Acuity Insurance

Marcus Knuth

Everywhere you go, “Help Wanted” and “Now Hiring” signs have become commonplace. Notices on the doors of local businesses ask patrons for their patience or announce limited hours due to being short staffed. Each new report of labor statistics shows that the worker shortage is unrelenting, with job openings outpacing available employees by the millions.

Studies of IT leaders confirm this as well. The Society for Human Resource Managementrecently highlighted several reports showing that the demand for technology will remain high in 2022 and beyond, but that IT workers will be hard to find and keep. CIOs are working more closely than ever with their HR departments to address the problem.

Tackling the talent crunch isn’t easy, but it is necessary for forward-focused IT departments and the CIOs that lead them. Here are five tips for talent recruiting and retention that have proven to be successful at Acuity.

1. Recognize that talent pipeline starts early. Campus recruiting has always been a key component of the talent pipeline. However, the effort needs to go far beyond job fairs that target soon-to-graduate students it needs to start earlier and be ongoing.

Acuity begins outreach to the next generation of workers at the middle- and high-school level, introducing students to our company and the insurance industry through tours of our headquarters and sponsorship of many educational events. We also work continually to maintain strong relationships with dozens of colleges and universities across several states. One of the most effective features of our outreach program is inviting IT professors to take an in-depth tour of our technology operations at our Sheboygan, Wisconsin, headquarters. We have collaborative discussions, share what Acuity can offer graduates, and obtain feedback on what students are looking for from us as an employer.

The program has been a huge success in recruiting. In fact, one professor tells his students, “If you do well enough in my class, I will let you apply at Acuity.” Of course, that’s not actually a prerequisite to applying at Acuity, but it shows professors value what we offer and our relationship with them. Likewise, recommendations from those professors carry weight in our hiring process.

2. Invest in partnerships. Outreach to schools is important but only part of the effort backing it up with tangible investment is the other. Whether it’s creating the Acuity Technology Center at UW Sheboygan-Green Bay or sponsoring the Acuity Cyber Defense Range at UW-Whitewater, we show our support for the future of tech.

This effort is important because, let’s face it, insurance isn’t the first industry that comes to mind for IT graduates looking to start their career or experienced IT professionals in other industries looking to make a change. It’s important to build your own brand as a tech leader and insurance industry disruptor.

3. Support and encourage personal development. We do hire experienced IT staff for specific skills where needed, but as a company we emphasize developing internal talent. It begins with onboarding and training and continues with ongoing career development, including support for advanced coursework both within the tech space and the insurance industry. We have an effective mentorship program and focus not only on building technical skills, but also “soft skill” development at a team level, department level, and company level.

"Recruiting and retaining great people in IT requires an unrelenting effort to build and maintain a workplace where people feel supported and valued"

For instance, we have regular sessions of our “Quad Squad,” which involves IT, Business Consulting, Marketing, and Actuarial departments. Sessions provide training on diverse soft skill topics from conflict resolution and decision-making to team building and more.

4. Capitalize on the virtual workforce. There’s been a lot of buzz in the media about companies starting to require employees to come back into the office, either full time or several days per week. This has surprised me, because I would have expected technology departments to lead the charge in remote work.

At Acuity, we have fully embraced remote and hybrid work arrangements. People throughout our company, including IT, can choose where they want to work. Today about 20 percent of our IT staff are fully remote, and we are entirely comfortable with that. This has not only led to increased job satisfaction buthas also opened up a nationwide talent pool to us.

5. Show people they arevalued. At an insurance company, the focus of business is on the needs of policyholders, with claims, billing, and other customer-focused processes being most visible to the public. It’s important that everyone in IT, whether they are new to the company or someone who has been here for decades, to understand how vital they are to those processes.

Our President and CEO, Ben Salzmann, likes to say that Acuity is a tech company inside an insurance company. The point is that we don’t just write code and create systems everythingwe do in IT supports our mission of being there when bad things happen to our customers and helping them rebuild shattered lives.

We continually work to demonstrate that connection and give people a sense of importance and accomplishment. There isn’t a single way that we do this—it’s baked into the fabric of our culture. It includes regular events such as quarterly, companywide “Town Hall” meetings and monthly “Lunch with an Officer” sessions. It includes my weekly “Meetings with Marcus” sessions where I show people first-hand how their work fits into the larger corporate picture. It also includes our migration to Agile development, which has dramatically increased the amount of personal interaction between IT and end-users and provided transparency into how the work we do impacts everyone.

In short, recruiting and retaining greatpeople in ITrequires an unrelenting effort to build and maintain a workplace where people feel supported and valued. This effort cannot exist in isolation. It requires a companywide commitment to being a great place to work and a company people are proud to be part of. There are no shortcuts to tackling the talent crunch, but putting in the work will pay dividends.