Optimizing talent to accelerate the path to profitability

In this post-Covid era there are several trends impacting our workforces, from quiet quitting to hybrid workplaces, decreasing employee engagement and retention rates, inflation, retiring baby boomers and the emergence of AI. In this session, senior-level Insurance & Insurtech thought leaders will provide solutions for companies to address these trends and remodel their talent acquisition, engagement and retention strategies to drive profitability and gain competitive advantage.

Transcript:

Ira Ziff (00:10):

So if you all want to move in, we would love to make this more interactive. And before we start, feel free to come forward. Okay. So why don't we do some introductions. My name is Ira Ziff. I am the Insurance Recruiter. I deal with both startups right up to the Fortune 50 and we are in the business of propelling businesses to optimize their investment in human capital. And we do retained executive search and fractional recruiting. So Bruce, to my right, Bruce Baumgarten is the Vice President of Talent for the CSAA insurance group where he is responsible for the full talent lifecycle, including talent acquisition, corporate learning, talent management, and leadership development. His passion is aligning talent to business strategy and has held several prior roles at CSAA in learning and development and instructional design. David, David Gritz, my friend from New York, is the Managing Director of Insurtech Fund and Insurtech, New York, the largest Insurtech community in the us.

(01:28)

David is the co-author of the Future of Insurance Volume three, the Collaborators. He has also served as an operator, co-founding zero, a behavioral safety focused InsureTech acquired by Ernest, Ernest Ree, and Peilin, my fellow panelists from multiple times. Okay. She is a Vice President of Analytics for EXL Service, a global professional consulting firm focusing on advanced analytics and digital transformation. Previously Peilin was the VP of analytics and innovation for Gerber Life Insurance where she won several awards. She is also a Member of Chief, an Advisory Board Member for DigIn and the Women's Venture Fund. So our panel is all about optimizing talent to accelerate the path to profitability.

(02:31)

In this post covid era, there are several trends impacting our workforce from quiet quitting, hybrid workplaces, decreasing employee engagement and retention rates and inflation, retiring baby boomers and the emergence of AI, see I can spell it. In this session, we will provide solutions for companies to address these fun trends and remodel their talent acquisition, engagement and retention strategies to drive profitability and gain competitive advantage. So let us start with David. NAAM says that over the next 15 years, 50% of the current insurance workforce will retire. This will leave more than 400,000 open positions unfilled while less than 25% of the industry is under the age of 35. What can the insurance industry do to change its reputation as a go-to sector to attract talent that is unaware or simply uninterested in insurance?

David Gritz (03:43):

So two answers to that Ira. First is you have to look at this in the same way that you look at your customers, your policy holders from customer experience. And ultimately if we do our marketing for the customer experience for our industry, we are doing an absolutely terrible job. If you think about the all-star careers that MBAs or undergraduates want to do, they want to go in our sister industry in banking, they want to go in management consulting or they want to go work at one of the tech companies in San Francisco. But what they do not realize is that the greatest things that they can do, like earlier today with the lunch session, we heard about analytics and data science. Who owns all the data, the insurers and those who want to go into the medical field and help people, why do not they go and help a much broader base of people by actually the ones that pay the claims?

(04:39)

So I think we can do a lot to take advantage of becoming a noble profession where people believe what we do is bringing back to the core of what insurance is all about. So that is one customer experience, a noble profession. Second piece is we have to bring our friends in. How I came into the insurance industry was a friend of mine was running a worker's comp insurance carrier. Things were not going very well and he said, I think technology can solve the problem. So together we spun out an InsureTech that was called Zero. So I think if we each went to one of our friends, there was one standard deviation outside of insurance and said, come join me. We will solve that 400,000 person problem in a few weeks.

Ira Ziff (05:23):

So I would love to hear from the audience as to how you think we can get other people to fall in love with insurance. I got also by accident and I hear that all the time, is are there any ideas how we can spread the word.

Peilin Corbanese (05:42):

You need to do the secret dance so if you move up we can do that dance with you and then you would actually remember how interesting the insurance industry can be.

Ira Ziff (05:52):

So what do you think the answer is?

Audience Member 1 (06:07):

I think one of the ways is as we are having these conferences, a lot of companies have interns that they are bringing in and the college students bring the college students into these conferences at a reduced rate, get them interested in insurance and excited about it. That is what I have found that is successful.

