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The insurance sector is facing major HR challenges, compounded by an ageing workforce and a perceived outdated image. With 400,000 professionals nearing retirement, attracting and retaining new talent is essential. Yet only 4% of Millennials are considering a career in the sector, exacerbating the skills shortage. To remain competitive, companies need to modernise their image, promote innovation and offer attractive benefits, while using tools such as psychometric testing to optimise their recruitment process.

The banking and finance sector is facing significant HR challenges due to the rapid evolution of the industry and the increasing adoption of AI. By 2024, 87% of banking executives expect major change, but more than half don't feel prepared for it. Furthermore, 65% of financial services employees believe their business will not survive a decade on its current trajectory. An HR approach focused on skills such as critical thinking and an agile organisational structure are essential to attract, recruit and retain the talent needed to adapt and grow in this changing sector.

The insurance industry already faces a major challenge in attracting young talent, but retaining staff is also a crucial issue for this sector, where employee commitment and satisfaction are crucial to business success. In this article, we present five effective ways of strengthening talent retention within insurance companies.

The healthcare sector faces many challenges in recruiting and retaining staff, exacerbated by labour shortages and demanding working conditions that can lead to burn out. Attracting and retaining talent is crucial to ensuring the quality of patient care and the smooth running of healthcare organisations. Here are 10 key tips for attracting and retaining talent in this vital sector.

The insurance sector holds significant weight in the financial industry. Its revenues are projected to reach $7.5 trillion globally by the end of 2025. However, it faces a major HR challenge linked to the aging workforce and the looming threat of an unprecedented labor shortage. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 50% of the current workforce in the insurance sector will retire in the coming years, leaving over 400,000 vacancies. Therefore, insurance companies must rejuvenate their workforce to remain innovative and competitive in the market. However, the sector does not appeal to the younger generation, who show little interest in pursuing a career in insurance. What strategies can insurance companies employ to attract, recruit, and retain young talent?

Obstacles to the attractiveness of youth in the insurance sector

Image problem

The insurance sector suffers from an unattractive image and reputation among Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) and Generation Z (born from 2000 onwards). It is often perceived as a conventional, conservative, and uninventive professional field.

Unfamiliar occupations

According to a survey conducted by The Institutes, 8 out of 10 Millennials have limited knowledge of career opportunities in the insurance industry. Young people may not have subscribed to insurance policies yet, and they have minimal awareness and understanding of these products.

Insufficiently competitive salaries and benefits

Young people are attracted to competitive salaries and benefits, but the banking and financial sectors as well as Tech & IT appear more attractive.

Lack of flexibility

Young people seek a work-life balance offered by remote and hybrid work arrangements, but insurance companies do not always guarantee this flexibility.

Lack of investment in skills development

Another factor affecting the attractiveness of insurance companies is a gap in the understanding of skills their employees will need in the future. Young people are eager to learn and acquire new skills to remain employable in an ever-changing job market.

Strategies for insurance companies to attract, recruit, and retain young talent

Developing an attractive corporate culture

Valuing corporate culture, mission, purpose, and emphasizing collaboration, career progression, flexibility, and other benefits are important. Additionally, promoting commitment to sustainable development, which young people are highly attuned to, is a plus.

Promoting career options in insurance

The insurance sector offers a wide range of careers (agent, broker, claims adjuster, risk manager, data analyst, cybersecurity expert, etc.). It is important to promote these career options to young people, so they are aware of all the opportunities available.

Emphasizing technology

Insurance companies now offer most of their services through mobile applications (claim submissions, video downloads for claims assessment, inspection planning, claims process tracking, etc.) and utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline their processes. Promoting the use of technology in the industry can attract tech-savvy young talent.

Recruiting via social networks

Social media is important and relevant for the younger generation. Insurance companies can benefit in promoting their job offers, internships, and compelling content about insurance careers on social networks (LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram).

