The Voice of Bolt

According to government statistics, the population’s need of insurance agents is in the process of growing 10% faster than the average job growth. However, at the same time, hiring in this industry is extremely precarious. In addition, digital natives are becoming the backbone of society. As such, it is important to know how to retain and attract this every growing workforce. However, there are many challenges with this. While changes in the workplace have come with every new generation of workers, the changes happening now are quite different. Today, digital natives want to collaborate and communicate no matter where they are. The office in not so much a physical location anymore as much as a mindset. In addition, the number of hours worked is less important than the results produced. In order to attract this type of worker, modern insurance companies need to provide technologies that are at least as good if not better than the ones that digital natives use today. The foundation of this is the internet, multiple platform connections, and cloud based data. Rather than having small chunks of separate data, the easy accessibility of information is very important in the decision making process. In addition, today’s digital native sees technology like a tool and not the solution. Therefore, companies that get the latest technologies just to do it, tend to push away the digital native. Furthermore, while digital natives are familiar with a wide variety of technology, it doesn’t mean that they know everything. Lastly, just because digital natives are more willing to multitask, they aren’t any better than previous generations at doing so. The insurance industry is in a great position to speak the lingo of digital natives. While this generation might be better with technology than previous ones, they are also acutely aware of the things that they don’t know as well. As such, insurance is a great industry to provide a degree of safety for them. Their fears aren’t unfounded. Especially with the advent of new technologies that many think may one day could take their jobs. However, the digital natives are great at doing things within the insurance industry that technology can’t reproduce. In addition, they are able to talk in the language of the current customer base.

In 2004, The Lodge in Gulf State Park, Alabama was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan. However, now it has been rebuilt and in the process has become the first hotel in the world to be named by the IBHS as hurricane resilient at a bronze level. The $140 million resort sits on the Gulf Coast. It was made to have more resilience to damage from hurricanes and other weather related events. In fact, it can withstand wind up to 160 miles per hour and has also been built up higher so as to protect it from flood damage. The hotel was given the FORTIFIED standard. This standard actually has 3 rating levels: gold, silver, and bronze. The difference between each level comes down to backup power, roof design, and other costly protection features. In a bronze rated place, the roof is strengthened more than a normal one so as to better hold out against the strong winds from hurricanes and other weather related phenomena. The testing for these buildings are done at the IBHS test center. There, they are able to simulate all sorts of weather and natural disaster related things such as wildfires, rainstorms, hailstorms, and hurricane force winds. As weather events are getting worse in both severity and size, investing in weather resilient design for homes is a great way to invest in the community. This is especially important for small businesses. In fact, 1 out of 4 small business that suffer from storm damages from extreme weather never are able to recover from it. With proper construction, you can mitigate the damage. While it might seem like it can cost a lot, it can easily pay for itself in just one storm. If you want to find out more about the FORTIFIED standards, you should check out the IBHS’s website.

According to research done on 97 different insurance agencies and 146 different banks, the Chief Financial Officers at these organizations are becoming more and more important to companies in their digital transformation. In fact, they have become the right hand of many Chief Executive Officers in determining the future digital transformation of their respective companies. The main reason behind this is because CFOs control the money. As such, they must understand where everything is going and their decisions with regards to technological investments in a company are very important. They want to be able to figure out the best technologies that can improve efficiency and thus save their company the most amount of money. This includes looking at how disruptive technologies can help their companies. For example, they are using things such as AI and predicative analytics to help make the best business decisions. However, this goes beyond just the finance division in their company. In fact, they are looking for ways to improve the entire company through technology. Using these new technologies and data from both outside and inside the organization, they are looking how to be best prepared for changes in the future more accurately and easily. However, today the biggest challenges CFOs are facing is finding and keeping the talent that has the analytical and data skills necessary to sue sophisticated analytical data tools. Most companies are dealing with this by trying to prepare their current workforce for the new digital technologies. However, some are more aggressive and meeting with and acquiring tech accelerators. In fact, studies show that as many as 27 percent of companies are meeting with these accelerators. For others that might be even more aggressive, up to 23 percent in fact, they are actually acquiring startups to help them speed up the process.

According to recent studies, more than 1 out of every 3 employees have changed their job within the last 3 years. The most common reasons for this include wanting to feel valued by their employer, looking for good work environments, looking for work that they want to do, and getting a better work life balance. However, the most important of these is probably worker’s needing to feel valued. If they do not feel like a company values them, they are more likely to leave. One of the best ways that companies can make their employees feel more valued is by working together with them about their own career development. The team leaders and their employees can come together and develop achievable, well developed career goals based on corporate and individual needs. One of the best ways that managers can do this for their employees is through the proper training opportunities that can help them further develop and progress throughout their career. With the integration of technology into the workplace, collaborating, no matter where you are, has become much easier. Using tools such as career planning software make it very easy and clear to plan an employee’s future based on both their needs and the organizations. It also makes it very clear what training courses they have taken and which ones they should take next to help further their career. Collaborating with an employee’s career development also require that company is able to connect their goals with their employee’s needs and wants. These types of software make it much clearer as the employee career avenues that are of the greatest benefit to both the company and the employee. The organizations and companies that focus on this type of collaborative career development process are more effective than ones that separate the manager and employee.