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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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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’.

Anatomy of Today’s Successful Insurance Leader

My most recent posts have explored the tightening insurance labor market. With the war-for-talent in full-swing, the demand for executive-level insurance talent is no exception. Add to the mix a constantly evolving industry, requiring leaders who inspire innovation and change, and you have a lot of critical positions that are difficult to fill. As Greg, my brother and partner here at Jacobson, so eloquently puts it: “We have emerged from the recession changed and the new economy requires a new type of leader to guide our evolving workforce.” Drawing from our executive search experience, we have found that today’s successful insurance leaders have three traits in common: critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and the ability to build trust. Greg recently penned a white paper on this topic, which also includes smart ways to identify these traits, or lack thereof, throughout the search process. I invite you to read the full white paper here and learn more about what leadership skills are in demand. What characteristics do you believe are most important for insurance leaders? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Recent Data Confirms Our Assessment of the Insurance Labor Market

Back in July, I wrote about what we were seeing in the tightening insurance labor market and included some of the research that our talented marketing department put together in order to help us identify the long-trend causes. The just released September PULSE seems to confirm the trend: a labor market much tighter than the general labor market. The insurance unemployment rate of 2.5 percent in August is far below the 7.3 percent in the general U.S. economy and is also the lowest number we have seen since mid-2008. If you are interested in seeing the historical record, take a look at the BLS data series. This number will bounce around over the coming months – it always does – but my prediction is that this is just one more milestone in a long term continuing trend and that we will see sub 2 percent rates in the future.

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.  

Year of the CAT: Is Your Catastrophe Response Plan Ready?

So far 2013 has been a busy and costly year in terms of catastrophic events and catastrophe response expenses. According to this recent article from Insurance Networking News, this year is currently on track to be the most expensive year, globally, for CAT-related losses. To date, we’ve experienced 460 loss-related natural hazards, which is a high number compared to the ten-year average of 390 events at the half-way point. In the words of Dave Coons, senior vice president here at Jacobson, “When disaster strikes, your organization’s response is only as good as your workforce.” Are you staffed up for the unexpected? Dave recently penned an article for Carrier Management that poses five questions to help determine staffing preparedness in the case of CAT events. We often go through these questions with our clients when assessing their current situation. When determining pressure points and areas of need, you can never be too thorough. I invite you to read the full article here. Do you have questions regarding staffing preparedness?

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.

Ready or Not, Here it Comes

On February 6, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated in a letter to the American Medical Association (AMA) that there will be no more delays to the ICD-10 deadline. The following day, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) submitted a letter to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Acting Centers for CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner in strong support for of the October 1, 2014, deadline. Not all are in are agreement, the AMA and other groups have requested a halt to the ICD-10 implementation, citing burdensome or even devastating implementation costs for physicians. The first extension was granted back in September 2012 in response to opposition of the original October 1, 2013 deadline. As I blogged about last year, the decision was met with mixed reactions back then, too. There is plenty of work to be done before the deadline hits—that is something we all can agree on! Ready or not, the October 1, 2014, deadline stands firm.

A Great Milestone

A Great Milestone

We made an exciting announcement this week that I consider a great milestone in our firm’s history. The Jacobson Group is going to merge with ejsSearch, the London-based insurance executive search firm specializing in assignments in the London, broader European and international markets. Through this union, we will become the leading international search and staffing firm that exclusively serves the insurance industry. We’re excited for this opportunity to provide the industry with this essential continuity in cross-border search. If you are interested in more information, view our press release here. This merger will make us a truly global company and we are adding some immense talent to our team. Barbara Schönhofer, chief executive of ejs, will join the Jacobson executive management team as senior vice president and chief executive officer, global executive search. We look forward to Barbara’s dynamic leadership and feel it embodies the same values we expect from our leaders. We are equally excited to welcome the rest of the ejs staff. This is the next step in our evolution – but not even close to the last!

Semi-Annual Labor Market Study: The Results Are In!

The Jacobson Group and Ward Group have completed another iteration of the Semi-Annual Insurance Labor Market Study and the results offer a telling picture of our industry’s current landscape. Eighty-six percent of companies polled expect to grow revenue in the next 12 months. Likewise, 56 percent of respondents intend to increase staff. Both of these figures are at the highest levels reported since the study’s inception in 2009. The primary reason to grow staff during the next 12 months continues to be an increase in business volume, with 47 percent of companies listing this as a reason to hire. Coming in second, with 46 percent of respondents, is expansion. It seems there are some exciting developments coming down the pipeline at many organizations! This return to hiring, along with a steadily decreasing unemployment rate, do promise a difficult recruiting climate. All functional disciplines were rated by respondents of the study as “moderately difficult to fill.” As demand increases, the difficulty-to-fill measure is expected to continue its incline. While insurers will continue to be faced with recruiting challenges ahead, the outlook is mostly positive for our industry. I invite you to view the full results summary for a closer look at these projections. If you missed the webinar, you can view the webcast here. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like more information about the study.