Taking care of onboarding

Once recruited, it is crucial to support and mentor new hires. Having mentors who will help new recruits network and advise them on progressing in the sector is a real asset.

Investing in training and professional development

It is essential to emphasize job stability in the sector and enable young people to acquire the skills they need to perform and adapt to market changes, offering them career advancement opportunities.

Millennials and Gen Z have begun to dominate the job market. These dynamic new talents seek the energy and flexibility that many industries offer. It is important for insurance companies to consider their expectations and capitalize on this pool of talent to address their deficits in human resources and skills that threaten their business.

With their experience in the Tech & IT sector, working at a digital services company (ESN) and then as a partner at a digital sector-focused headhunting firm for Estelle Calestroupat, currently a Work Psychologist and Key Account Consultant at Pearson TalentLens, and 5 years at Cisco, a globally renowned IT company, for Anna Ballerand, current HR Manager of Pearson France, they have agreed to share strategies to better attract, recruit, and retain employees in this sector.

7 Strategies to Better Attract, Recruit, and Retain Employees in the Tech & IT Sector

• Strategy #1 - Highlighting Company Culture: Employer branding must align with the company's values and reality on the ground. "To attract Tech-IT talents, a company must assert its difference, its added value," asserts Estelle Calestroupat, supported by Anna Ballerand, for whom it is essential that the company clearly showcases its corporate culture, and its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives. Estelle Calestroupat also emphasizes the importance of developing a managerial culture aligned with the company's values and ensuring it is deployed at all levels of management.
• Strategy #2 - Anticipating Future Needs: Being visionary and proactive. The tech and IT sector is continually evolving, HR leaders need to work alongside their business counterparts to proactively plan their talent needs in order help reduce skill shortages in the future and reduce the risk of increased pressures on current staff workloads while new roles wait to be filled.  Modelling future business models HR leaders can see in advance any need for training and development giving employees time and the valued investment to develop. 
• Strategy #3 - Building Internal and External Networks: Creating a community of former employees and a pool of candidates for potential future employees. The value of networking both internally and external to the business cannot be overestimated. Former employees who have felt valued and invested in can be brand ambassadors for your organization and provide a much-needed route for recommendations. Consider networking events from graduate fairs to community groups. 
• Strategy #4 - Improving Recruitment Processes: "Recruitment processes are often too lengthy and discourage many," laments Anna Ballerand. "Streamlining processes is necessary to increase efficiency and enhance the candidate experience," she recommends. The skills sought in candidates are also evolving. "It's no longer possible to recruit solely based on technical skills (hard skills)," explains Estelle Calestroupat. "Adaptability and learning ability, as well as the ability to analyze complex, multiple, or even contradictory data, having a broader perspective, as well as pedagogy, interpersonal skills, and teamwork, have become strong success criteria in Tech-IT professions. Values and commitment also play an essential role in the alignment between an employee and the company."
• Strategy #5 - Investing in Training: To address the challenge of skill development, which is even faster in this sector than in other fields, it is important for companies to invest in employee training. "It involves supporting employees both in constantly evolving technical skills to ensure a solid foundation of expertise within the company and to meet the strong technical appetite of some employees (e.g., investing in certifications), and in the development of certain behavioral skills (especially for career advancements in project management, management, or sales)," specifies Estelle Calestroupat. Anna Ballerand gives the example of Cisco, which offers several training initiatives, including renowned technical certifications in the sector. Their "Graduate Program" (recent graduate program) that she herself implemented at the European level is another example, offering several days of training abroad for new recruits.
• Strategy #6 - Offering Attractive Working Conditions: The Tech-IT sector is known for offering relatively high salaries to its employees. "There is a fierce battle among digital players to attract the best profiles," testifies Estelle Calestroupat. "This power struggle is reflected in salaries and benefits (company cars, bonuses, profit-sharing, installation bonuses for remote work, proposals for company stock options, etc.). "Competition is such that differentiation between various sector players involves offering additional benefits such as greater work flexibility or a recognition program," confirms Anna Ballerand. "In the technology sector, a culture of pure onsite work makes no sense," reminds Estelle Calestroupat. Flexibility in working hours and formats (remote work, hybrid, onsite) is essential.
• Strategy #7 - Encouraging Career Development: Managing professional advancement. For Estelle Calestroupat, it is important "to support mobility within the company without confining employees to predefined career paths, provide visibility on advancement opportunities, and support mechanisms in place."