Panel Member (06:28):

It sounds like more like a statement for me.

Ira Ziff (06:30):

So bringing college students into the conferences. So there are conferences that actually do that, especially in New York. Yukon is doing just that pale. Do you have any thoughts on it?

Peilin Corbanese (06:44):

But how even if we do that, if the college kids nowadays show up at this conference, what are we going to do with them? Right? Because I mean there is a mindset situation here. There is a mindset of engagement, there is a mindset of insurance can be very innovative, can be a lot of fun. So how do you deliver that message? What would you do? I know I am supposed to be up here and give you answers, but I think it will start with, let us put down on our phone, let us be very authentic. Let us tell people who we are and be honest about how slow the industry actually is and what kind of opportunity that is for the college kids to learn to change, to improve. But you need to stop at the top. One second. I will get it when it is at the CEO level.

Panel Member (07:35):

Ira, we got another person over here with a thought. Whenever you are ready.

Audience Member 2 (07:42):

One last year I attended a Society of Insurance research conference in Vegas and they did something really interesting. I think they partnered with University of Arizona with their data analytics department and they assigned some students to work on certain insurance data and risk profiles and create this whole their own sort of capstone projects and they showcase those projects at the conference. I think that could be one way the insurance industries can go into straight to the talent, have them engage with the data that we have that we just talked about and see how cool it is to work with them. And I think that would be a doorway or gateway to get them in.

David Gritz (08:22):

Yeah, I think that is a great story, but I think you do not have to wait for the Global Insurance Symposium to ask you to have a group, but it is something that you have the power to do. We reached out to a university on the east coast called Lehigh University. They were running a capstone for students interested in entrepreneurship and product development. So we had a group of eight students for a year last year to do some research for us on co-product development between carriers and Insurtechs to support MGA Lab. And my one goal from the beginning of the capstone program was there was nine students and each week or each every other week, I would ask them, so did what you learn this time persuade you that maybe you want to do a career in insurance? At the beginning, all nine of them said absolutely not.

(09:17)

So at the end of the capstone, which was basically a year later where we got to was one was like, oh, my dad just started working at an insurance company in medical malpractice. So I am definitely considering it. Another one was maybe not my first job, but maybe a second job. And then another one was like, I am not quite sure about this insurance thing, but I really like venture capital, so I will probably do that. So I think it is a process, but the way the process starts is you have to put your hand out and you have to volunteer to bring people over to work with you and give them an experience.

Bruce Baumgarten (09:56):

One thing we have done is actually we have gone before college, we have had go to junior achievement, so go to high schools, just get people used to. We have also offered some mentors for students. So it is get people to understand what other jobs are there in insurance, not just insurance

Peilin Corbanese (10:11):

And and also we need to have a good mission. The mission of insurance is to protect families, protect people. That is really do something about that for real. It is not just something on the webpage is it is your mission statement. And so you conduct a summer internship, you have a group that I interns come in and really indoctrinate them and make sure they buy into your Kool-Aid. So do great marketing, do great branding and reward them and show them what the world can be and how much contribution they can make.

Ira Ziff (10:45):

And it is really important because when you look at the workforce, half the workforce is Gen Z and the millennials. And I am as a recruiter, I am getting an avalanche of resumes from people who are retiring who still want to stay involved, but we need to bring people up through the ranks. So with that, Bruce, given the dynamics of the labor market that we have just mentioned, what have you done to attract talent and have, how have you gone about switching up what you have done? I know you have mentioned the junior achievement, but what else is your company doing?

Bruce Baumgarten (11:28):

There is a couple parts of this. The first part I'll say I am lucky how many people have to come in the office two or three days a week, not us. We are centering on employee choice. And that is one of the things my recruiters are selling every day is we are finding people who there is, companies are saying, we want you to start coming in. You do not have to if you work for us, it is employee choice. We have locations around the country. If you live by one, you want to come in, come on. If you do not want to, which is 85% of our employees, you do not have to maybe once or twice a year we will ask you to. And so we are finding those people that are looking, they are once they have to start going back in the office, they can find us. And that is one of the values that we are really starting to offer from a talent acquisition attraction area. All my recruiters also, I am guessing we have people who like data here, all my recruiters have access to where is the different talent within the country. They can look up skills, they can look up job titles and they can see where in the country are they, what is the competition for them, and then we can reach out to them and we do not even have to for them. It used to be you were in HR, Finance, Marketing, do you want to move to California? No, no, we do not care where you live.

