Aug 5, 2020
Deidre Wright is the CEO of Strategic Stories, a Diversity and Inclusion Award Winner, and a board advisor for Juniper Labs. Deidre is passionate about incorporating more diversity into organizations, especially the insurance industry. The good news is, the industry is perfectly ready for it because they’ve already adapted a risk management mindset. Deidre shares her thoughts on what the insurance industry can be doing to adapt to the times and bring in a new set of talent into their retirement-eligible workforce on this week’s episode.
Key Takeaways
- Deidre shares a bit of her background and how she first got into risk management.
- Deidre kept wondering why she was the only minority in the room.
- The biggest challenge companies are facing is that they can’t find minorities with the right skill sets. Deidre shares her thoughts on this.
- What improvements can companies be making to improve their diversity?
- What are we doing as an industry to meet the needs of diverse customers?
- We already have a risk management mindset, which means the insurance industry already has the best potential to make a difference. The numbers and math are already there.
- The insurance industry has a massive talent gap approaching, with a high percentage of professionals being eligible to retire right now.
- What would Deidre like to see included in outreach efforts to attract more diverse talent?
- If you want to retain the talent you have, appreciate them and make real efforts to show you care about them.
- How do you make insurance more attractive to new talent?
- Customers just want things to be easy and they want to trust you.
- The world will never be the same due to this pandemic. Deidre believes we will see better employee engagement.
- What does Deidre wish she had known before getting started? Use your voice.
Keep Getting Better
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Quotes
“We know things have to change. Are we going to be proactive about this or are we going to risk our companies being dinosaurs?”
“Companies understand that investing in diversity and inclusion equity is important. The challenge is for others to be motivated to proactively change the system.”
“Don’t think of diversity as more work, think of it as more opportunity to grow your business, grow our industry, and get top talent to solve these problems.”