With the baby boomer generation poised to enter retirement, it's imperative that the health insurance industry draw millennials into the workforce.
The effort might not be as difficult as it seems, given that younger generations have already shown a keen interest in healthcare overall, according to Healthcare Payer News. In fact, 40 percent of high school-age students say they expect to work in medicine or health-related fields, according to the National Society of High School Scholars' most recent annual career survey.
A number of high-profile payer names also made the survey's list of respondents' top 100 preferred employers, including Cigna, Kaiser Permanente and Aetna.
The health insurance industry can lure millennials by touting its relative job security and competitive salaries, emphasizing the industry's commitment to work-life balance and offering flexible options such as the chance to telecommute, according to Healthcare Payer News. Indeed, Aetna upped the ante by announcing early this year that its lowest-paid employees would get a 33 percent raise starting in April, according to FierceHealthPayer.
The industry may also want to try to make itself more hip, which is why Allstate, State Farm, Liberty Mutual and the Society of Actuaries started a recruiting project named "My Path: Insurance. It's Limitless," aimed specifically at millennial audiences, the article notes.
For the health insurance industry in particular, outreach could help bridge a generational gap recently highlighted by a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, which found that many millennials fail to understand common insurance terms such as deductibles and copayments, FierceHealthPayer reported.
To learn more:
- read the article
- check out the survey results