Hugh Terry, CEO & Founder of The Digital Insurer moderates this panel discussion with Simon Phipps, Founder of The Digital Insurer, Sara Roberts, Founder & Principal Consultant at Kettlewell Consulting, and Malini Nagaria, TDI Academy Programme Director. Dive into: – Digital Tipping Point changes everything – Practitioner perspectives – Learning and development (L&D) design perspectives for the TDI Academy
Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:07
hi welcome to this 30 minute session on culture and reskilling in a digital
0:13
world as part of the insurtech connect global tour my name’s hugh terry and i’m a founder
0:20
and ceo at the digital insurer the digital insurer has the world’s largest
0:26
knowledge base on digital insurance and our purpose is working together to accelerate the digital transformation of
0:33
insurance this topic of culture and reskilling in a digital
0:38
world is one that’s very close to us we’re really looking forward to this
0:43
exciting fast-moving panel today we’re going to look at consumer change how the digital tipping
0:50
point changes everything and simon will cover that then we’re going to take some practitioner perspectives and sarah is a
0:57
very experienced l d professional in financial services it’s going to give her point of view then we’re going to
1:04
sort of narrow down and focus on l d design perspectives and some of the things that we’ve been learning
1:09
at the td tdi academy which is our business school focused on digital insurance and then we’ll end uh with a
1:16
little bit of a call to action so let’s get going it’s great pleasure to hand over to uh simon my fellow founder at
1:23
the digital insurer simon over to you well thanks you and hi everybody uh and
1:29
i wanted to start this discussion really by reflecting on recent challenges that the industry has
1:34
been sort of facing really on the back of the kovit 19 pandemic and and we tdi issued a fairly stark message
1:42
earlier this year and it’s not something we do that often and this message was entitled industry warning digital
1:49
tipping point is approaching insurers faster than expected and we we issued this with really the
1:54
intention of criticizing nobody but challenging everybody and in particular we wanted to try and
2:01
encourage executive teams to step up their digital digital transformation efforts so i guess the question is well
2:06
why would we want to do that and the next slide um sort of attempts to explain that
2:12
and what you see here is that i guess consumers around the world
2:18
outside of insurance and literally across all parts of the world
2:23
are increasing their adoption of digital this year as a result of uh kind of pandemic induced uh needs to sort of
2:31
live and survive and still try and thrive i guess in this world and i the general consensus really
2:37
coming into 2020 was that the world was still a couple of years away from what we call the tipping point of consumer
2:44
adoption of digital and tipping point is really the point at which things become mainstream and there’s no going back
2:50
so as i said really before we came into this year that the world was a couple of years away from the tipping point but
2:56
what we’ve seen in 2020 is an accelerated adoption of digital and technology by consumers
3:03
not just the consumers that are already using digital to some extent but perhaps more significantly
3:09
new groups of people whether they be the very young the very old uh the very rich the very poor
3:16
so this was one consensus i guess coming into 2020 that actually the world was a little bit off tipping point but our
3:22
view is now this is being accelerated the other generally recognized sort of i guess um
3:29
observation in respect of insurance specifically is that insurance as a sector was lagging behind a lot of other
3:35
sectors so you can see on this visual the little blue dot in the middle on the left there where consumer adoption was
3:41
pre-crisis and the fact that it’s now moving above the tipping point during during the course of this year but
3:47
insurance down in the bottom left the green dot was actually lagging behind the rest of the rest of the market
3:55
and the big concern we have is that actually if insurers don’t recognize this and do something about it then they’re going to
4:02
be left further behind when we come out of this crisis and it’s quite natural
4:07
for insurers to focus on kind of immediate crisis management and curtail discretionary spend and really fails a
4:14
reset strategy but our big concern at the digital insurer was if they do all of those things and don’t
4:19
further increase investment in and accelerate digital transformation as an industry we’re going to be left
4:24
further behind coming out of this next year so our conclusion in this report was really insurers have lost a couple
4:31
of years off of their transformation road maps and really need to step up their efforts now what goes with that
4:38
then is another warning and a big concern next slide please view which is that actually if you look at digital
4:43
transformation efforts almost all of them fail this is i think some recent research by
4:49
mckinsey showing that over 75 of digital transformation efforts fail