Peilin Corbanese (12:40):

So Bruce, yeah. So what is your company doing with the buildings that nobody is going to nowadays?

Bruce Baumgarten (12:46):

So well, we have some long term, we sold one, well one our lease came up so we got rid of it. So we no longer have a Oklahoma City location. We are looking for a very small area. So if 10 or 15 employees want to come in, they can. And the others we are waiting for the leases to run out and we are in the meantime, we are experimenting bringing people in for town halls if they want to come in, we see how many come in.

Peilin Corbanese (13:09):

That is fantastic. You are changing with the world. More of us need to do that.

Ira Ziff (13:16):

Well there is a tremendous tension between onsite and not onsite. And I recently did a search where my client absolutely wanted someone onsite and I found just the perfect person. It was a CFO role for an insurer and the person lived 20 minutes away. I offered him 30% more in income and he absolutely turned it down. He said I would come in once every two weeks. So there is this tension. Do you see, how do you see it being handled?

David Gritz (13:56):

So Ira, I think ultimately there is two ways to look at it. One is that Talent is a global possibility. So we can find people, as you said in Oklahoma City, in Walnut Creek, we could find people in Brazil or in Argentina or India. In India, exactly. And if your perspective is we just want where the best talent is, then location does not matter. And I think the one advantage that we have as the insurance industry is other than field adjusters, there is no single profession that requires us to physically be present. And even these days, field adjusters do not have to be as present as they have to be. So we can use that to our advantage. We are not manufacturing, we are not mining, we are not oil and gas. Let us use that, that is one side. The other side is I have had a couple panels and discussions and there is somewhat of a dark side of not having everyone in the same place.

(14:57)

And I think it was a panel I had with the CEO of Plymouth Rock Assurance Bill and his perspective was we are a super regional, we serve a small number of markets and we consider ourselves a very innovative company. And we believe that a lot of that mixing and bumping shoulders has to happen when you are passing each other in the hallway because there is not yet something where you can pass each other virtually on a zoom. There are some augmented reality apps that are coming out that I know are popular here in Silicon Valley, but to be honest, it is difficult to replicate that. So what we've done as an organization within Insurtech New York is like because our organization has events that kind of go out throughout the year, we bring our employees in to those events and use those as opportunities, kind of extended time period for team building, sharing ideas and kind of going beyond. So I think if you have to move really fast, you might need to be together for some period of time. But if you are a large organization like most of you here, you should really take advantage of the talent everywhere.

Ira Ziff (16:05):

But something is definitely lost when there is no mentorship, direct mentorship. Would not you think Bruce?

Bruce Baumgarten (16:12):

Yeah, mentorship is a huge deal for us. But that is something that we actually have found with the virtual world. It used to be I want to be mentored by somebody I know in my location. Now we have mentors across the country and we are using our HRIS system to actually match people up. So anybody can go on there, they can say, I am looking to be mentored on X, Y, Z, and they can find somebody to be mentored.

Peilin Corbanese (16:31):

Or what I have been doing with my organization EXL, is that specifically for women, we have these women in EXL inner circle group. So we form a small group of people with a facilitator like myself and I would meet with this group of people once a month and we would actually do peer coaching. So we can talk about the problems that we have, we can talk about challenges, we can talk about wins. So you create this virtual group of colleagues, peers, and that is across rank across different verticals that we have functions and you form these personal relationships, you have somebody to go to. So worst case scenario, you bond with 19 of your other colleagues that is in the region once a month. So you start that and you train more facilitators and therefore these facilitators can create their own inner circle groups. So then you start using these rings, so people going out there. So essentially you create virtual organization where people are very closely bonded to each other.

Ira Ziff (17:35):

Well you are on a roll. So I have a question for you.

Peilin Corbanese (17:38):

No eye roll.

Ira Ziff (17:39):

Yes I do. So how can the industry hire employees with transferable skills and what needs to change within the hiring and onboarding process to make it successful?

