A poll of workers recently hired into the property/casualty insurance industry conducted during a Travelers
Institute webinar last month produced some unusual results, surprising one webinar panelist who leads a key business segment at Travelers.
Only 20 percent of responding webinar attendees who were hired into the industry in the last five years said they fa
ctored company “mission and purpose” into their employment choices, and just about one-third said they valued “engaging and interesting work,” according to the in-webinar poll.
Competitive compensation and benefits topped the list (63 percent) that also had more respondents cho
osing work-life balance (59 percent) and positive company culture (50 percent). Culture edged out the final factor on the list, training opportunities and career development. (48 percent).
“I am probably not qualified to answer since I didn’t join the industry in the last five years,…but I would have checked all of the above,” said Michael Klein, pr
esident of Personal Insurance at Travelers, who has been with the company for 35 years. “I’m interested in … the relatively low response on alignment with com
pany mission and purpose,” he said. “I think our industry has a very noble mission and purpose,” he said, expressing the hope that the webinar conversation to fo
low would shed some light on the lack of interest in this factor revealed by the quick-response survey. Klein, who started his career as an actuary, did not reve
al how many attendees responded to the poll, nor did he indicate that the results were statistically significant.
In fact, Klein and co-panelists Denise Perlman, chief executive officer within Aon’s North America middle market seg
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ment, and Robert Hartwig, associate clinical professor of finance and director of the Risk and Uncertainty Manageme
nt Center at the University of South Carolina, offered repeated exa
mples of the purpose-driven and interesting career paths available in the P/C insurance industry at various points during the webinar.
Perlman offered the first reaction to the polling results, stating that they “aligned perfectly” with an Aon survey of talent globally (across industries), which p
ut company culture, work-life balance, and attractive compensation and benefits “definitely on top of the list.” (Mo
st of the respondent population, 89 percent, of an Aon Employee Sentiment Study survey, however, consisted of employees who have been in their current roles for two or more years, and only 25 percent identified as being associates or entry-level staffers. The Aon survey was linked to an online description of the Travelers webinar as a resource for attendees.)