The workforce today is dynamic, inquisitive, intellectual, and culturally diverse. Keeping them anchored to a given place for long is a challenge as they demonstrate shifts from one job to another more regularly than their predecessors. On the back of a digital, data led economy, the millennials are expected to steer disruption across sectors and drive an exponential business growth.

As an HR professional in the insurance industry, I have forever been advocating the belief that in spite of the recruiter's best strategy and vision, it can only be realised when the organisation synergises the hearts and minds of its most important asset - its employees.

A recent survey conducted by Korn Ferry Institute interestingly maps workforce challenges that insurance companies confront as they undergo digital transformation. Collecting employee engagement data from over 60,000 respondents in the industry, the survey found that it gets too overwhelming for the leaders to respond to workplace management changes—be it understanding employee motivation, or tailoring engagement to offer value-led propositions to your people. The reality is that the rapidly evolving digital economy can be weathered only by organisations that can completely understand and embrace the need of digital natives.

The future of the workforce: In the insurance industry, in particular, automation, technology shifts, and innovation headways are expected to reduce the time and energies of those in the actuarial, underwriting, and claim adjustment business. In the backdrop of this transition, the recruiter will have to adapt in order to appeal to, engage with, and drive meaningful exchange at work with employees, to develop a high level of cognitive involvement. 

Digital tools to the rescue: At an inflection point of technological innovation, the insurance industry today has a host of robust digital tools that are paving the way for employee progression. With traditional employee roles and workplace structures in transition, digital tools are constantly helping upgrade operations across the entire recruitment chain. From prospecting to onboarding, learning, and engagement, insurance companies are utilising an array of tools to empower the employees' presence in a dynamic ecosystem. 

Elevating recruitment & onboarding: With greater technological intervention and automation in the picture, the time and energies of manual operations in business are expected to reduce significantly, increasing the demand for more strategic and cerebral skills. Employees will be expected to dedicate more of themselves towards ideation and thinking responsibilities as opposed to processing and demystifying. To create a work atmosphere that is charged with meaning, insurance companies must ensure that every investment in technology and enablement is complemented by investment in talent and creativity, and digital tools can be a catalyst to this drive.
 

Today, companies across the board have access to developed recruitment apps that are addressing this need. This provides managers with a variety of options to deliver value propositions. Creating requisitions, providing feedback on interviews, and reading feedback from other interviewers, these applications further allow recording interview feedback via text as well as voice. This can help candidates to effectively transition to the next phase of the process- onboarding.

Once hired, it is equally important to digitally leverage the onboarding experience for a new employee since a strong onboarding process forms the basis of higher retention and productivity. While this presents organisations with a huge opportunity to do better on that front, as per a survey by Gallup, nearly 88% employees feel their organisation does not do a superlative job when it comes to onboarding. 

With new digital tools on the platter, companies today stand to merit in the said domain. This makes the onboarding experience smoother by allowing room to upload the required documents digitally. Further, it enhances the engagement levels at the onset, decreasing the time to proficiency ratio by making assessments such as 360 degree feedback and psychometric evaluation for effective development on digital work boards.

Driving digital learning and engagement

The workforce today is dynamic, inquisitive, intellectual, and culturally diverse. Keeping them anchored to a given place for long is a challenge as they demonstrate shifts from one job to another more regularly than their predecessors. On the back of a digital, data led economy, the millennials are expected to steer disruption across sectors and drive an exponential business growth. Studies indicate that by 2020, Millennials or Gen Y are projected to be 50% of the workforce, and by 2025, are expected to constitute 75% , and unlocking the opportunity within this demographic is one area which cannot be overlooked. To be able to retain the so-called millennials in an organisation, new-age insurance companies need to recognise the power of digital capabilities in systematically addressing different predicaments at the workplace. 

From peer-to-peer engagement through intranet or leadership engagement via quarterly business performance webcasts and informal interactions, digitisation is helping insurance companies maintain and grow a distinct culture across a wide geographical spread. These organisations are further developing a set of unified self-service offerings for their employees to create a simplified experience. From streamlining access to payslips and planning leaves to digital referral and recognition of colleagues, digital initiatives are enabling productivity by bringing about a remarkable reduction in queries raised via internal ticketing system and increase overall nimbleness.

Using apps and tools to attract, retain and lead talent 

To build camaraderie within the workplace, insurance companies are experimenting with social apps. There has been a notable increase in leveraging digital solutions to resolve business problems which involve teams from multiple departments working in cohesion. A new class of HR products and solutions, many built around mobile apps, artificial intelligence (AI), and consumer-like experiences, are making their way to recruiters to enable HR to become near real-time. Insurance companies are evaluating multiple AI based solutions to onboard and engage with the distributed workforce real time. The objective is to enable
employees to have instant interactions on key life cycle processes and "moments of truth", driving accessibility of data with speed that enables performance, engagement and superior quality experience.

Promoting productivity

Lastly, when speaking about digital transformation, it is important to understand that having access to the right technology is only one part of the dynamics. But for organisations to efficiently leverage technology backed changes and build differentiated human resource solutions, it is important to first create a culture which welcomes digital metamorphosis. Having motivated, digital-savvy leaders in place who are keen to internalise digital upgrade into dayto-day operations and communicate frequently about the benefits of digital methods can help employees embrace digital change effectively. To build a digital ready culture, one must invest in capabilities that empower the workforce of the future and become adept at unlocking power from working in newer, unconventional ways.