4:54
and of course if we need to accelerate those efforts we want them to actually make a difference and kind of stick
5:00
so you then get into the question of well if we need to accelerate transformation and they’re mostly failing why are they mostly failing and
5:07
the next slide starts to get to this and this is an interesting sort of excerpt from some research from bcg
5:13
which shows that actually of the successful digital transformations and the companies that
5:19
are winning in digital transformation they all focus on the culture of the business and the people side of their
5:25
business as a key part of transformation and pretty much every time insurers and other companies
5:32
try to digitally transform without focus on people those efforts fail so the 25 that are winning are doing
5:39
something right in the people space and getting into the culture moving the needle along the way the business is
5:44
sort of living and breathing not just focusing on the tech and there’s plenty of evidence for this
5:49
beyond the bcg report the next slide just shows i guess a couple of images which which show
5:55
firstly i guess that you know there’s a lack of broad staff involvement in digital initiatives this research is
6:00
from capgemini figure 4.4 here you know less than 40 of staff are involved in
6:05
digital projects and and programs and figure 6 shows that organizations are
6:11
just not working enough to close the skill gaps and develop talent for um for
6:16
the future so insurers need to accelerate transformations but these efforts to be more effective they need to focus much
6:23
more on the people side and it’s a combination i guess of upskilling and changing the culture for the better
6:30
aligning more with digital so that brings us really to a phrase that we use quite a lot at the digital
6:36
insurer on the next slide which is really the need for insurers to move digital from the few to the many and
6:43
what we mean by that is it’s time that engagement in digital projects and awareness of digital and what it can do
6:49
for customers moves from digital leaders tax specialists to everybody across
6:55
insurance whether it be you know a head of claims a head of underwriting or somebody in the sales function
7:00
all of us need to understand more how technology can help us do what we do
7:05
better with customers and it was really with that sort of backdrop in mind that earlier this year
7:11
tdi launched the tdi academy and last quick slide from me hugh thanks uh and
7:17
really our flagship program the associate digital insurer uh mini mba on digital insurance was it was a genuine
7:23
attempt to help the industry get a better understanding of what technology can do and it kind of
7:30
embed and foster more of a sense of enthusiasm i guess for what digital technology can do across the insurance
7:36
business and malini’s going to touch more on this uh the academy and what it what you know where we are in the development of it it’s a bit later but
7:43
few from for now those are my opening remarks uh happy to take any questions yeah simon thanks and you know as you
7:50
know we started work on the tdi academy in that pre-covered um world i mean
7:55
things are changing so quickly now do you think insurers um are going to be sort of taking more seriously now this
8:01
need for introducing the digital culture and reskilling their their teams
8:07
yeah a great question here and i have to say firstly i think on the back of our pov the article we
8:12
just mentioned we had a lot of engagement with executive teams i think i think the pennies really dropped that they need to
8:18
accelerate digital transformation efforts and go beyond the sort of tactical short-term things they did a few months ago
8:25
but i have to say and hence we’re discussing this topic now i think the penny hasn’t fully dropped yet that
8:31
actually it’s all about the people and all about changing culture is such a critical success factor so i think um
8:38
you know i think at one level there’s a lot of lip service to this topic i think executives acknowledge it is really
8:43
important but we’re not seeing it play out as much as it needs to yet um malini again will touch on the program we’ve
8:49
had great success so there are great sort of shoots of early signs of of executive teams moving the right
8:55
direction here but i think there’s more to do here and of course changing the culture is not an easy thing i suspect
9:02
sarah will touch on this next yeah great well don’t come i look forward to bring you back in when we
9:07
have a couple of questions at the end but great segue and uh sarah you know you’ve got vast experience in this area
9:13
can you can you pick that up and run with it and share some of your experience yeah that’s perfect hugh and absolutely
9:20
a great segue and what i’d like to do is is really share a case study um and it’s
9:27
from citibank uh the asia pac business uh and this was when part of my
9:32
portfolio uh was the l d or the learning head for the region and obviously this is an organization
9:38
very large complex geographically dispersed across 16 countries many managers and employees working in
9:46
