Insurance diversity work: Including the head, heart and hand
Spotlight on DE&I: Here’s a closer look at resources available through the Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association.
The Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association (WSIA) undertook notable steps during 2022 to provide its member organizations with resources to foster long-term success in establishing diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives as well as more inclusive staff and workplace cultures.
“There are many people in our industry who are serious” about diversity and inclusion, says Vanessa Sims, WSIA’s director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. “But you have to be strategic, and you have to have a plan.”
In addition to making DE&I conversations pivotal to WSIA’s 2022 Annual Marketplace, the organization launched fresh programs this year to further its goal of establishing long-term organizational successes within the wholesale, excess and surplus lines insurance sector.
Here’s a closer look at some of WSIA’s DE&I resources:
Blue Ocean Brain Microlearning Platform: The WSIA Diversity Foundation partners with Blue Ocean Brain, an online educational platform, to deliver customized micro-learning content to members each month. These knowledge snippets are designed to enhance DE&I workplace programs as users glean actionable tools to implement and share with colleagues.
“We’re getting a lot of good feedback from our members about how easy (the platform) is to use, and how quick it is to watch a video, listen to a podcast or read an article and then put those ideas into action,” Sims says.
Organizations that want to go deeper with DE&I initiatives also can license Blue Ocean Brain content through WSIA.
CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion. WSIA has become a signatory with this global organization that aims to rally the business community to proactively advance DE&I in the workplace. By becoming a signatory, WSIA has pledged to:
- Continue making workplaces trusting places to have complex, and sometimes difficult, conversations about diversity and inclusion;
- Implement and expand unconscious bias education;
- Share best — and unsuccessful — practices; and
- Create and share strategic inclusion and diversity plans with its board of directors.
Roughly 4,000 CEOs fill the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion ranks, says Sims, who adds that the organization’s pledge helps lend accountability to DE&I practices.
DE&I Practitioners Forum. This is a quarterly, one-hour gathering in which DE&I practitioners, human resources personnel, or anyone in the surplus insurance space who wants to dialogue about DE&I issues can come together to hear about other firms’ successes and challenges. Forums have taken on such topics as ‘Recruiting Diverse Talent’ and ‘Nurturing an Inclusive Culture.’
Providing these safe spaces to collaborate and exchange ideas goes a long way toward forging lasting diversity work, Sims says.
“It starts with the head, but it has to be in the heart,” she concludes. “Then, the hand is going to follow.”
Click here to learn about WSIA’s DE&I initiatives.
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