Allie Nawrat and Jon Kennard from the UNLEASH editorial team kick off their second focus chat with a story about sustainability in the insurance sector. Would this help retain your talent?
"It's all about how you actually make it easy for companies to hire the best talent no matter where they are".
Did the Morgan Stanley CEO's recent comments in the press chime with you or clang?
Tune in for this analysis and more, of our recent talent and recruitment stories.
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Listen above or read an excerpt of the transcript beneath, which has been edited for clarity.
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Jon Kennard: Yes, welcome to the second UNLEASHcast talent and recruitment focus and I’m welcoming back an old hand at the UNLEASH podcast now. Our Talent Recruitment lead senior journalist here at UNLEASH, how are you?
Allie Nawrat: I’m good, thanks, Jon just coming out of a cold. So if I sound a little bit a little bit creaky, I apologize, but hopefully on the other end of that now.
JK: You sound fine to me. And really glad to do a second one of these. Again, we’re going to be rounding up two or three stories from the last three or four weeks and just see what we’ve been talking about in the world of talent and recruitment, unleash the stories we’ve been publishing the initiatives, businesses have been putting together for their people, those kinds of things. And the first story we’re going to come to is about Zurich. The headline was, ‘Why sustainability is core to Zurich Insurance‘. My question: sustainability and insurance, not necessarily the go-to but they’re making real inroads here aren’t they?
AN: Yeah, they are. And it was really interesting, because in the interview, I really found that Sally, the interviewee, global head of talent and learning at Zurich insurance, you know, she was pretty, pretty excited about everything she was talking about. But when we started talking about sustainability, she really perked up even more; actually, it’s a really big deal for them. And not just because there’s this amazing HQ that they’ve got which, you know, I really would like to see in person, it looks really cool, you know, a garage for any electric vehicles, loads of greenery, lots of using rainwater and filtering it out, all that stuff. But what I thought was interesting about what Sally said, I’m not sure how much it’s emphasized the piece, but in the background that she said about how for them at Zurich, sustainability is so important to the company as a whole.
Obviously, as you said, it doesn’t seem like a natural friendship. But actually, for them, I think they’re pivoting to like, if they have to insure people’s homes, obviously, with the climate emergency, you’re more likely to have flooding, you’re more likely to have tsunamis, any of those kinds of storms that really are a problem for insurers and a problem for people. So they’re clearly trying to do their best to get ahead of it as early as possible. And avoid the impact on their business, but also the impact on their clients, their customers and the world in general, which is quite interesting. I actually a bit like you didn’t see the immediate connection, but the more Sally explained it, the more it made more sense to me.
JK: Yeah, it’s great. I think I need to put my preconceptions in a box, because I used to work in insurance for a short amount of time, six months, I think. The place I worked, I’m not gonna name it, but it certainly wasn’t like this. I mean, this was 2010. So a long time ago, and businesses have everyone’s policies and focus and and ethos has completely changed since then. And rightly so. But I think my preconceptions got the better of me there. But yeah, really great to see that they’re leading the way in this industry.
