GB’s General Manager – People and Performance, Chenoa Daley recently presented at the 2016 RMIA conference. Following the great feedback from her presentation, our roving reporter spoke to Chenoa in more detail.

Chenoa, can you give us a bit of background on your presentation?

Sure. Like any organisation, GB strives to attract high quality candidates to join our team. We are very passionate about recruiting candidates with the right cultural and value fit, therefore we need to screen out candidates whose values don’t align with ours. As an organisation, we focus more on cultural fit, as we recognise that if a candidate shares GB’s values, we can train them the technical components of the role where applicable.

Given the restrictions of the size of the insurance and finance industry, it’s simply not realistic to try to source all new staff from within the industry, as the ‘pool’ of candidates is limited. Instead, we focus on bringing in talent not just from within the industry but from other industries, as well as interns and other individuals just starting out in their careers. My presentation was about attracting skilled resources and launching careers, and how we at GB take the risk out of the recruitment process.

You just mentioned GB’s values, something spoke in depth about in your presentation. This is obviously something the organisation is passionate about. How do you ensure your new staff are the right cultural fit?

We use a number of tools as part of our application and recruitment process – this is how we reduce the risk during the process and look for the right cultural fit. As part of the application process, all candidates go through a values assessment. If the assessment proves that their values do not align to GB’s, the candidate can opt out of the recruitment process. If they chose to continue with the application, we are made aware of what the assessment has flagged, and can manage that accordingly.

Applicants who are short-listed participate in competency and behavioural based assessments, allowing us to further understand their values. We also utilise psychometric testing as part of our recruitment process – all of these tools assist with fact based placement, helping to mitigate the risk of selecting a candidate that isn’t the right cultural fit.

Your presentation was titled “Launching Careers in the Finance, Risk & Insurance Sector. Attracting Skilled Resources” – how exactly are GB launching careers?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, although we do recruit people with industry experience, we also recruit a lot of people new into the industry or even new to the workforce. We work hard to ensure that we offer our people a career and not just a job.

Our structured L&D programs ensure that our people are developed and are able to grow in the organisation. The psychometric testing that we use as part of the recruitment process also assists with this – the testing gives us a comprehensive understanding of the strengths of our new staff, which helps us and them carve a career pathway for them.

GB’s culture is focussed on investing in our people, and our structured L&D programs underpin this. A fantastic example of long term career development is the recent appointment of Aidan Brophy to the role of General Manager, Victoria Workers’ Compensation. Aidan joined GB 14 years ago in an entry level role, and worked his way up through all roles within the claims operation before being promoted to lead the Victorian team late last year.

That all sounds great, helping the right people kick start their careers, but what’s in it for GB and GB’s clients?

We love the energy that our people bring to the team! It’s especially exciting as we recruit people with such a variety of backgrounds.

GB and our clients certainly benefit from this energy, and the different ideas and ways of thinking that new people bring in the short term. Longer term, we absolutely benefit from the fact that many of our senior leaders and other team members have worked in a number of different roles and even across different product lines at GB, building fantastic experience along the way which is incredibly valuable to both GB and our clients.

We think the recruitment tools, structured L&D programs and fantastic culture at GB are really a winning combination!

Speaking of winning, you’ve also had a pretty exciting year of awards haven’t you?

We have! In September last year we were incredibly proud to win the ANZIIF Youth Development Employer of the Year 2016. This topped off a fantastic year for us, having come in eighth place in The Australian Association of Graduate Employers 2016, making the Top 25 Intern Programs list and taking home two golds at the 2016 LearnX Awards for our training and induction programs!