Are financial services’ employees ever working from the office again?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thirteen percent of employees are full-time remote, according to Forbes, while another 28% work some form of a hybrid schedule.

In financial services, many employees went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic and remain ensconced in that family friendly schedule. A talent shortage gave many employees the leverage to remain on a work-from-home schedule.

But "I think the pendulum is swinging back," said Mike James, executive vice president and chief sales officer for NFP, an insurance broker and consultant.

James was a panelist Sunday in an opening session of the LIMRA and LOMA 2023 Annual Conference. Titled, "Leading Through Change: Global Executive Perspectives," the session tackled the seismic changes in financial services.

Panelists clearly favored having their team in the office.

"I want to see people. I want to talk to them and engage," James said. "My greatest learning experiences were because I was in an office next to someone and they could share instantaneously responses to things that are going on."

The future is here

The panel included Chris Blunt, president and CEO of Fidelity and Guaranty Life [known as F&G]. He, too, expressed a longing for the office work model. But the reality is that those days are gone, Blunt acknowledged.

"I'm a walk the halls, shake hands kind of guy," Blunt said. "But that's not the world we're in anymore."

F&G is expanding rapidly, growing from about 250 employees to 1,100 in four years, Blunt said. With about 70% of its workforce so new, it gave F&G an opportunity to create its own story, Blunt said.

"What do we have to offer that's different from any other company?" he said. "Obviously, we weren't as big as some of our competitors. We didn't have as well known a brand name, but we knew the advantage we had was growth. Because when companies are growing, you can create great career opportunities, promotion opportunities for people."

Headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, F&G had substantial discussions about what kind of company it wanted to be, Blunt recalled. In order to hire the best talent globally, that meant embracing a hybrid model.

"It puts pressure on your managers," Blunt said, "so a lot of effort gets done to training your frontline managers on how to manage in that environment. We're all making this up. [Having a remote team is] not intuitive to me."

Remote work a key issue

For many employees in financial services, home-based work shot to the top of their employee benefits list. P&C insurers, who are in more of a downsizing mode due to several negative financial trends, are facing resistance from workers they have called back to the office.

At F&G, the company is bonding with workers through monthly "connection week" gatherings in Des Moines.

"We literally bring everybody in," Blunt said. "It has been once a month, but it'll probably be less frequent going forward because it's a tremendous amount of work. And it's all about leadership training. We do volunteer work. We socialize. We have a lot of fun because people are trapped, and they're craving, human contact, but they don't necessarily want the company to tell them [that they have to be in the office]."

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at john.hilton@innfeedback.com. Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.

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