Treat your employees well, says survey
As a precursor to Bermuda:Re’s Focus on Talent month, we approached leaders in the Bermudian reinsurance industry with a survey to learn their views on human resources and talent development.
This second report focuses on respondents' answers about issues such as benefit schemes, diversity and the ESG agenda. We'll look at human resources from the employee's perspective and reveal what's motivating staff to stay or leave. The first report in this micro-series presents key results and market comments concerning talent development.
According to global management consulting firm McKinsey, talent strategy requires 'the same intensity as core business strategy'. Retaining top talent in order to develop them requires a high level of forward planning, and increasingly companies are incorporating talent strategy into their future business plans.
Motivating each member of the workforce
Since the establishment of the Employee Value Proposition, HR departments across all industries have been able to offer their staff a tangible package that includes a unique set of compensations and benefits acting as a quid pro quo for their talent and personal investment in the company.
But do all the various money off incentives, birthdays off and top-up schemes persuade employees to remain in the company? By themselves, it would appear not.
Feeling valued was repeatedly listed as the most important factor in motivating our respondents as employees, followed by company success and then salary very closely behind. One respondent stated: "Being valued at a company allows me to excel in my work," while another felt company success and strong leadership were "critical for the other factors to follow".
Training and development came fourth out of fifth, while a good benefits package was actually considered the least motivating factor, although one participant did write: "I have been a long-term employee (37 years) and all of these items have contributed to my long tenure at the firm".
The value of feedback
Considering we spend many years of our waking lives at work, feeling valued in the workplace is both crucial and should allow for both professional training and personal improvement.
The recruitment process to find the best talent can sometimes be long, so upskilling and reskilling are swiftly becoming vital pathways to filling the industry's skills shortage. McKinsey gets straight to the point: "Reskilling is critical to meeting insurers’ future talent needs because hiring externally for the skills required is costly and difficult."
Fortunately for the (re)insurance industry, employees are ready and willing to be trained. Out of all the survey questions, respondents had the most to say on whether they believed performance evaluations and feedback to be important or not.
Just over one-half of participants felt they were very important, with one saying: "feeling valued is confirmed with performance evaluations and feedback", and one-quarter of respondents considered appraisals and feedback to be fairly important. One person stated: "regular feedback and coaching is critical" while another affirmed: "absolutely, that's how you can identify ways to continue growing your career.”
Several participants took the opportunity to raise the same issue: appraisals were spread too widely apart. "Evaluations should not be done annually," complained one respondent, "Employees should be coached throughout the year to point out inefficiencies and or merits: one should not have to wait until a yearly review to be told of their performance."
Offering some insight into worklife as a whole, another said: "I do not believe the industry is great at giving feedback, but this is likely a problem for most industries."
Diversity and inclusion
For an industry labelled in the past as 'male, pale and stale', a different type of problem has also surfaced, namely the lack of diversity among employees and senior staff coupled with the lack of inclusive working environments to welcome in that diversity.
There is good news, however: over 85% of respondents confirmed there had been some or great progress in the industry in terms of diversity and inclusion in the last five years. To some extent, this view is upheld by some statistics: female representation at board level in the UK insurance industry has increased, however not by others, eg ethnic representation has fallen since 2017.
In 2023, KPMG published an Insurance CEO Outlook report which stated 74% of CEOs believed DEI progress had 'moved too slowly in the business world'. The same percentage was also convinced that ‘scrutiny of DEI performance would continue to increase over the next three years’.
Should achieving diversity in the industry require change at the most senior level? Over 55% of respondents said yes, however "changes should not be made just to tick the box" and "diversity should be across all ethnic groups".
The ESG agenda
The final question put to our respondents concerned ESG's importance to the industry. Over three-fifths believed it remained very important or important. "ESG becomes more important every year," enthused one person while another agreed: "We should all be aware of our environment."
However, the topic also brought out some conflicting views. One participant bemoaned: "ESG is outdated and should be discontinued," and another conceded: "Making too many changes just to say 'we are doing what is expected' is not the right motivation".
Pretending to align with certain values as a company can never end well, especially as staff will see right through the charade. If employees believe their firm is trying to pull the wool over their eyes, they'll vote with their feet. As successful UK entrepreneur Richard Branson once said: "Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to."
Securing the best talent is the first successful step in a company’s journey of growth; all that matters then is learning how to make that talent stay.
Did you get value from this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