Peilin Corbanese (17:50):

Okay, do not kill me as you will come to my sessions tomorrow please. I think first as an industry, we need to look at our current staff and the skillset that we have and we need to start offering a lot of voluntary retirements attract people. So once you do that, you can start onboarding the right talent that would have transferable skills because some are just not moving. Some do not want to be upskill, some do not want to cross. Once you learn anything new, it does not matter what you tell them, they want to do the same job over and over and over again and they will be very good at it. Great. If that is what your organization needs. If your organization's ready to improve, to change, to transform, then it is time to think through how you want to optimize your talent.

(18:46)

And so you want to do the kind thing, you want to give them time, but at the same time you need to think about switching off the portion of your workforce that is not the best for the future and bringing people that would want to learn new things such as generative AI and move your company's data into something that generative AI can help you with and think of the solutions. But then at the same time you ask about onboarding. So again, onboarding, you need to do it in a very human way. I know what happens with some of the people and I know how I was treated when I was looking for a job. Some people, they believe a lot of companies you will believe that when I have the job, you wait for me to call you and once your interview, it does not matter how you do, it is my turn, it is my turn to tell you when I am going to get back to you. That is not how the world works anymore. People have choices, people have options, especially the younger folks, I have to advocate to my child so that he would start thinking about potentially going into business. And he is fantastic at it. You know why? Because insurance puts him to sleep.

(19:58)

So how are we going to change that? He did a fantastic PowerPoint for me, which I got in trouble for because he is outside of EXL.

(20:10)

So what I am trying to say is, let us be real. Let us be real with our younger generation, with the people you want to onboard and be honest with them and tell them that it is going to take a little bit because my CEO does not work that fast. And if the interview is not going anywhere, tell them. Because if that is not something you can do, you might as well just offshore you resources to a different country where the dynamic is a lot more like client and service that may be easier than an FTE where you really have to treat more like a family and also a business. So it is hard to balance that. So think about how you want to optimize your talent and what portfolio you want to carry.

Ira Ziff (20:58):

It is so interesting. It is so hard to get people to change up in the ranks and the insurance. And one of the expressions that I love is practice makes permanent. So it is an issue.

Bruce Baumgarten (21:14):

When I was thinking about that, for me, I was thinking through what are you putting in your job postings? What? What is required versus preferred? And the one thing we changed recently, we had some education requirements for a job and then the business manager said, I have somebody, but they technically do not fit it, but I know they can do it. Okay, so what is that really a proxy for? And can we change the job description? Men will apply if they meet 60% of requirements, women will apply if they meet 90%. Correct. So what are you putting in there in writing and what does that look like?

Ira Ziff (21:42):

Well that brings up a subject that I have a passion about. How is it that, how can we help? And David and I have talked about this, how can we write job descriptions to magnetize the interest of people that would otherwise not be interested in a job or the field? I will give you a great starter and maybe you can finish it. Imagine working for a company that can think about it

Peilin Corbanese (22:13):

Changing the world.

Ira Ziff (22:15):

How would you answer that? I am putting everybody on the spot.

David Gritz (22:20):

Yeah, no, but I think to kind of build on what you are saying, Ira is most people when they put out a job description and I was at fault of this until I was enlightened by you Ira, is I took the perspective of what we want in the job and what we want of the skills, which is important. But I did not take the perspective of what we are going to give in terms of someone is career path, their identity, the skills that they are going to gain, the access that they are going to gain from our network and our relationships. And I think oftentimes you are caught up in just filling the role opposed to filling someone's dream.

Ira Ziff (22:57):

That is beautiful. I mean how many people have written job descriptions that focus just on what the role does versus why it matters? Does anybody write one that talks about why the role would matter to the industry, to the company? It is really hard to find. I only got someone back here because most job descriptions are cut and pasted.

Audience Member 3 (23:28):

Got it. Okay, sorry. Yeah, I think you guys are giving a whole different perspective on how we should look at recruiting. We do not really think as much from what the person who is going to be hired is looking for. We always focused on what is the requirement of the job and what is needed rather than thinking it from the other side. So I think this is really interesting to listen to and hopefully we incorporate it into our job descriptions.

Peilin Corbanese (23:58):

You got to sell. Yes. Life is about selling.

Audience Member 3 (24:02):

Absolutely.

