Professionals discuss HR’S important role in insurance industry
The insurance industry employs a workforce of about 18000-20000 and has an agency force of about 45000. Insurance, as a market, has a strong growth potential but the penetration ability of insurers remain relatively low.
A panel consisting of International Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka Chairman Dinesh Weerakkody, Janashakthi Insurance Managing Director Prakash Shaffter, Union Assurance General Manager Human Resources Suresh Muttiah and AIA Director Chaturi Munaweera, at the Annual Insurance Congress on the topic ‘HR challenges in a consolidating industry’, in general noted that attracting new talent has always been a challenge for the industry.
Hence, HR professionals will need to continue to focus on building a strong employer brand and talent development tools to attract new talent. This they noted would require the HR community to work together to generate a more positive image of insurance in academic and professional fields and among school communities.
At the same time, HR must continue to develop the existing employees and reskill them to perform in the new roles that will emerge with the changes and disruptions that the industry is currently facing.
Weerakkody noted in his address that an HR strategy to help employees embrace new technological advances and build organisation capabilities to adopt new business models would be required.
He noted that HR will have to be a strong advocate of the digital transformation within the organisation, that goes beyond the basic HR systems and therefore, HR must be able to embrace concepts such as digital talent within organisations and develop reward systems that are not based only on team performance or simply on education/technical qualifications but more merit driven and that promotes creativity and innovation.
The panel in general noted that if skill development is an issue and if the industry is not able to grow all the talent from within, it has to take advantage of the regulatory landscape, which provides opportunities for consolidations, partnerships, etc.