Is clunky tech driving away millennial employees?
It’s no secret that there is a significant talent gap in insurance.
Millennials are projected to comprise half of the entire global workforce by 2020, according to Insurance Careers Trifecta.
But only a paltry 5% are interested in a career in insurance. Overall, the industry is aging out, with nearly half a million open positions projected over the next two years.
Of the millennials who do enter insurance, many are dissatisfied or driven out by the clunky technology in use there. They have grown up with nearly everything accessible online or through slick mobile apps, and their threshold for poor user experience is exceedingly low. Technology that is cumbersome and frustrating can (and does) drive highly-skilled and competent employees away.
So what can carriers do to positively impact user experience, keep millennials happy with the technology they are using, and prevent turnover? The answer is simple: Understand their employees.
Troubleshooting technology
Millennials have grown up in the age of smartphones and high-speed Internet, and their digital fluency demands that the technology in the workplace matches the speed and convenience of what they use in their personal lives. Intuitive, user-friendly software is a must; poor user interface design, processing lags and functional errors force employees to develop workarounds, repeat tasks, and become frustrated with the software, and their jobs, which leads to poor morale.
Technology must also be able to communicate seamlessly across multiple platforms. A fancy new upgrade is useless if it cannot work in tandem with other devices. In an increasingly interconnected world, efficient and effective communication across the board is absolutely imperative.
Of course, every company has challenges with employees adopting enterprise applications, and employees will encounter difficulties on occasion. However, when such problems crop up, it is essential that the pain points are nipped in the bud. Too much down time or troubleshooting doesn’t just decrease productivity; it also causes frustration and impatience, and eventually impacts engagement and morale.
Enacting change
So what tangible steps can carriers take to get where they need to be?
The first step is to understand they have a problem. They can do that by implementing user analytics, which track employees’ experiences and engagement with their critical software applications. Data gathered by measuring business workflows, application response times and error message frequency is extremely valuable, because it sheds light on which areas require adjustments in order to fully optimize employees’ experience and productivity.
Instead of making superfluous changes driven by the latest industry fad, carriers need to take the time to understand their employees’ actual needs. This requires a special empathy for the user, and it also necessitates the right technology to measure the true user experience. With this technology, companies can pursue informed improvements that truly address the problems at hand. In the end, it’s self-evident that happy, satisfied workers boost overall productivity and help the bottom line.
Many in the insurance field spend all day parked in front of computer screens, so it’s crucial that their technology is optimized to provide an efficient and user-friendly work environment. Carriers need to address the root cause of employee frustration, be it a lack of training, poor user experience (UX), sluggish system performance, or something else entirely. Millennials don’t just care about ping-pong tables and free snacks — what they want most is the ability to do their job well through the use of seamless technology that doesn’t bog them down.
Brian Berns (bberns@knoa.com) is CEO of Knoa Software. These opinions are his own.
See also:
How millennial producers can pursue their most profitable insurance market