STRATEGY
Only connect: communication is the key in D&I
To make D&I initiatives work, insurers must talk about what they’re doing—in the business, in the industry, and outside. There’s no room for looking only for competitive advantage if change is to happen.
There are many different ways to approach diversity but they mostly share one thing at their heart: communication.
Bill Wharton, head of Argo Insurance Bermuda, said: “One of the things we have found is that you can’t communicate enough.”
Wharton is a member of Argo’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) committee, made up of senior leaders from across the organisation, including HR as well as communications.
To discuss his company’s approach and the wider issue, he was joined on an Intelligent Insurer panel bringing together a range of D&I experts in the re/insurance sector: Helen Cooke, who joined Aspen Insurance in May 2020 as its lead for culture change engagement and D&I; Chelsey Sprong, inclusion partner at Beazley; Barbara Schönhofer, founder and chair of ISC Group, a community interest company that provides personal, professional and business development for women in insurance; and Vic Mazonas, general manager of the Group for Autism, Insurance and Neurodiversity (GAIN), launched in 2021 with founder members including Marsh McLennan, Swiss Re, and Zurich.
Bringing buy-in
For Wharton, communication within the organisation on D&I is crucial. Strategies need to be led from “the base” to ensure the focus is where it needs to be, he added.
“You can easily look up and see what the CEO wants or you want to put out a glowing ESG report, but it’s not about that,” he warned. “I always remind myself and others that it’s about the employees.”
Communication reveals where people’s interests are and can help direct work to improve diversity.
“Many have family members who are neurodiverse, or have disabilities, or are LGBTQ+,” said Wharton—and that applies to leaders as much as other staff.
“We ask them to be open and share it because when they do, employees see that the president of the organisation or division is no different from them when it comes to diversity inclusion.”
“I’m increasingly focused on making sure that we understand the value of diversity.”
Chelsey Sprong, Beazley
It helps to ensure buy-in and stops D&I becoming merely a compliance of performance issue. Sprong said: “I’m increasingly focused on making sure that we understand the value of diversity. It’s not just me telling them they have to have 50 percent women in their team or to think about racial diversity.
“I want people to start to connect it with the reasons this is so enriching and necessary.”
Being open about D&I issues helps promote a more welcoming workplace for those with diverse characteristics which may otherwise be overlooked.
“If you have 1,000 employees in your workforce, I guarantee you have 80 to 100 people who are neurodivergent,” noted Mazonas.
“Your workforce is already diverse; they’re just not necessarily bringing this aspect of themselves to the workplace with them, sometimes because it can be a scary thing to do,” she said. “If nobody else ever talks about this, you can’t be the first person to speak up; it feels like a risk.”
Being open is also vital for those who aren’t opposed to greater inclusion but are uncertain about how to go about it.
“A lot of people in organisations have been scared of it,” said Cooke. “It’s not that they want to discriminate, but they may not have friends who are different from them and are not sure about the language to use.
“One of the things we tried to encourage is to talk very honestly about what language to use and what happens if you say the wrong thing.
“If we do nothing else, we need to be having more open conversations helping people to feel more confident and comfortable to have those sorts of conversations.”
“If you have 1,000 employees in your workforce, I guarantee you have 80 to 100 people who are neurodivergent.”
Vic Mazonas, GAIN
All in it together: sharing best practice
It’s not only within businesses that the conversations need to happen, however. It also should be between them, the panellists agreed. To see greater progress, the industry must work together.
At Beazley, Sprong has been with the business for five years and focused on D&I for the last two, shaping the strategy and embedding it globally. As she put it, there should be “no copyright” over ideas and practices that can improve D&I within re/insurance.
“We can never diversify insurance as an industry on our own. It’s something we need to do collectively, and sharing best practices is the way that we will achieve that faster,” she said.
Schönhofer, who set up the ISC Group, originally the Insurance Supper Club, almost 15 years ago to promote networking among women working in insurance, agreed. She argued that insurers should share success stories, best practices, and data to promote D&I.
“Let’s get away from competitive advantage; we need industry advantage right now,” she said. With insurers being challenged by disruptors from outside the industry, it needs to tap the widest possible pool of talent, she said.
“If we can get clever and different people coming together with our existing insurance brains, we can start truly competing with that.”
To succeed, the industry may need to look both within and outside. Cooke’s background is in the NHS, and she believes the insurance industry could learn from others.
“Rather than just looking inwards at insurance, there’s an opportunity to learn from other sectors. The environment may not be identical, but there could be some very interesting opportunities,” she said.
Where it gets it right, the industry should trumpet it. It’s true that the industry has not always been an example of diversity, said Mazonas, but that could make its success even more impressive—and inspiring.
“Strategically, we’re past the point where this needs to be addressed, but unfortunately the world as a whole is past that point,” she said. “We have the potential to lead on this and show that if we can do it, the world can do it.”
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