unemployed but actively seeking employment,” while total employment measures the number of individuals working. View the total non-farm employment picture from the BLS below. While the jobs picture has improved markedly from the depths of the recession and total jobs are nearing the peak seen in 2008, the population has increased from 298M in 2007 to 315M; thus, there are quite a few more unemployed people. We can see from our July Pulse that the insurance industry is following a roughly similar path. But we still haven’t explained what feels like a tightening labor market in our industry. A quick search of the BLS data can shed light on the changing labor market conditions. As can be seen, the median age of workers in the insurance industry is currently 45.0 compared to 42.3 for the overall economy and 43.5 (imputed from the BLS data presented) for the rest of the financial industry. Furthermore, a look at average tenure with current employer by industry shows just how much our industry relies upon seasoned, tenured professionals. With an average tenure of 5.7 years, the insurance industry is far more tenured, on average, than the overall economy (4.6 years) and the rest of the finance industry (also 4.6 years). One of the primary reasons that the industry labor market seems so tight is that its employees are older and more tenured than the rest of the U.S. economy, and even than the rest of the finance world.The bad news is that the issue is getting worse. Only 26.67 percent of the insurance industry’s workers are under the age of 35. This number also compares unfavorably to the overall economy (34.07 percent) and the non-insurance finance community (30.66 percent). We are not bringing enough new talent to the industry. Well, Jacobson is committed to doing whatever we can to help solve this talent crunch. Last week, we made a major announcement regarding a new service offering and it is receiving a great deal of traction. Our emerging talent service offering provides insurers with promising young professionals and recent graduates with an expressed interest in the insurance industry for direct hire, temporary and temporary-to-hire positions. We are excited to play our part in offsetting the skills gap by guiding bright, new talent to our clients’ doorsteps. I invite you to learn more about this new service here.  

Why Work-at-Home Works for Us: A Look at Telecommuting

Do you have a formal work-at-home policy? Do you allow your employees to work from home at all? The work-at-home and telecommuting debate is top of mind. An announcement from Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, that employees would no longer be allowed to telecommute has drummed up significant media coverage. This provision to Yahoo!’s work culture won’t begin until June—and the business world is waiting with bated breath to see how it plays out. As Greg posits in his article, the choice of whether to allow employees to work from home is unique to the organization and often situational. There is no one-size-fits-all solution that can be applied. Our experience at Jacobson is that allowing a work-at-home option has helped us retain high-performing employees. We have tenured workers successfully reporting in from across the country! We’ve seen tremendous success doing this with our contract employees, as well. We deploy work-at-home project teams for our clients’ critical workload fluctuations. Besides providing cost savings to our clients, it also broadens the viable candidate pool considerably. Candidates with very specific software skills and targeted experience come together virtually to complete a project in a timely fashion. However, executing this type of work requires strong project management methodology and sophisticated technology. A lot of hard work and dedication goes into making it possible. Where do you stand on the work-at-home debate? Share your thoughts in the comments.