Reasons why Insurance Professionals are Seeking New Opportunities in 2023

With more roles available than candidates looking for work in insurance, it’s not surprising that retaining and attracting employees is at the forefront of every employers’ minds.

The consequences of poor retention and attraction include stunted growth and operations of insurance businesses – a phenomenon already affecting 80% of Australian insurance employers, explains ANZIIF in their latest journal article, Navigating the New Job Market.

Historically, the insurance industry has always been a candidate short market, and veteran businesses are well acquainted with effective strategies for retaining and attracting talent.

However, in recent times, the candidate short market has been exacerbated by a change in employee demands and a plethora of consequences from supply and demand issues that have snowballed into a bit of a mess for employers juggling business growth and productivity.

Today, with the rising cost of living, a shift in attitude towards work and work/life balance, insurance employers will need to pull different strings to achieve their talent goals. Employees priorities have changed, and one extensive study has shown that they’re not afraid to search for an employer that will support their needs.

Insurance professionals’ behaviour in the job market in 2023

Last year, ANZIIF conducted a study, titled ‘The Expectations and Motivations of Insurance Professionals’ to gain a deeper insight on insurance employees and their motivations in 2022.

The study found that close to two thirds of respondents indicated they had engaged in some form of job seeking activity within the last 12 months. 28% had updated their resumes, 28% had been approached by a recruiter or directly by another organisation, 27% had actively started to look for a new job online, and 19% had interviewed for a new role.

Meanwhile, 91% of employers are finding it difficult to recruit or fill roles and 63% stated they are finding it harder to retain talent in 2022.

1.   Attractive salaries remain as top motivator

Due to inflationary pressures, wage growth is still high in today’s market. While some may predict this trend to plateau as possibilities of a recession loom, the RBA sees the trend continuing to increase as businesses compete over talent.

Unsurprisingly, ANZIIFs research shows that high salaries remain as the number one motivator for insurance professionals, especially with the rising cost of living increasingly concerning Australians.

Regarding salary, Cameron Watson, Fuse Recruitment’s Head of Strategy, states, “we are seeing roles in the market up by anywhere between 20 and 30 percent. If you want talent, you’ve got to pay for it.”

Other experts state that for roles where only basic employee benefits are offered, employees are likely to move solely for a bump in their salary. For employers that can’t justify salary increases, a reassessment of employee value propositions (EVP) is an effective strategy to retain and attract employees.

2.   Offering flexibility is non-negotiable

The traditional perspective on work suggests that work cannot be changed and if you can’t handle it, then you’re simply not cut out for the task.

However, dramatic measures taken to continue business throughout the pandemic proved that the work can change.

Flexible work has now become a non-negotiable for many who seek new roles.

“We’ve got candidates that will just flatly refuse a role if it doesn’t provide flexibility,” says Watson.

Last year, we interviewed Rebecca Slingo, whose team conducted the “Expectations and Motivations of Insurance Professionals” study. She explained that while employers know that their employees want flexible work, there is disagreement between how much flexibility should be offered.

There is no one size fits all for how much flexibility employers should offer to retain employees. The only way to know is for employers to ask their employees what their ideal situation would be. If it’s impossible to meet these demands, employers and their employees should work together to meet a happy medium.

Employers should also express their willingness to workshop flexibility offerings when selling roles to candidates when hiring. This includes sharing this information on job ads, on the company website, through word-of-mouth, and every other avenue used to engage candidates.

3.  Extrinsic benefits are only part of the puzzle

A common theme in insurance professionals’ motivations is the desire for a more enjoyable life.

High salaries can help to ease strain caused by rising costs of living, flexibility can provide more time in the day to relax and spend more time with family, and finding work that is meaningful can create a sense of fulfilment and achievement.

High salaries and flexibility can be offered as extrinsic benefits, although these benefits do not address employees’ intrinsic motivations.

A massive 76% of survey respondents expressed that they were internally motivated when asked about what would make work more meaningful and enjoyable to them.

To determine what will make work meaningful and enjoyable, employers need to look ‘inside’. Intrinsic motivations may include:

• Having the ability and resources to perform their roles to the best of their ability
• Being able to work towards career goals
• Experiencing the satisfaction of achieving their personal goals
• Feeling challenged in their role
• Learning something new

While we stress the importance of offering high salaries and flexible work, addressing employees’ intrinsic motivations is really going to be the key for driving strong retention and attraction of employees.

In ANZIIFs journal article, experts explained that candidate shortages have made it harder for these motivations to be fulfilled.

Where businesses have struggled to retain talent or fill vacancies, employees have had to take over the work of missing persons which has had a negative impact on their wellbeing and job satisfaction.

Acting now will insure against emergencies down the track

This is a tricky situation to navigate in the midst of the candidate short market, but it is critical to note that a business’s stable workforce can crumble if retention and attraction is not addressed.

A small investment to protect against potential disasters is a fundamental concept that insurance employers should be very familiar with. It is the only reason that the idea of insurance could be conceived.

Therefore, we shouldn’t need to emphasise the difference it could make by taking small actions to avoid resignations and difficulty in attracting new talent.

One action employers can take now that we haven’t already mentioned earlier is to consider attracting talent from alternative candidate pools, including graduates , migrant talent , and talent from other industries.

Empowering young talent to build the insurance workforce

Insurance has typically been seen as an unattractive industry to work in being characterised with long working hours and high-pressure environments – issues that naturally prevent employees from fulfilling their intrinsic motivations.

While businesses may take action to change the nature of work and address these issues, many graduates are simply unaware that the insurance industry even exists as an industry to build a career in.

The first issue is that universities fail to offer courses that teach the business of insurance.

The second is that many insurance businesses are too small to run effective graduate programs on their own. They don’t have the infrastructure to source and identify graduate talent that align with their goals.

The Future Insure Graduate Program run by Fuse Recruitment has been designed to tackle these challenges and provide a pipeline of young talent who will become tomorrow’s leaders in the insurance industry.

Insurance businesses looking for graduate talent join the program by partnering with Fuse to secure high performing graduates.

“We’ve placed over 250 graduates in the Australian insurance market over the past four years,” explains Watson.

Employers who’ve been dedicated to the developing and training their graduates have seen their young professionals grow into driven, loyal and high performing employees. This is a testament to the power of attending to employee intrinsic motivators.

If you’re unsure where to start to ensure your business doesn’t fall behind in today’s candidate short market, fill in the form on this page and our consultants will get in touch to discuss possible solutions.