An 8th Strategy - Using Psychometric Tests

To better recruit talents in this sector, support their skill development, and career progression, HR professionals can use psychometric tests: personality and values inventories, intellectual aptitude tests, critical thinking assessment tests, as well as motivation and professional interest questionnaires.

They allow them to:

• Identify individuals most suited to the position and the company's culture.
• Predict job performance.
• Reduce turnover rates by fostering better alignment between employees and their work environment.
• Implement personalized development plans encouraging talent retention.
• Improve engagement by creating a positive and productive work environment conducive to personal and professional growth.

Due to increased demand for care, healthcare staff face high workloads, irregular schedules, and stressful situations. This often leads to professional burnout and high staff turnover rates, compromising care quality and job satisfaction. What strategies can be implemented to preserve the mental health of medical personnel? 

Healthcare: A Stressed Sector

According to the WHO, professional burnout is "a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." Several factors contribute to this:

Staff shortage: In the medical sector, all positions must be filled to care for patients. Staff shortages result in overtime and increased workloads to manage a higher number of patients, leading to physical and mental fatigue, decreased productivity, medical errors, absenteeism, and departures.

Innovation: Besides constant advancements in medications and treatments, the medical sector increasingly relies on technology to modernize equipment and surgical techniques. Staff must adapt to these innovations while maintaining transparent and connected patient relations, adding to stress.

Exposure to risks: Staff are continually exposed to health risks (infections) from contact with sick patients in overcrowded facilities where protective equipment, safe facilities, and prevention measures may be insufficient. Psychological risks also exist due to the emotional burden of the job. Patient deaths or verbal abuse can be stressful and traumatic, influencing staff well-being.

Professional Burnout: A Problem in Healthcare

Alarming Figures

According to surveys, nursing has the highest professional burnout rate at 70%. Nurses often feel they can do more than permitted or are unable to provide adequate care due to high patient loads. Overwork triples the risk of professional burnout, leading to intentions to leave the job. About one-third of nurses (32%) consider leaving the profession, while over half of physicians and other healthcare professionals feel exhausted, stressed, and ready to quit due to factors such as staffing shortages, low salaries, mental and emotional strain, job insecurity, inflexibility, and lack of support. 

Cause and Effect

Staff burnout results from both staffing deficiencies and high turnover rates, causing a cumulative effect. Burnout affects patients as medical staff struggle with emotional, mental, and physical fatigue, impairing patient relations and care.

Tips to Prevent Healthcare Staff Burnout

By actively listening to staff, considering their needs, and supporting their learning and career development, HR managers can prevent burnout:

• Encourage open dialogue to assess well-being, understand needs, and listen to improvement suggestions. Tools like 360-degree surveys or motivation and satisfaction questionnaires for employees or teams are useful for empathy. 
• Provide recognition and rewards (praise, bonuses, promotions) for highly engaged employees.
• Invest in training and professional development to keep staff up to date on industry trends, best practices, medical and technological advancements. Motivation and satisfaction measurement tools help tailor career development and training programs.
• Reduce workload: Use advanced analytics to anticipate care demand and align resources in real-time; rethink roles and processes with new technology (digitization, automation of administrative tasks) to reduce working hours; explore reliable and efficient recruitment methods. Psychometric assessment tests (personality inventories, cognitive ability tests) can assist in this.

"Every member of the healthcare team is crucial to patient outcomes and experiences," says Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "It's vital to remember this as we strive to optimize both patient outcomes and our staff's experiences." Healthcare staff burnout is a significant issue facing healthcare facilities and HR professionals in this sector. It is imperative to address it to preserve employee mental health and ensure exemplary care quality.