Ira Ziff (24:05):

Yeah. And it is a very competitive market and if you are not differentiating how you are presenting your opportunity, let me just give you an expression that seems to work. Generic job descriptions yield generic candidates. So think about that.

Peilin Corbanese (24:28):

Well, however, I would debate that if the company is doing really well, then generic job description may be okay because personal story, I took a job with a very generic job description because all I did was looking at the company's stock in the past five years and I say I am in. Alright, so that is another way that one can think about it. But that takes a different kind of candidate and it takes a candidate that will go there and take that generic job description and turn it into something that is worth gold.

Ira Ziff (25:00):

Right. Good point.

Peilin Corbanese (25:01):

Could be a test.

Ira Ziff (25:03):

Any other comments, David? So as a VC, as someone who is funding startups with the funding pipeline for startups slowing down, how can these companies optimize their resources to recruit or redeploy talent in order to scale up?

David Gritz (25:23):

Yeah, so I will tell you a story that actually came from one of the startups that spoke at an event that we ran in Colorado and I think it is hopefully inspiring to all of you. So we had a presentation on bootstrapping because it is kind of the opposite of what me as a VC wants is want to give companies money for equity, but for the founders to do their best, if they can scale the company and not give up any equity or control and get a good exit, that is all to them. There is no other kind of pieces of the puzzle. So the founder, we had actually founded a company called Founder Shield and one of the discussions points we had was about why he had more than 90% of his company under 35. And I just asked him, how did you actually get people in that could sell your new insurance products?

(26:19)

And he said, well, I did not really have a choice. We did not have enough money to hire anyone that did not have more than three years experience. So we had to hire them right out of school and train them. And to his credit, there is people that started when he started the business back in 2012 and they are still there. And they are not individual contributors, they are General Managers, they are Head of HR, they are in all kinds of different roles. And some of even started new MGAs. He gave them entrepreneurial opportunities. So I think if you can take people with that spark for the startup, right? Because at a startup company there is no existing rules, there is no HR manual and you can mold those people with the spark, they could be your next General Manager. And one of the great things is as the startup grows, you can give them additional titles. So I think that is one thing is think as if you were bootstrapping. The other suggestion I would have is not all resources come in a hundred percent increments. A lot of startups have been very successful taking people half their time, a quarter of their time, they might just be an advisor. And those advisors have made a big impact in the success of companies and a lot of times those startups meet those advisors and accelerator programs. So that is a whole another avenue for startups is kind of using fractional resources.

Peilin Corbanese (27:45):

So I want to say that on the carrier side, I know that it is extremely difficult to get promoted in a very short amount of time. So for the younger generation, usually, and this is a eye-opening for me, my boss basically told me current job basically said two years you should get a promotion within two. And if you are not getting a promotion within two years, you should be out. So let us think about how we can create different, different layers and cross train our people and create opportunity to promote them. So the younger generation would actually feel this is something that is fantastic because I can see my career growth and now wave for another 10.

Bruce Baumgarten (28:29):

By the way, we have been doing it, so we are over a hundred years old now startup, but we do internal gigs, we pulse gigs that it could be a day a week, it can be full-time for a couple months and it is when you are done, you go back to your previous job. And so it is a way people can try. So I have actually found a couple and my employees came from claims. They were like I had needed the job. Somebody was going on leave for a while, they came over for a couple months and then they went back and there was an opening, they came over. Another person I found that was they are part of the business but they were going to school for something else. So we have had service people go to it. Sometimes it is the way to fill a current gap and you get to try each other out. They get to see what do you really need to be in this part of the business. They can go back and they can keep developing that and come on over later.

Ira Ziff (29:16):

And I can give you my perspective as a recruiter, what I am seeing is that especially emerging companies, they do not have the funds to do to hire full-time really gifted employees. So it taps into what you were saying, David and I classify them as fractional executives and I am seeing how we are repurposing really gifted workers that are 40, 50, 60 years old that really need to be repurposed. And it also gives companies the opportunity to try before they buy and it is really filled a major talent gap for some of these companies. So I think we are okay. So Bruce, it is been reported that overworked and undervalued employees are the underlying cause for disengagement, underperformance and lower retention rates. The buzzword used to describe the changing attitude workers have about their jobs is quiet quitting. Some of you may have seen the viral series of on TikTok that is gained 63 million views. This is clearly an issue. So what strategies can be deployed to optimize engagement and retention, especially with the younger workforce?

