February is Insurance Careers Month, and Sedgwick is proud to participate in this industrywide effort to attract new talent to our ranks. With nearly 4 million Baby Boomers retiring each year and fewer than 5% of millennials expressing interest in careers in insurance, our industry faces a looming talent crisis. To ensure we can properly meet clients’ increasingly complex needs and care for the millions of people who depend on our services when unexpected events occur, we must make a concerted effort to explore new sources of talent and promote claims and insurance as a career choice anyone could love.
Why choose a career in the claims industry?
My own path is a testament to where a career in our industry can take you. I was recently humbled to accept an induction into the Florida Workers’ Compensation Institute Hall of Fame. After 20 years of experience in the workers’ compensations claims management industry, I have been able to take advantage of my time and opportunities to continue learning, having earned multiple professional designations. In my current role, I have operational responsibility for the Sedgwick Southeast casualty business unit, with approximately 600 colleagues on my team.
In addition to having financial responsibility for multiple offices, I work to ensure customer satisfaction, claim quality and colleague development and retention. While I do feel a sense of personal accomplishment, my Sedgwick colleagues have played such an important role in helping me reach this point. It’s our wonderful colleagues that make this industry a great place to work. I never dreamed that this is where my career would lead me, but this industry has allowed me to build a strong network of talented colleagues and lifelong friends.
My story is just one example of the wide range of opportunities found working in this field. It is said our industry offers the “career trifecta” – jobs that are:
• Stable – One of the few things we can dependably expect in life is the unexpected; it is when those unanticipated circumstances arise that people rely on the promptness and expertise of claims and insurance professionals. Studies show that our industry will need to fill 400,000 jobs by 2020 to meet the rising demand.
• Rewarding – Beyond compensation and benefits, working in claims and insurance offers the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others at times when they are particularly vulnerable and distressed. Helping another person resume a sense of normalcy following a workplace injury, serious illness, auto accident or property damage is how we at Sedgwick show that caring counts®.
• Limitless – Growth opportunities abound in the claims and insurance industry. There are always new coverage lines to explore, jurisdictional nuances to learn, and additional skills to master. Further, our industry provides enriching experiences in far-reaching specialties like data analytics, risk management, customer service, healthcare, information technology and globalization.
As we say at Sedgwick, if you care, there’s a place for you here. Our industry provides meaningful, challenging work and a culture of learning with a focus on professional and personal development. Those with a can-do, service-oriented attitude, emotional maturity, empathy and sound judgment will achieve success here. Whether you are an eager newcomer or a seasoned professional, we would love to have you join our industry and specifically the Sedgwick family. As I have found, the colleagues you meet in this industry often become lifelong friends. You will be constantly challenged and the sky is the limit for finding an opportunity you will love. To learn more about careers with us, visit https://www.sedgwick.com/careers and learn much more about our industry at https://insurancecareerstrifecta.org/.