virtual teams we had in the order of 62 000 employees so i’d like to talk about it in terms of you know what was
9:52
prompting this what was our burning platform and there were there were two elements to our burning platform and
9:58
this was this is important um to the point of culture and reskilling but the things
10:04
that were driving us and creating the y um were around
10:10
the the business driver on sustainable growth so that was really igniting the fire we were moving from a pivot to
10:15
growth into a period of sustainable business growth and the other element
10:22
in a way the accelerant for us was really around digital transformation so we had those two forces playing out and
10:28
the ask of us in that business kind of context was well canoe as a learning organization
10:34
just go ahead change the wings while you’re flying the plane and create
10:39
a digital learning platform and capability that allows for that culture shift and
10:45
the culture shift was for us was around really putting the employee in the learner um in the center in the driving
10:52
seat of their own learning so that shift was around kind of their learners and our employees
10:59
really curating learning that was on a very much more personalized basis for their own needs
11:05
so much more learning as a pull rather than a push a mindset shift in terms of
11:11
moving away from classroom training being the kind of the push option to blended learning and that
11:17
personalized learning and absolutely against the digital digital transformation
11:23
was really accelerating dq and accelerating the capability of the organization to reskill for
11:28
transformation and we felt in that regard as as an organization we also had a moral obligation to support our
11:35
employees to reskill for the future and the outcomes which i’ll touch on but
11:40
i’ll come back to later as well um you know we were very pleased with the success of the outcome in terms of of
11:47
creating that digital shift and as simon rightly says that’s not something that happens overnight this was a journey for
11:52
us um over over a couple of years to kind of drive that that shift over time
11:59
we absolutely accelerated our digital capability and therefore impacted kind
12:04
of innovation and digital transformation and we also had some hidden benefits but i’ll come back to those later so if we
12:10
can move to the next side hugh and i’ll tell you a little bit more about um some
12:15
of the specifics of this initiative um we had to take in terms of context we
12:20
also had to take the the aspect of the modern learner into account because many employees
12:25
are overwhelmed with the kind of massive things that they have to deal with so we wanted to create this initiative which
12:32
we termed my career it was a branding exercise for us but we created an initiative that took
12:38
into account the learner experience and that was something that really kind of drove our thinking around what we
12:45
created so so what were the core components of my career um
12:50
one key component was senior sponsorship and when you think about culture for us that was very critical because our
12:56
seniors were sponsoring this they were behind this and what that said in terms of the culture was this is very important for
13:02
us the other elements were around content we had no issue in the organization with
13:09
with content in fact our issue was there was too much content and it was all over the place and it was not easily
13:15
accessible so we used our what our website is the repository for kind of learning content
13:23
and that was the base that our employees went to to then kind of personalize their content we didn’t have to create
13:29
that no new content it was around the way we kind of organized it and personalized it the other element that
13:34
we had which was very important we had a collaborative platform which was like ms teams
13:41
and yammer kind of mixed together and that was really important from the learner experience and the employee
13:46
experience to be able to blend the right context and write content for them what
13:51
they needed when they needed where they needed it and how they needed it but also to build in that collaboration and
13:57
create learning communities so they were our key contents you can see a little bit of a timeline here so
14:03
i’ll step through some of the things that we introduced along the way so we we launched back in q1 2017
14:10
um we worked with arctic shores to bring some gamification tools to us to help
14:16
our employees to kind of understand their own strengths their gaps so they could use that to
14:21
start to personalize their learning we had challenges we had a 30-day challenge we created an internal
14:28
marketplace which was kind of like our own internal linkedin that allowed employees to again
14:34
drive their own career outcomes as an enterprise we purchased the rights to licenses to
14:41
degrade and that really was a great accelerator for us in terms of content
14:47
you can see the the fluffy kitten there and if anyone is attempting to do something of this nature we work very
14:54
closely with our tech teams but interestingly one of the concerns that they had was if we were going to
15:00
