Team-building: Peak performance
Imagine the scene: after 12 months or more of discussions, you’ve finally convinced the finance director to part with £100k to purchase state-of-the-art actuarial software for your department. So what happens when it arrives? You dive in, of course, making sure that you take every opportunity to embed the system into your daily work and show that the investment was worthwhile. So why does the same not always happen when an often larger investment is made in new graduate recruits?
Ernst & Young recently undertook a survey of graduate joiners in consultancies and other companies and it was clear from their point of view that they were not always being used to their potential. While it will always be difficult to balance an ideal training environment with the ever-increasing demands that most actuarial departments face, I hope to provide some ideas that have worked well for us.
Get the right people
Graduates applying for actuarial roles will have different skills and interests. It is therefore important to consider any gaps in your current team’s skill-sets during the recruitment process. Your requirements may be for people with strong programming skills, for example, or those that are highly confident and can build relationships quickly.
It is possible to involve even very new people in graduate recruitment, providing a low risk environment for developing skills such as presenting to reasonably sized groups. Assigning ‘buddying’ responsibilities for a new joiner or involvement in assessing an applicant gives a sense of responsibility and having a stake in the business that can often be missing in the early stages of a career.
A questioning culture
One of the most important ways of recruiting and retaining students is to provide varied and challenging work. Interest can often be maintained by giving graduates plenty of opportunity to engage with more senior staff. Practical methods of achieving this include role reversal, where the graduate undertakes a review of a more experienced colleague’s work, and making sure that coffee machine debriefs occur after meetings, so that any issues that were not fully understood can be explored further.
Communication skills
Don’t assume that basic business etiquette will be second nature to new graduate joiners. Traditional induction and development programmes tend to concentrate on practicalities, such as IT, at the expense of softer skills.
Feel free to give advice on the basics such as making a business telephone call. The frequency with which very intelligent graduates will fail to introduce themselves or confirm that the recipient has time to speak is surprising.
Although team meetings provide an ideal opportunity to practice active participation skills in a safe environment, it can be useful to get new joiners used to being involved in client-facing meetings at an early stage. Start with meetings that are less challenging, such as those that are gathering information and make sure that specific questions to ask are allocated beforehand.
Ensuring that graduates are given plenty of exposure to more experienced people and situations, such as formal meetings, should allow some of these skills to rub off.
Two-way feedback
A majority of the students surveyed stated the lack of any kind of performance markers as a concern. As well as providing guidance on what was done well and how to improve, feedback fulfils a secondary but vital role in making sure that people feel that they are important. This can most easily be demonstrated by the time and attention that they are receiving from colleagues. Feedback does not have to be formal or task-based. Impromptu conversations with senior managers, covering future career aspirations, rather than past performance, are also useful in making people think differently about their work.
Encouraging a relatively new student to organise and chair a peer-group meeting is a great way to develop their negotiation and planning skills, as well as gathering useful feedback from the team.
Practical examples
Here are some other practical ways in which recruits can gain wider skills that also benefit the actuarial group:
>> Participating in an Institute working group will increase technical knowledge in addition to communication and networking skills
>> Organising internal seminars on current actuarial issues for the wider company will give exposure to other departments within a firm and develop project management ability
>> Leading training sessions on IT applications. Designing and delivering training is a great way to improve both group presentation and one-to- one coaching skills.
So, the next time that you are thinking about the priorities within your team, just add up the salaries and study support costs and consider if you can afford not to get the most out of this vital investment in the future of your business?
Andrew Binns is a graduate recruitment and development manager within Ernst & Young’s insurance and actuarial advisory services practice
Andrew Binns