Bruce Baumgarten (30:42):

First of all, I hope you are measuring it. So do an employee engagement, employee experience surveys and see what are they saying? Where are they disengaged? Do they feel the volume of work is not right? Is it the back to back meetings? What is driving it? So one key word in there is they feel undervalued. I go on the premise, most people want to have an impact. So you are giving them that a chance to have an impact. And we have done some things where I will say even within my team, I did not have enough recruiters this year. I thought it was going to be a slower year and so I was assigned this stuff, okay, I did not forecast right, we are going to do something about it. When I talk to my recruiters, I know you have our back, I do not mind doing a spike. They knew we acknowledged it, they knew we were taking care of it.

(31:22)

Same thing in claims. What are our claims looking like? What is the volume look like? And now are we doing something about that and communicating it? We, we like our meetings. So one thing a couple years ago people were like, especially with the pandemic, we are doing back to back meetings. There is no hallway to walk through to stop by the restroom on your way to the next one. It is the you are looking at a monitor back to back. So we instituted an organizational norm, we called it where for half hour meeting. They are no more than 25 minutes and anything longer than that gets done 10 minutes before the next meeting. So we now have 10 minutes in between meetings to go to the restroom, go grab some a sandwich, whatever it is. And it is the way we do business now. Even our town halls. It is okay, we are going to monitor our norms being done in two minutes even though there is 10 minutes left before the top of the hour.

Ira Ziff (32:12):

Alright, any other thoughts?

David Gritz (32:14):

Yeah, so there is an author named Daniel Pink and many of you are familiar with his books about why and he has a what formula. But two of the things that he talks about that you can help push employees or even push yourself is after you meet your basic needs of money, the things that you are looking for is autonomy and mastery. So if you give employees the kind of ability to come up with new ideas or have more control over what they are doing or you allow them to have a way to master their craft, those are other ways to get them inspired again.

Peilin Corbanese (32:53):

So I have always made it make happiness as the goal that I have for my team. And I tell that. I tell that I want you to be happy, that is my number one goal as your manager and then the rest will come. So that means including the KPIs, the numbers that they need to hit and whatever developmental thing. And the reason I did that was because I truly believe if somebody loves what they do, they will be engaged and they will not leave. So you must love what you do and that is a good one. So do you love what you do? And you can usually tell in their eyes when you talk to them, you can tell whether somebody is engaged and they love what they do, what they do not love, what they do. So when they do not love what they do, what do you do as a manager? I think that is a question to ask and that is a tougher question to ask yourself. So once you have that answer, then you can proceed accordingly because some people will be very happy to do the same job over and over again and that may be what you need. But if you want more found your team, then you need to make sure they are happy

Ira Ziff (34:04):

And communicate and be gratitude and communication, so important to keep engagement. And that is for all of you. If you have any thoughts having, so having recruited for the last 26 years, I have encountered problems getting top performers hired due to the inflexibility to offer market rate compensation packages, especially Fortune 50. They have their ranges and you get out outside of it, it is almost impossible. So do you see this as an industry problem? And if so, what suggestions do you have? I would love your thoughts on it Bruce.

Bruce Baumgarten (34:43):

I think it is more than even industry problem. People are looking at inflation saying, why are not my merit increases matching inflation ranges. And so it really gets to be, for us it is the conversation of, hey, we do pay competitively. So what is we did we do a series that I help organize called Under the Hood where HR does kind of behind the scenes and we really share here is the surveys that we take place in and here is the different things we do. The recruiters and our compensation team are tied together more than ever because some of the surveys get outdated really quick these days, but we also shared here is what we gave for raises the last few years and here is what inflation was. So you do not actually want us to tie it right to inflation because you are better off that do not. The other part that we really talk about is the total package.

(35:30)

It can not just be the compensation. It has to be what is the total rewards? What is your 401K, what is your benefits look like? How many people have tuition reimbursement? Everybody? We also offer tuition or student loan repayment. So one thing we noticed a few years ago, look at our data, a lot of the younger generation was not contributing to their 401K. So we put a program in place for as long as they do at least 2%, we do a hundred percent matching for your first 6%, as long as they did 2% of their 401K, the next 4% or a portion of they can have go to us matching their student loan payment. So you get some of those top students that we will help you pay off your student loan.