open up access to channels like youtube would our employees stop work and spend their time kind of watching fluffy
15:06
kittens but what that meant to us was really around the cultural element of trust we had to trust our employees we were
15:13
bringing the opportunities to them for them to personalize and our trust was that they would use
15:19
that opportunity to get themselves fit for the future but our tech
15:24
our tech support folks you know had a serious point they wanted to raise also around just managing bandwidth because
15:31
we were introducing um amazing kind of content that needed the right kind of bandwidth and support
15:38
we introduced streaming capability we streamed sessions to about 14 000 employees across the region
15:45
um and a number of our businesses kind of used the platform to introduce some of their fintech um kind of outcomes the
15:52
workforce of the future we supported everything that we were doing through communication and branding career
15:58
stories videos celebrating successes uh if you can move to the next slide hugh and i’ll just talk a little bit
16:04
about kind of outcomes and some of our key insights i think we were very pleased with the
16:11
outcomes in terms of creating a very learner-centric environment that was really from a culture perspective what
16:17
we were keen to drive we made it fun we made it very focused on employee experience and as you can
16:23
see from the insights on the right hand side that was really driving the cultural aspect so it was really around
16:29
creating that learning culture creating learning in the flow of work so moving from learning directly into
16:35
application applying it to the key kind of work requirements making it relevant and
16:41
personalized easy to access and absolutely critically important that collaboration engagement
16:47
we accelerate dq and some of our hidden benefits were really around increased employee engagement which we
16:53
were able to determine through our surveys we increased career mobility which reduced external hiring costs and
17:00
we increased retention so we were very uh pleased with the outcomes we achieved over time and i think again coming right
17:07
back to the beginning it was business driven and it was about culture and reskilling yeah thanks sarah thanks for those
17:13
insights what i’m going to do is bring you back um for questions at the end and i’ll now sort of get it a little bit
17:20
deeper and sort of hand over to molina molini’s our tdi academy program
17:25
director and malini maybe you can just share um your thoughts or you know about when the tdi academy was created and
17:31
some of those design principles um that were followed yeah thanks thank you and uh
17:38
hi everyone and uh you know happy to be here so um yes so we launched uh tdi academy uh
17:46
back in january of this year but you know it was um uh sometime in the making before that um
17:53
before we before we even launched it and you know it’s when we were going through the planning phase it was very much
17:59
based on um you know how can we bring most value to people we saw the
18:04
need for a learning and development capability and it refers back to simon’s earlier as points on uh you know the
18:11
need for upskilling people within the industry to help accelerate uh digital
18:16
transformation um and when we were going through the planning process there were a number of
18:21
um design principles i guess that we had in mind and it’s good to see that actually sarah touched on on a number of
18:28
those as well and we seem to be so fairly fairly aligned even in the case study uh that she shared but just sort
18:34
of you know calling out a few of those um you know we wanted to create something that um had obviously sort of you know
18:42
great content but also in terms of the actual uh user experience as well so combining those uh two capabilities but
18:49
also making sure that when people go through the program um that it’s you know highly relevant for them it’s
18:56
something that they can um you know consume but also take away and implement
19:01
within the organizations and i think that was you know a key factor for us to making sure that that applicability uh
19:07
was there because you know when we were researching um the market beforehand what we saw was that there was you know
19:13
plenty of choice out there for insurers or you know businesses for for skills uh training but creating that applicability
19:20
where um you know people can actually go away and implement what they’ve learned was was really key um and in order to do
19:28
that we had to create something as i said that was relevant um with great content but also taking into account you
19:36
know the new sort of needs and requirements of people you know everyone’s got busy
19:41
lives um they’ve got home lives work lives and then you know when you introduce learning into it as well it’s
19:47
another factor that you have to consider so we wanted to make sure that we’ve created something um you know that’s easy to access that’s
19:54
convenient um and that’s you know not traditionally uh classroom based but something you know
20:01
that’s fun um immersive and people can sort of you know do alongside uh their uh
20:09