PULSE of the Labor Market in 2013

The year’s first issue of PULSE of the Labor Market, the monthly supplement to our quarterly newsletter, is out and you can view it here. While the BLS reported an addition of 2,400 jobs in the insurance industry in December, the unemployment rate crept up to 3.7 percent. The average industry unemployment rate in 2012 was 4.4 percent, well below 2011’s average of 5.8 percent and 2010’s average of 6.2 percent. This downward trend can be expected to continue throughout 2013. Temporary employment for the industry, which is not figured into BLS data, is also expected to be on the upswing this year. The 2013 labor market promises a strong emphasis on talent as the differentiator in an increasingly competitive market. Employers will strive to attract and retain the brightest and best to tackle the skills gap and embark on growth initiatives. On a related note, last week marked the beginning of the January ’13 iteration of our Semi-Annual Insurance Labor Outlook Study. This data gathered in the study will help us further understand what we can expect to see happening in the labor market, as well as this year’s hiring plans for insurers across all sectors. All industry organizations are invited to participate in the survey and receive the results free of charge. You can find more information on the survey here. I am excited to see the outcome of this year’s survey and to give my take on the results. Best wishes for a prosperous 2013!

The ROI of Succession Planning

At the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) Operations Conference this year, we moderated a panel on a topic that we here at Jacobson hold close: succession planning. We brought a dynamic panel of CEOs and a board chairman together to share their personal insights gleaned from all stages of the succession process. The speakers provided valuable insights from their own succession journeys. Perhaps one of the most interesting takeaways shared came from an audience member. Lee Webster, Director of Human Resources Standards with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), brought up the ROI of succession planning—certainly an issue that deserves a deeper look. The measurement of the ROI of a succession planning process is a vital component that allows organizations to evaluate and adjust. As Webster said, “The succession planning dialogue must include a progressive and dynamic component on the effect of choosing the right leader, as well as the effect the leader has on the capital value of the enterprise. We must create the opportunity to look at risks from a human capital point of view. When we focus on the return, we can begin to account for how well we are doing.” This is certainly interesting food for thought for the insurance industry as the industry faces up to the challenge of an aging workforce. As the industry strengthens its talent pipeline, we must keep the end goal in sight by continuously measuring the value of our succession and engagement strategies.

Impacts of the Supreme Court Validation of PPACA

With its ruling released on June 28th, the Supreme Court has, absent an unexpected legislative repeal, cemented the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into U.S. law. Now that the judicial challenges have run their course, there is some clarity around the impacts this law will create. In the short term, I view this development as moderately positive for the health Insurance industry and perhaps even stimulative for the health insurance labor market. Over the past several months, as the uncertainty around the Supreme Court decision grew, I have seen countless health insurance decision makers put developmental projects on hold until some clarity emerged. I now expect a bit of a dam break in the flow of these projects. Additionally, health insurers can now plan for an expected increase in covered lives due to the survival of the “individual mandate tax.” Together, these impetuses should lead to a modest, industry-wide uptick in hiring over the near term. Moreover, the industry avoided what would have been a major negative shock had the Supreme Court struck down the individual mandate but upheld other aspects of the law including the “Guaranteed Issue” provision. My view of the longer term impacts of this law is less sanguine. The health care crisis in this country is a crisis of cost, not one of evil health insurers who need to be reigned in via a central authority dictating the terms of their market. Throughout history, central control of markets has invariably led to mal-investment, skewed markets and unintended consequences. I have argued since 2009 that the health care cost crisis needed to be solved with market friendly reforms that took advantage of the immense power of capitalistic choice (aka consumerism). One can make a strong argument that the seeds of our cost crisis were planted by the very body that passed the PPACA, as the endless stream of Washington generated coverage mandates, managed care restrictions and cost-less (to the consumer) benefit increases led to an economic imbalance that ensured consistent health care cost inflation. The long-term consequences of yet more market interference is not in doubt. We will see continued and likely accelerated, cost escalation. Further, the medium to long-term marginal impact of this law on the labor market will clearly be negative. For all the talk of job creation, every high school economics student understands that an increase in tax decreases economic activity. In this case we have both an individual tax and a tax on employment – and one that will disproportionately impact the segment of the economy most responsible for job growth: small businesses. All that said, this is not the first time that lawmakers – in their zest to improve the conditions of their constituents – have passed counter-productive laws. Even with the PPACA, the United States continues to have one of the most supportive economies for entrepreneurship and innovation. I expect that our health insurance organizations and other businesses will learn to innovate within the framework of the new law and our economy will continue to outpace the rest of the developed world.