It’s a different world today if you’re just entering the workforce compared to 30 or even 20 years ago. Not only are the skills required different, but so is the speed of change and adaption required. Younger people are very aware of this change and have very different expectations about working, from their parents’ generations. (Who's more online savvy?)
Combine the changing expectations of employees with the increasing speed of technological change, and the business world becomes a very different landscape. As business owners and employers we need to be ahead of the changes.
To take Pinnacle Life as an example. We were the first life insurance company in the world to offer online underwriting and issuance of life insurance policies online. And that has meant we need to run a very different business model than our competitors. For example, today nearly 75% of our life insurance customers apply for, and get issued a life insurance policy online – with no interaction with us unless they want to. It also means that these 75% of customers don’t need to provide medical records or provide any paperwork – they can even sign up for their direct debit payments online.
So that means that we have a very different structure than our competitors. We have no underwriters in our business - which is unheard of in life insurance. But because 75% of cases get underwritten by our technology, we have lots less manual underwriting to do. So we outsource the complex underwriting to our reinsurers – who have teams of underwriters who do this for other clients. We also don’t need as many sales and service people, as so many of our customers use our self-service options.
We run a business model which we call an ’eco-system’. We’ve got clear on the core capabilities that we need to hold within our business, and then we partner with experts in all the other areas. This extends to marketing, technology development, underwriting, and finance amongst others. This creates a really nimble and agile structure which we can ‘flex’ to meet our growth needs easily.
This model works well for Pinnacle Life but there are other options. What are you doing to attract young people, to keep nimble and to stay ahead of the game?