Estelle Calestroupat, Work Psychologist and Key Account Consultant at Pearson TalentLens, and Anna Ballerand, HR Manager of Pearson France, share a common background: experience in the Tech & IT sector. They have agreed to share their experiences regarding the specific HR challenges in this field.

A Dynamic Sector in Full Expansion

Estelle Calestroupat and Anna Ballerand agree that the Tech & IT sector is highly dynamic and constantly evolving. While this trend isn't new, it has accelerated significantly in recent years. "Technological innovations are constant. New products, services, and solutions emerge continuously to meet the changing needs of users," notes Anna Ballerand. The attraction to this sector is undeniable. "It no longer appears reserved only for a few experts. The new generations are comfortable with technology and digital tools; it's part of their daily lives, which draws them to work in this field," adds Estelle Calestroupat.

HR Challenges in the Tech-IT Sector:

• Talent shortage and volatility: The Tech-IT sector is not immune, like many other sectors, to candidate shortages. "The demand for qualified IT professionals often exceeds the available supply, making talent acquisition and retention highly competitive," says Anna Ballerand. Estelle Calestroupat agrees, confirming that "although the number of candidates is growing, recruitment needs are increasing even faster." She warns that "companies in the sector must rethink their approach to recruitment, management, and employee training. Those who succeed will have a real competitive advantage."
• Skills obsolescence: The rapid evolution of new technologies requires continuous training. Anna Ballerand emphasizes that "keeping staff skills up-to-date can be a challenge for HR in terms of continuous training and professional development."
• Need for inclusion: The Tech-IT sector faces challenges regarding inclusion. "Companies need to implement strategies to encourage variety in their teams and address underrepresentation of women and minorities," suggests Anna Ballerand.
  

The Increasing Use of Psychometric Tests to Assess Skills

The skills sought in the Tech-IT sector are varied and necessarily depend on the context, the company, and the position. "All these elements require, as with every recruitment process, an analysis of expectations," recalls Estelle Calestroupat before specifying that "generally, there will be expectations in terms of technical skills/knowledge (or at least an inclination towards new technologies), adaptability/learning ability, analytical skills, and transversal skills (such as organization, rigor, teamwork, communication, etc.)."

To assess these skills, HR professionals can rely on personality and value inventories, tests of intellectual aptitudes, and tests of critical thinking. "Psychometric tests allow either the evaluation of a candidate's strengths and areas for development in relation to the expectations of a position, as in the case of an assessment during recruitment, or to accompany an employee in becoming aware of their comfort zones and areas for improvement (self-awareness, understanding of their functioning) in a developmental logic," says Estelle Calestroupat.

Their advantages are numerous, adds Anna Ballerand:

• Finer selection of candidates: Evaluating candidates' cognitive abilities, personality traits, and behavioral skills helps select individuals most suited to the position and the company's culture.
• Prediction of job performance: Identifying candidates' strengths and weaknesses enables recruiters to predict their performance and make more informed hiring decisions.
• Reduction in staff turnover: Matching employees' skills and personality with the job and company requirements reduces turnover rates.
• Professional development: Understanding employees' development needs leads to personalized development plans that promote talent retention.
• Improvement of employee engagement: Recruiting individuals whose values and personality are compatible strengthens team cohesion and fulfillment in a positive and productive work environment.

Estelle Calestroupat has worked in the IT and new technologies sector for over 10 years. Initially, she worked internally at a digital services company in project management (defining competency frameworks and building evaluation processes), training for recruiters and recruiter managers, and operational recruitment (recruitment and internal mobility) for manager, sales, and bid manager profiles. She then collaborated with a headhunting firm specializing in the digital sector, again focusing on sales, bid managers, project managers, and managers.

Anna Ballerand spent 5 years at Cisco, a globally renowned IT company, responsible for recruitment and employee and manager training support, implementing social benefits, conducting professional interviews, and promoting campaigns such as Great Place To Work®.

