Blog: John Keppel - "Zurich is on a mission to be future-ready"
05 November 2020
Zurich is on a mission to be ‘future-ready’ by nurturing ‘homegrown talent’ to combat the skills shortage
Disruptive technology in the fields of robotics, data science and cybersecurity are placing increasing demands on our workforce. And this demand for new skillsets in our UK workforce never seems to cease. Indeed, as an industry, we’re locked into a constant fight to stay ahead and evolve for the benefit of our customers – which is absolutely right. Likewise, there is an understandable desire to harness top market talent to try and fill the gaps opened by technological disruption.
At Zurich, we don’t believe this is cause for concern. In fact, our own AI facilitated analysis identified 270 robotics, data science and cybersecurity jobs that could go unfilled by 2024 if our employees aren’t reskilled today. In response, we have settled on this ambition: in the next five years we intend to retrain, upskill and augment 3,000 roles, that’s two-thirds of our UK workforce.
It’s of paramount importance that our employees’ jobs are future-proofed. This is a clear opportunity, not a threat. More to the point it is crucial that we factor the future skills requirements for the business into the process now.
It’s also worth noting that there are many preconceived ideas about implementing automated processes into a business and how these roles must be carried out by tech specialists. In reality, the best people to do this effectively are those that have worked within the function that you’re looking to automate. They are the ones who really understand the process.
Upskilling home-grown talent will also save the business a considerable amount in recruitment and redundancy costs. This is money we can divert towards evolving and scaling our newly formed AI team as well as our Automation and Data academies. Moving forwards, we will also be launching academies in DevOps, Customer & Innovation and Leadership.