“The four-day week is not happening [in insurance].”
That was the bold assertion made by Blake Oliver Consulting managing director Daniel Marsh (pictured) amid suggestions that a fixed four-day work week – meaning it’s the same day off for everyone – could be the way forward for insurance companies. Marsh, whose credentials include years spent at Willis Towers Watson and Chubb, “massively” contests the idea.
“We have to remember that the insurance industry is a service industry,” the headhunting expert told Insurance Business. “I’ve been a broker myself, and I know that we work in the service industry. Brokers service clients.
“The insurance market is a service industry – that’s what people need to understand. And the thing about Australia is, if we don’t take command of servicing our clients over five days, Singapore will take our clients, Hong Kong will take our clients, London will take our clients.”
Prior to his foray into the world of insurance-focussed executive search, Marsh’s insurance career began in the UK in 1998. His networks in Europe and Asia go back more than two decades, while that in Australia goes back 10 years.
In Marsh’s view, reducing days of operations will mean the loss of clients, particularly for brokers.
He declared: “I think If you’re an insurance broking firm and you go to a four-day week, you’re going to lose business. Say, if I run a huge accounting firm and I need to call my broker on a Friday and I can’t get hold of them, I guarantee that Marsh, Aon, Willis, Gallagher, Lockton, BMS, the global brokers, will be doing five days a week.
“If we’re sending a message out to regional brokers saying, ‘Bring your staff in four days a week because that’s how you bring in talent’, that’s not a good message to send. Because I promise you, Marsh will not be bringing their staff in four days a week.”
The Blake Oliver boss went on to state: “The insurance industry is never going four days a week. We have to remember that we are in a global economy and we are competing with New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Paris, etc. That’s our market. If you want to attract people on that basis, then that’s a really good way to mess up your business, in my opinion.”
Marsh added that, given the current market, brokers are having to work harder than ever – something that he doesn’t think will be helped by a reduced work week. He warned that someone else is going to take clients from those unable to service them.
“We’re not off the clock on a Friday,” stressed Marsh. “In fact, brokers work seven days a week. They will take a phone call from a client on a Saturday or Sunday. They take a call when it needs to be taken.”
These calls after hours, he illustrated, can be a 10-minute chat about a client suffering a warehouse fire, for instance. A broker may not necessarily be able to help right then and there, but Marsh believes there’s value in simply putting a client at ease under such circumstances.
He told Insurance Business: “The insurance industry is not Monday to Thursday, nine to five. The insurance industry is Monday to Sunday, midnight to midnight. Yes, there’s nothing you can do on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday night – or Thursday or Friday evening, [for that matter] – so you deal with it the following [working] morning. But as a broker, you’re on call.”
As someone who’s been a broker and underwriter himself, Marsh won’t accept that the four-day work week is the future awaiting the industry he is so passionate about.
Marsh pointed out: “If we’re saying to clients, ‘You’re getting less of us but for the same money’, how is that a benefit? And the Australian insurance market is under massive pressure. To say that the only way you can bring people in is if you give them an extra day off is absolute nonsense.
“If that’s the future of the industry, then I’m very concerned. Do not have that as a message to a small broking firm. Saying to a small broking firm that they can grow their business by going four days a week is very, very concerning and very short-sighted, in my professional opinion.”
