Page 20 - BusinessWest January 8, 2024

Insurance Group, with Rush being his mother’s maiden name. “It isn’t high- tech, it isn’t Wall Street, it’s just ... not sexy, so young people aren’t interested in it, and the ones who are interested are aging out. Let’s be honest, insur- ance has been an ugly word forever — you have to have thick skin to be in this game because no one wants to talk to you.”
With that, he summed up the ongoing challenge of attracting and main- taining a workforce today, hitting on two of the key points: Baby Boomers are retiring, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hire their successors, especially in insurance.
“If you have that skillset, you’re in an environment where you can change jobs and get a pretty significant pay increase,” he said, referring to seasoned insurance professionals. “In order to get that skillset — and the number of people who possess it is diminishing — employers have to pay up for it, and that squeezes everyone.”
But even those business sectors that would be considered sexy continue to struggle on this front, with many of those we spoke with summing up 2023, and the overriding issue for 2024, with three simple words: “work- force, workforce, workforce.”
Hanmer was one of them, noting that, in his sector and many others, ‘vir- tual assistants,’ technology, and especially AI hold the promise of removing the human element, meaning hired help, from some backroom functions, the broad realm of customer service, and “helping customers understand what they’re buying.”
In the meantime, though, Hanmer and those in many other sectors are focusing their efforts on educating young people about what could be prom- ising careers, including those in that non-sexy realm known as insurance, and grooming them for this work.
“We’re going to start looking at young, inexperienced people who have a desire to potentially have a good-paying job in insurance, because these are good-paying jobs, and you just can’t get people to fill them,” he explained. “So we’re going to have to start growing them from a younger age, and, hopefully, they’ll stick around.”
With that, again, he spoke for business owners across virtually every sector.
School of Thought
It will be called the Adult Learner Success Center.
This is a new initiative at Holyoke Community College (HCC), that, as the name suggests, has been created to help adult learners — non-traditional students generally in the their mid-20s and older — achieve success, how-
“It’s about how you respond to the populations that you have on your campus and ensuring that they have the resources and the support they need to be successful.”
GEORGE TIMMONS
ever they choose to define it.
“It will help address the specific needs of the adult leader, and we’re
really excited about it,” said George Timmons, who took the helm as HCC’s president this past summer. “It’s about how you respond to the populations that you have on your campus and ensuring that they have the resources and the support they need to be successful.”
And the program says a lot about the state of higher education as the cal- dendar turns to 2024.
Indeed, with the passage of the MassReconnect program, which provides free community college to eligible individuals 25 and older, these institutions have seen a much-needed boost in enrollment (4% at HCC, for example) that is also changing the demographic on their campuses.
While enrollment has edged higher at community-colleges and other institutions in 2023, overall enrollment and financial challenges persist, said Timmons, citing the announced closing of the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y., after more than a century of operation, providing more evidence — not that any was needed — that these are difficult and somewhat perilous times
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Wishing a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year, from our family to yours.
baliseauto.com
20 JANUARY 8, 2024
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