July 17, 2023 — Most of our organizations — whether corporations, units of government, other non-profits or insurance companies — have at least one thing in common with farmers; we have our own summer crop. In this case, it's our annual crop of student interns. Perhaps you were an intern once, some years back. With the last of the tidal wave of Boomers either retiring or thinking about it*, working with our college/university interns is a wise investment in cultivating new talent to keep our organizations moving ahead.
Hence our question here — is your organization bringing in interns for risk management? No kids are born knowing our often arcane and always demanding skill sets and subject knowledge. The whole point of having interns — the mutually beneficial chance to show them how this vital work gets done while we conduct what are often summer-long job interviews — is to maintain high levels of performance and continuity in our work. We have often commented in these pages on how risk management's role keeps expanding as new challenges like cybercrime and AI regulation become parts of how our organizations work every day.
Back when I was running a large ag insurance agency in the San Joaquin Valley** I brought in an intern from the ag management program at nearby Fresno State University. How we developed insurance programs for enormous ag-based risks was a revelation for my intern, who had grown up on one of the biggest farms down in Kern County, and it opened a whole new career path for him. He did such a great job for us that I brought him back part-time to help me create an entirely original actuarial database for a new line of crop coverage. That's the kind of win-win we see all the time in well managed intern programs.
If risk management is not included in your organization's intern program, why not? Where do you expect your future ERM wizards to come from? How are eager young people going to learn the unique exposures and developing new risks in your line of work if you don't take a hand in training them? We invest heavily in enterprise-wide interns programs here at Gallagher because we know that's our future.
As an example, our internship program is a robust nine-week course that provides an inside look into the full-time role of producers, consultants, and a myriad of important support positions in analytics and information technology. The program is for individuals excited to explore an insurance career. Interns work side by side with Gallagher professionals to experience their "learn by doing culture" and complete various projects based on real world issues and needs. How might that apply in risk management? Do you have research needs that you don't quite have time for? We are regularly amazed at what our super smart interns can accomplish in a mere nine weeks.
My old Swedish grandfather told me many years back, "The future's not over yonder, it's happening right now and it'll run you over if you're not paying attention." Got that?
*1960 was the peak of the Baby Boom, so the crest of the Boomer retirement wave will be 2025 — not very far away. Even more to the point, the so-called Baby Bust started in 1965. We'll be out of Boomers before we know it.
**Ag was then and still is the largest industry in California. Ag generated some $47.1B in 2021. Ag insurance is not a little specialty line.
Author
Dr. Gary Anderberg
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