Ira Ziff (36:08):

Wow. David, how is this manifesting itself in startups?

David Gritz (36:12):

So I think there is two sides of the coin. One is obviously startups do not have the money of larger companies to pay, but what they can offer is something that larger companies only can offer a tiny fraction of which is equity. So if you really get employees that believe in the value of the company, that equity can be worth a lot more than what you can pay them every year. So I think that is one component and having the right kind of set up of the employee stock option plan. I think the second thing is you might not be able to pay competitively in San Francisco, but maybe you can pay competitively in Oklahoma City to use that example or Toronto or Sao Paulo or Lisbon. So I think ultimately you should just ask yourself, is this a global skill that can be solved anywhere? And then where would I like to work with someone? And if that allows you to pay competitively there, then you can hire really top talent in those other places.

Ira Ziff (37:14):

All right. Any thoughts? Peilin or

Peilin Corbanese (37:17):

I am in the global shoring business and I was amazed at what kind of quality my company was getting for the, shall we say competitive, where a fair wage that we are paying in different countries. So this is the now and will be the future. The labor arbitrage is here to stay and we better capitalize on it before it completely goes away. You get highly qualified people working for a lot less because they live in a different country. So it is a question of where you want to take your company and how you want to get there and what kind of culture you want to develop and what kind of mission you have. So if you answer those questions and be who you are, be genuine, be kind, be truthful, and provide immediate transparent feedback and cut out the negativity on the team, I think that is going to go a long way.

Ira Ziff (38:20):

Beautifully said. We have a few more questions. We have a few more minutes. Any questions from the audience? One?

Panel Member (38:27):

Oh please. Stacey had one back on the topic of fractional executives. You guys were talking about it from the perspective of startups. I am just curious from a corporate's perspective, do you see a need for that? Do you see an opportunity for that? Are there talent gaps that going to the fractional marketplace might be something to consider?

Bruce Baumgarten (38:51):

All Soros, we had a conversation about this last week, my Manager and one of my direct reports, and I do not see the need right now, but it is not off the table. Generally what we do, if somebody leaves, it is the can we make it part of their job for a couple months?

(39:06)

This is probably the overwork border earlier, but it is also the opportunity for somebody to shine and try something new and see if it is something they want to do. And sometimes there is that cascading effect. We have one right now where we have an Interim CIO, a Senior Director became an Interim VP. So it gave a couple people a chance of getting a little different world in there. That being said, what we talked about last week too is what if you do not have that ready now or almost ready now, internal person? Is it something we would consider? We thought there is probably not at the C-suite level, but maybe at the C-suite minus one level, there would be,

Peilin Corbanese (39:42):

A potential for it.

Ira Ziff (39:44):

I am seeing more activity in the emerging companies, Stacy. So we have not had much of a demand from the carriers so far, but it is a great market right now because especially with emerging companies that are struck, they are cash strapped, they need to get projects done. They could do this at a lower burn rate and it could be a great solution for them. So are there any other questions before we wrap up? Okay, well I

Peilin Corbanese (40:20):

I know there is a question. Looks like there is a question there supporting you. I think there is a question right there in down the middle, the guy that does not have hair.

Panel Member (40:37):

Oh yeah, I can.

Dean Westervelt (40:41):

Dean Westervelt with Axiom and I know Peilin actually. So thank you for the call out. It was just a point when you were talking about what makes you excited about insurance and I am in analytics, it seems kind of analytics heavy up there and insurance has sort of the best richest first party data that in a world of signal loss, I think is quite exciting. I try to tell my son that it is why I shy away from retail, nothing against retail, but I just love the comfort of a solid first party data set along with a bunch of attendant questions about how you define your best customers. It is a pretty complicated algorithm there. So anyway, that was just, you had asked way earlier, so thanks.

Ira Ziff (41:20):

Thank you.

Peilin Corbanese (41:22):

So it is time for that secret dance. You want to come up on the stage, come up.

Ira Ziff (41:30):

Okay. Well I think our panel did a terrific job. Thank you.

Panel Member (41:36):

Yes, thank you. Thank you everyone. Really great.