Zurich on becoming ‘fit for the future’

For Sarah Kirby, group head of organization design and HR strategy, one of many things that makes Zurich Insurance special is its employee value proposition: “creating a brighter future together”.

The crucial word here is future. For Zurich, “it’s not just about equipping [employees] with what they need today, but very much what is needed for the longer term around our whole skilling, development and career advancement agenda”, Kirby tells UNLEASH.

Learning and development (L&D) at Zurich is “about being equipped with a capability to do one’s job now, but [also] how do we think about that for the long-term? How can we make people fit for the future?”

While future skills have always a priority for the insurance giant, Kirby explains when COVID-19 hit, it really accelerated Zurich “into a new way of thinking” regarding how to bring future-focused learning to life.

As a result, Zurich has digitalized learning, and launched a new learning platform. The platform includes more than 18,000 resources, and Zurich employees are getting good use out of the tool  – while 500,000 learning hours were completed in 2020, its 55,000 employees are on track to do one million hours of learning in 2022.

The insurer wants to create “curiosity around learning, such that people aren’t fearful of the unknown or how the world is changing”. According to Kirby, “it’s about being transparent with people about how we offer those skills, those capabilities, such that we can offer them longevity of career within Zurich”, as well as outside.

Skills, skills and more skills

This future-focus ties in with work Zurich has been doing over the past ten years to move away from job titles and reporting lines, and towards grouping jobs based on skills.

“This approach allowed us to design career paths within a given discipline” and think about “how we build people’s careers based on the acquisition of new skills, rather than just thinking about it in terms of job domains”, Kirby tells UNLEASH.

This means skills have become a currency at Zurich, and therefore, the types of skills that the insurer prioritizes needs frequent review.

Kirby explains that while the focus is on “what I call the ‘power skills’, e.g., resilience, adaptability to change, innovation and creativity”, Zurich frequently reviews its skill framework to check if it is “in sync with where we need it to be”.

For instance, does the L&D framework still align with and support changing business and customer requirements? Are Zurich’s 12 technical academies providing the most up-to-date training?

According to Kirby, “that’s quite new thinking”, and it is key to becoming more future ready and future focused.

Sarah Kirby, group head of organization success and HR strategy, Zurich Insurance.

To help here, Zurich is working with an unnamed external vendor to provide data and insights into the changing skills landscape in the wider market; which skills are trending up and which are trending down?

“We have a whole suite of algorithms working in the background that can inform and shape how we are developing the skills frameworks”, explains Kirby.

These insights will further help Zurich to better understand the current skills gaps, and how to close those gaps and “keep our people future fit”. This is an “ambitious agenda”, but it will be incredibly powerful for the future success of Zurich and its people.

Using internal marketplaces to acquire skills

On the topic of skills gaps, “without question, there will part of our business where we need to acquire niche skills” from the external market, notes Kirby.

But internal mobility remains Zurich’s priority – “with over 67% in 2021, the majority of the hiring that we do is coming from the inside”. This confirms what Zurich’s global head of talent Sally Henderson told UNLEASH earlier this year: “We will always prioritize internal hires over external hires wherever possible”.

To get creative on how to acquire employees and skills from different parts of the business, “we are very much actively promoting our internal marketplace”. This was built by Zurich technologists, and it aims to “mobilize people into part-time or full-time assignments to grow their careers, not only horizontally, but also laterally”.

This allows employees to gain new experiences and skills, as well as gives them “insights into opportunities across the organizations”, which has been historically hard to achieve.

Talent marketplaces are growing in popularity – more and more vendors are cropping up in this space, and brands are increasingly leveraging them to help with internal mobility. For instance, Novartis’s global head of talent Markus Graf recently told UNLEASH about how crucial they are to retention at the pharma giant.

Are you ready to follow the example of Zurich and Novartis to close skill gaps and retain your employees in the war for talent?

Giving employees a say

Part of Kirby’s role as group head of organization design and HR strategy at Zurich is employee listening, and doing this in a continuous way. This allows the employer to take a temperate gauge and figure out what is really going on in the organization.

Using the Employee Net Promoter Score, Zurich’s HR team found out that employees are engaged with Zurich’s purpose and commitment to be a sustainable employer.

“That’s really powerful… we read all the time about organizations who are striving to achieve this, but we seem to have got the right ingredients in place such that employees feel that they’re part of [and] contributing to our sustainability efforts”, notes Kirby.

This helps to explain why Zurich isn’t being significantly disrupted in the ‘Great Resignation’. Remember, purpose, values and being genuine on environmental commitments are core to thriving in the current war for talent.

Zurich’s new sustainable HQ in Switzerland.

Kirby adds: “The ability to retain our people is very much borne out of the heavy emphasis and investment that we’re placing on learning, development and career advancement.

“It’s inspirational when you hear our CEO and other senior leaders talking about our commitments to people sustainability. It has a real resonance [with our employees and] they feel that they will have longevity of career at Zurich.”

Listening also has a clear role to play in L&D priorities at Zurich by “empowering our employees to work with us…to identify the skills that they need for the future”.

To help here, Zurich is going to be leveraging its new in-house career and L&D platform, which was created by the company’s own technology and operations function. It’s currently in the pilot phase, the aim is to roll it out fully in 2023.

Kirby explains: “Employees will be able to go into the tool and self-assess themselves against the capabilities that are dictated within their job description [and] that they’re interested in”. These will include future-focused skills.

This self-assessment approach aims to provide the opportunities for managers and employees to have informed decisions about development paths to create a future-ready career.

Creating the culture for success

Kirby is clear that while having an “emphasis on learning and skilling is absolutely paramount, running parallel with that is [the need to] create the right operating environment [and] the culture to be successful”.

This is where Zurich’s broader focus on wellbeing comes into play. People want to “feel part of an organization that cares” about them and their future careers, and the insurance giant achieves this through mentorship and coaching.

Zurich provides managers with coaching and mentorship to ensure they “engage with employees in a very different way from perhaps what we or other organizations have seen historically. It’s about now being fearful to talk about development and advancement”, even if it is outside of Zurich.

Mentorship is also available to younger generations who are early in their careers at Zurich, including interns and apprenticeships. These programs are innovative and are global in scope.

Kirby adds: “At that early stage of your career, that’s pretty special. It’s not just about the usual type of learning programs, it’s about building one’s network within the organization, which is so important to help facilitate career advancement and movement”.

These types of initiatives are central to Zurich growing and strengthening its brand as an employer of choice for the younger generation.

“If we look at the younger generations, they want to come to an organization which is purpose-led. They want the right level of investment in learning advancement to enrich the experience,” notes Kirby.

So, for Kirby, if Zurich truly wants to be ready for the future, it cannot drop the ball on learning and development.

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