Despite the industry’s well known talent crunch, Gallagher Bassett (GB), the third-party claims administrator (TPA), doesn’t seem to have too much trouble recruiting new staff and retaining them. GB recently announced that it successfully recruited several hundred new employees.
One key to the firm’s successful recruiting strategy could be how it targets the right people.
Ria Leason (pictured above), GB’s chief people and culture officer, told Insurance Business that GB looks for a range of important industry relevant skills in potential candidates.
“An ability to have strong resilience, to be able to communicate really effectively and manage time and multiple priorities,” said Leason. “They need to be able to clearly communicate outcomes to injured workers or clients and ensure the right people are kept informed of any issues or opportunities throughout the process.”
She said their requirements are in some ways no different to any firm with a strong customer service culture.
“But it probably goes deeper because it is such an emotional piece of work that we do for people. It really is,” said Leason.
GB, she said, also brings in people who have different skill sets from insurance industry professionals.
“I think there's a longevity with bringing colleagues on who have a different skill set and experience,” said Leason. “If you think about the type of work that we're doing, we're often working with very complex claims which come with complex needs of an individual.”
She said technical experience is fantastic but recruiting someone who is the right cultural fit is “critical”. Leason said this includes having service skills to support injured people through their claim.
“We see stickiness with that, people stay within our business because of the training and support we provide people,” she said.
Another important ingredient in GB’s successful recruiting strategy is the way the firm goes about advertising for new positions.
“We're always very transparent about what we're doing across the business,” said Leason. “Firstly, we want to make sure that we're giving people the opportunity to move around the organisation.”
She said the firm’s “significant expertise across our global company” can be very appealing to new talent who want to build a satisfying career path.
“The second is our referral program, which empowers our people to introduce their connections to a workplace they know and trust,” said Leason.
GB’s talent acquisition team is “incredibly strong,” she said.
“They use all the tools and systems that we have at our disposal to be able to go out into market for specific senior roles and skills,” said Leason. “Then we work very closely with our training teams to build those skills with people who might not necessarily have them but are transferable.”
She also said the firm is very strategic when its building and expanding teams.
“Our significant experience in new scheme response starts ups is one of the biggest strengths we have.”
She gave the example of GB’s Darwin office which opened in 2017 that provides self-insurance claims management services to all Northern Territory (NT) government staff.
“We run town halls locally for people to be able to come and join us and understand a little bit more about what we do,” said Leason. “But honestly, our people are our biggest asset and I know that sounds really cliché but you just have to visit our LinkedIn page to see our people sharing news and recommending available roles to their network.”
In a previous interview with IB, Kye Brown, GB’s Darwin-based branch manager for the NT discussed how her office is dealing with the talent crunch.
Brown said when they need staff, GB’s preference is to focus on finding someone who is a “cultural fit.”
“We can always teach a person with the right drive the technical skills, the injury and case management skills, and the legislation is what it is,” she said. “We pretty much only focus on that culture fit and making sure we’re bringing the right people into the business that are actually going to help people during their recovery – and we teach them the rest of it.”
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