ROLE OF COVID 19 PANDEMIC ON TALENT MANAGEMENT IN THE INSURANCE SECTOR

Abstract

Purpose: In the recent years, the insurance industry has experienced accelerated change in technology and uncharted risks in because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has raised the need for talented employees in the insurance sector who have been a scarce resource in the current business environment. Hence to manage these risks and trends and optimize the value of new technologies, the industry will need a new approach and strategy to attract and retain talent employees in order to improve their performance and remain competitive against their competitors. The purpose of this study was therefore to establish the role of Covid 19 pandemic on talent management in the insurance sector.

Methodology: A desktop literature review was used for this purpose. , a systematic search was carried out using Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and Research Gate. The study included relevant sources that were published between 2019 and 2022.

Findings: The study findings indicated that concluded that the revenue reductions and budget shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 crisis have resulted in significant talent management challenges in all industries including insurance firms. Under these difficult circumstances, most organizations have opted to downgrade and even completely abandon performance and talent evaluations and reviews. The fact that these practices are being discontinued demonstrates that many organizations do not implement state-of-the-science talent management systems but, instead, just performance appraisal. In contrast, talent management is particularly suited to address the many talent management challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis because it serves important administrative, strategic and communication, developmental, organizational maintenance, and documentation purposes.  It was also found that measuring results in addition to behaviors, measuring adaptive performance, conducting stay interviews to retain top performers, implementing multisource performance management systems and using performance promoter scores not only help organizations address challenges during a crisis but also allow them to thrive after the crisis is over.

Recommendations: Based on the study findings, the study recommended that insurance firms should foster organizational citizenship behavior. This is because during a time of crisis or pandemic, OCB is important because employees are asked to contribute ideas to help the organization survive, and employees need to go out of their ways to use their talent, skills, networks, and innovativeness to do so. It as well recommended that during a crisis, human resource managers should conduct stay interviews focus on discovering what makes star performers decide to stay in the organization and provide information that managers can use to implement actions that will retain them. -management systems that can be realigned to track skills alongside employee performance.