The retail sector has long been associated with high turnover rates. It hovers around 60%, meaning that more than half of the staff is likely to change within a year, according to McKinsey. It is imperative for companies operating in this sector to refine their HR practices to optimize employee retention because high turnover rates have significant impacts on their commercial performance. They can rely on psychometric assessments for this purpose.

Turnover Rate: A Key Performance Indicator

The turnover rate (or employee turnover) is a key performance indicator (KPI) that quantifies the rate of voluntary or involuntary departure and replacement of personnel within an organization during a specific period. It assesses the stability of its workforce and its overall health.

A high turnover rate often reflects employee dissatisfaction, inefficient recruitment or onboarding processes, and any potential organizational issues within the company.

Conversely, a low turnover rate reveals employee satisfaction, effective talent retention strategies, and a pleasant work environment.

The Proven and Hidden Costs of High Turnover Rates

 Understanding and analyzing the turnover rate is a strategic imperative. It directly impacts the company's finances and indirectly affects its operational effectiveness.

• Costs of Departure/Recruitment: On average, turnover costs in the retail sector represent 1.5 to 2 times an employee's annual salary, according to Built In. Each time an employee leaves the company, the recruitment, onboarding, and training process must be restarted, and human and financial resources must be allocated to ensure their replacement. The departure of an employee can also entail severance payments. Furthermore, the time it takes for vacant positions to be filled and new employees to become operational, the workload for existing employees may lead to overtime payments, directly impacting the company's financial costs.
• Loss of Production: Turnover affects operational continuity, team cohesion and productivity, and company performance. Constant staff turnover can lead to dissatisfaction among existing employees, even encouraging new departures. Turnover, in this sense, can lead to decreased employee engagement, especially if it is high, and impact on the customer experience and sales due to a loss of service quality.
  
•  Negative Impact on the Company's Brand Image: Employees who work in a company with high turnover are unlikely to recommend it to others as a place to work or even to use its services or buy its products. The company loses attractiveness.

The Role of Psychometric Assessments in Employee Retention

Psychometric tests explore personality, assess abilities, identify motivations, interests, and values of an individual.

• Personality Inventories: They assess personality traits, which are behavioral tendencies and interpersonal characteristics related to relationships with others (leadership, sociability, cooperation, empathy, etc.), emotional management (stress resistance, flexibility/adaptability, etc.), work approach (reliability, attention to detail, regulatory compliance aspect, success/effort, perseverance, initiative, etc.), and mode of thinking (innovation, analytical reasoning, independence, etc.).
• Intellectual Aptitude Tests: They provide information on numerical, verbal, spatial, and mechanical skills as well as the ability to solve complex problems and the ease of learning. They also assess critical thinking (ability to quickly grasp key aspects that will impact any decision, distinguish assumptions from facts, evaluate arguments in favor of possible actions, and draw conclusions that will lead to objective decision-making).
• Motivation and Professional Interest Questionnaires: They provide information on an individual's motivational state, sources of motivation/demotivation, professional interests, needs, and values to better support them in developing their career plan and make them feel fulfilled professionally within the company.

In recruitment, psychometric tests allow retail companies to:

• Gain in-depth knowledge of a candidate's potential, beyond their resume.
  
• Secure recruitment through concrete and reliable information provided.
  
• Ensure the candidate's profile matches the job requirements and reduce turnover.
  
• Enhance the candidate's experience by identifying their strengths and areas for improvement.

In development, psychometric tests allow them to:

• Identify and develop the potential of their employees.
• Identify their skills for better development.
• Support internal mobility.
• Better understand each staff member to improve their employee experience.

To reduce their turnover rates, retail companies must rethink their talent acquisition and retention strategies. The use of psychometric tests allows them to recruit individuals whose profile aligns with the company's culture and the position to be filled, ensure they have the necessary skills, and evaluate those that are useful to develop to encourage them to stay and evolve within the company for as long as possible.