working lives as well so our content is um you know fairly short it’s broken
20:14
down into lessons and we’ll move into that in a minute but um it’s um you know designed for busy people
20:20
um and to fit in uh within their schedules now obviously simon mentioned us or flagship adi program
20:27
that is more involved and there is obviously a certain degree of commitment that is required from people who go
20:33
through the program um but all in all we wanted to make sure that um you know it’s it’s it’s it’s easy for people they
20:40
can do it alongside their work and then they can go back um consume the learnings and go back into their workplace and implement those
20:48
so i’ll just move on i think to the next next slide here
20:55
um so here just focusing on what our core curriculum looks like um
21:02
and as you can see here it’s it’s it’s fairly broad and that’s you know deliberately but we do go into um you
21:09
know a certain amount of depth as well um i think the key thing here is is um
21:14
as you can see there’s there’s seven courses that we cover um and that core curriculum is at the heart of sort of
21:21
all of our programs um and then the experience is what kind of slightly differentiates you can see at the top
21:27
there that some of the programs that we have the the adi and and the cdi but this really sort of core fit forms the
21:34
core of of the content and um and what participants will learn um and you can see there that underneath
21:41
the seven uh courses we have each course has eight lessons um each lesson is about as i said about an
21:48
hour long so we do have you know it’s 56 hours worth of content
21:53
which uh which is a lot but because we’ve broken it down into those one one-hour sessions it’s fairly easy to
21:59
consume and it’s a combination of video and slides as well so it’s quite engaging um and
22:06
the order of the courses as well is um again quite deliberate so we start uh
22:11
with the sort of the basics with courses one and two there’s of course one in particular is is a scene setter um and
22:17
then two goes uh is more in introduction introducing the uh the technologies and
22:22
then we sort of move along into into going into different more specific areas of of the business
22:28
um and we do collect feedback um after every single lesson so it’s really important to us to ensure
22:35
um you know what what value participants are getting and also to collect their own feedback so
22:42
after each lesson um participants have to complete feedback and i have to say we’re you know really pleased so far
22:48
with the feedback that we’ve got we’ve um we’re running two cohorts at the moment for our adi programme um and we’ve got a
22:55
third one starting um later this year and we’ve also got a number of people
23:00
going going through our cdi program and so far the feedback has been really really
23:06
positive um we measure it sort of on an mps level um and the so far the feedback that
23:12
we’ve got you know puts us very much in in the excellent range so that’s great
23:17
for us and i think just you know sort of validates goes back to sort of those design principles um that we’d produced right at the
23:24
beginning of when we were going through the planning phase and just getting that feedback validate um our progress and that we’re
23:32
on the on the right track so i think that’s probably where i will
23:37
pause there um just on on on the curriculum uh and is it back to back to
23:43
you now i think for some discussion yeah thanks um thanks um uh
23:48
molini for that and getting into um you know some of those design principles for learning and development
23:53
which is of course the sort of actionable end of digital culture and reskilling um but but i want to bring us
24:00
back and start with yumalini just um to this issue right so we’ve got two objectives right one is to create a
24:06
digital culture the other is to look at reskilling or upskilling you know what’s what’s your opinion on which of those is
24:13
most important it’s a tricky one um because they’re not
24:18
mutually excuse exclusive and they you know i think they reinforce each other um however i think if i had to pick one
24:25
um i’d probably choose culture um because i think if you have the right organization
24:31
organizational culture for digital change and transformation and the reskilling of employees comes naturally
24:37
as part of that and that need is sort of inherent within within the culture um so my view is you know culture is all about
24:44
you know the way that we do things here and the mindset of employees and therefore if that culture is is open to
24:50
change and has sort of you know digital running through its dna then that reskilling becomes sort of an obvious
24:55
requirement in order to facilitate uh the change that’s required
25:01
yeah sarah what about you yeah totally agree um
25:06
yes no no i’m i’m there with molini and i think it is whilst they are kind of very much intertwined i think culture
25:13
sets the purpose that kind of sets that real tone in terms of what’s really important in the
25:18
organization and then from that you can flow through to the kind of re-skilling and getting the the workforce fit for
25:24
the future simon hopefully i disagree with both of them
