There's a split-screen quality to how the insurance industry talks about its own workforce right now. Ask carriers directly, and most will say they're holding steady or even hiring. Look at what the federal government's payroll data shows, and you'll find something closer to a slow, steady leak that has now lasted the better part of a year.

The latest evidence arrived this week. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July employment report, insurance carriers and related activities shed another 7,000 jobs last month, part of a broader pullback across financial activities. It wasn't a one-off. Carriers lost roughly 5,700 positions in March, another 9,100 in April, and by some counts more than 10,000 in May, according to the BLS's Economics Daily bulletin for that month. Insurance Business flagged the same run of consecutive monthly losses back when the May figures came in.

Employee engagement isn't about where people work, it's about how leaders create environments where people can do their best work.

The conversation around hybrid work often focuses on where employees are working. Maybe the better question is: Are we creating the conditions for people to stay engaged?

In her latest Fast Company article, Alison Myers, Venbrook President of Corporate Benefits & Specialty Health and a Fast Company Executive Board member, explores why hybrid work isn't the real challenge, and what organizations should focus on instead.

As organizations tighten budgets, employees are bound to look beyond flashy office perks and focus on benefits that provide lasting financial security, wellbeing, and career growth. 

When HR professionals reevaluate their spending account providers, the most common trigger is not cost or contract terms. It is employee feedback. A survey of more than 300 HR professionals by InComm Benefits found that 73% cite employee feedback as the top factor when assessing spending account providers.

The finding has direct implications for benefits brokers. It positions employee satisfaction data as a direct entry point for renewal conversations about group benefits programs that include health savings accounts (HSAs) or flexible spending accounts (FSAs).

There is a cost attached to senior compliance roles that does not appear in job descriptions, is rarely discussed in appraisals, and is absent from careers talks given to people entering the profession. Not workload and stress in the general sense that every senior role has. This is something more specific: the personal price of having a job that the organization needs and values, but does not fully understand.

I have spent over 20 years in and around this profession and, over that time, I have come to believe that the most senior people in compliance are carrying a set of costs they rarely speak about.