In 2020, the World Economic Forum estimated that one out of every two workers in the world would need re-skilling (training to acquire new skills needed to change jobs) over the following five years. According to projections from the Future of Jobs Report, companies will need to incorporate new job roles into their organizations in the same time frame: e.g., data analysts and data scientists, AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning specialists, business development professionals, etc. In all, ten mostly new professions will represent a workplace demand estimated at nearly one hundred million people.

New technical skills, backed up by essential soft skills 

These staggering figures illustrate the scale of the challenge that is now facing all business sectors and companies of all sizes. In order to keep a competitive advantage, and to survive the emergence of new players, they have no choice but to adapt and transform in order to remain agile. 

The pandemic has added to this, accelerating the transformations already taking place, particularly in the digital space. More than ever, the question arises as to the need to adapt technical (hard) skills and improve behavioral (soft) skills to maintain employees’ employability. 

Such an approach is even more important given that employees are also voicing that expectation. According to the Great Insights 2022 study conducted by the Great Place To Work Institute, employability is one of their primary concerns.

Nearly one in two employees state that they will need to upgrade their skills and/or pivot job role in the next five years, but almost a third of them do not feel that they have benefited from specific career development support over the past year. 

Five ways hiring manages can help to create a culture of employability

The study also reveals that training and development programs are becoming one of the defining criteria when choosing to work for a potential employer. With this in mind, here are five ways you can create a culture of employability at your organization:

1. Future Proof your Talent Pools

The best talent pipelines are those that are nurtured. Building a talent pool takes time and requires a well-orchestrated strategy which focuses on the long-term aims of the business, as well as the immediate needs. Cultivating conversations with potential candidates for roles that may not yet be fully formed enables hiring managers to be future focused. This coupled with insight from team managers across the business as to what values, skills and personality will be the best fit for the team, can help hiring managers to make informed decisions to attract top talent.

2. Move to Skills-Based Hiring

Avoid restricting your candidate pool by only focusing on qualifications. Adopting a skills-based approach to hiring opens your talent pool, giving you a wider reach and the ability to attract candidates outside of your usual recruitment network. In the US, “LinkedIn has seen a 21% increase in job postings advertising skills and responsibilities instead of qualifications”. This strategic approach can result in a more varied and multi-skilled workforce, and even help to improve retention rates.

3. Use Psychometric Insight

Psychometric assessments supply detailed, data-driven insight into the values, personality, skills and potential of candidates. There are two forms of psychometric tools - personality and aptitude tests - which together can provide a comprehensive overview of a candidate. With tools such as Role Assessment, a custom employment assessment can be created to meet your roles’ requirements, and its results generate a fit-to-role score that aids in your decision making.

4. Evaluate Talent Retention Strategies

From quiet quitting to quiet thriving, today’s employees are making their feelings on employability known. Gen Z’s priorities are focused on a work-life balance where active steps in creating a culture of wellbeing and inclusion are sought after. Today’s candidates want organizations who echo their values and aren’t afraid to speak up or move on if they don’t align. Take time to review your company brand and values. How do you present yourself? Are you actively living your values? How are you working to upskill and retrain your teams?

5. A shared culture of upskilling and reskilling

The future-of-work challenge cannot be met solely by improvisation. The whole organization, from employees through to top management, needs to subscribe to a culture of “employability” so that each person takes ownership. Executive management sets the course and shares a strategic direction and its implications for the development of job roles. Line management then implements that strategy by identifying development areas for its teams and by working with employees to determine their own employability.

Employability must be embraced across business units to future-proof organizations. Priorities have evolved, technology has marched forward, and organizations can no longer afford to wait and see what skills gaps will develop in the future. Taking steps to reflect on your organization’s employability approach can help future-proof your talent pipeline and address the growing skills gap. For more information on employability, download our whitepaper - “How to Put Employability at the Heart of Corporate Strategy.”