25:32
no i just but you know maybe just to try and add something different and another layer of sort of insight on that i mean i came
25:38
across a phrase a long time ago with regard to cultural change which is that you act into a new way of thinking
25:46
you don’t think into a new way of acting um and what that means is you can’t just
25:51
leaders can’t just issue a note saying hey now we’re going to be a square not circle or we’re going to become customer focused and people sort of get up the
25:57
next day and think right i must put customers first and foremost to change the way people are behaving in
26:03
organization and the dna of an organization you’ve got to break that down into changing the behavior day to
26:08
day and then eventually everyone wakes up one day and realizes they’re doing things differently so if you’re going to
26:13
change behaviors and become a more digital first organization it’s not just about deploying tech people need to know
26:19
how to you know leverage that tech use it differently for the benefit of customers so i think you won’t change the culture
26:26
without re-skilling people as part of the journey but the kind of holy grail the outcome
26:32
the primary thing you’re looking for is clearly shifting the culture and reskilling is just part of the journey
26:37
in my opinion yeah yeah thanks simon um we’re getting a little a little bit short um on time um
26:45
but so let’s just do a sort of a rapid a rapid round uh if we can on just this
26:51
question of you know if we get back down into l d and and some of the
26:56
innovations that we’re seeing and it’s all opening up because face-to-face is no longer available right so we’re in a
27:01
time of rapid innovation is there a particular area that you’re really excited about in
27:07
terms of that can make an impact in terms of that learning uh process maybe
27:13
if we could start with sarah on this one yeah i think it’s totally related to
27:18
digital transformation and kind of developing kind of innovation and digital capabilities and
27:24
i think the the great thing is that there have been some dramatic shift in terms of some of the tools the tools
27:30
that can help you to achieve that so you know you can have kind of virtual based kind of webinars
27:36
where you’re kind of engaging teams and leveraging tools like myro to kind of use kind of virtual post-its to really
27:43
get that kind of innovative thinking going kind of customer experience focused innovative learning so i think
27:49
there’s plenty of scope yeah simon briefly from you
27:54
yeah i mean you know i i agree that you can’t successfully transform the business digitally without getting into
28:00
culture so to get into culture you’ve got to reskill you’ve got to upskill people ultimately though you we won’t be
28:06
talking about digital in five or ten years time it’ll just be part of business as usual the thing that is
28:11
still the point of differentiation is customers and companies should focus on being customer obsessed
28:16
through technology rather than competitor obsessed that’s why two pennies worth as jeff bezos said a few
28:23
years ago yeah thank you simon malini last words from you uh yeah i think just you know picking up
28:29
on on sarah’s point there around you know what sort of exciting um you know tools and stuff they’re out there
28:35
that you know in in the l d space and uh sarah mentioned a couple there and i think i’d just like to sort of uh call
28:41
out that you know even in in our programs you know we’ve been experimenting with you know how do we make learning more engaging more more
28:47
fun again coming back to some of those design principles and um you know one thing that we’ve been um experimenting
28:53
with is you know using virtual networking software um and we’ve been using that now for for a few months now
28:59
and you know that’s gone down really well and i think you know obviously in today’s today’s climate um you know that
29:05
face-to-face physical interaction isn’t as easy to to make happen but you know now the technology is there that enables
29:12
us you know still you know we’ve got people from different countries being able to get together and still network
29:17
together in a in a fairly you know sort of um you know it’s imitated in a physical
29:24
way which uh which i think is brilliant and i think you know that we’ll see more and more of those types of solutions uh developing as we as we move forward
29:31
yeah thanks thanks melania and thanks thanks to the panel we’re sort of up and out of time and i guess you ended their
29:36
millennial with the point about how we can use digital to bring in the human touch and i think that’s
29:41
something we all really want to look forward to in this uh and this uh and these times as well so um just just
29:48
really sort of wrapping up um here um to thank everyone for their time um uh
29:55
and if you need to get in touch with any one of the panelists we’ve just got the emails there if you’re interested in
30:00
finding out more about the tdi academy you can see the link and the qr code so thanks to the
30:08
panel again thank you to everyone for listening hope you found this useful and interesting
30:22
you