Fewer employees, higher expectations: How insurers are responding correctly now
Demographic change is changing the labor market faster than many companies can adapt. By 2035, there is a risk of losing millions of skilled workers — with dramatic consequences for productivity, service quality and competitiveness.
Structural changes in the labor market are continuing to intensify. While many companies are desperately looking for skilled workers, the age structure of the population is rapidly shifting. More than 22 million people in Germany are already over 60 years old — and the trend is rising. At the same time, the baby boomer generation with strong births is increasingly ending their working lives. According to a study by the Federal Institute for Population Research, Germany will lose around seven million workers by 2035. A dramatic decline that has profound consequences for the economy and society.
Sectors with high staffing requirements, such as the insurance sector, are particularly affected. These areas are already struggling with bottlenecks and congestion. Competition for qualified employees has intensified. Companies must not only score points with better salaries and more flexible working models, but also increase their productivity and intensify their customer relationships. Without strategic answers to these structural changes, many companies are threatened with a loss of innovative strength and competitiveness.
Regional inequality is an additional factor: While metropolitan areas have a wider field of applicants, at least in theory, rural regions are particularly affected by an aging population. On the one hand, this is due to the immigration of young people to cities with the prospect of better education and a better job. On the other hand, older people in particular can no longer afford the often high rents in big cities and are therefore more likely to move to the countryside.[3] Companies there are increasingly being forced to consider supra-regional recruitment strategies or even relocations.
When knowledge goes and demands grow
Demographic change has a twofold effect: both internally and externally. In the companies themselves, a considerable amount of experience is lost when older employees leave. Many companies have not established systematic knowledge assurance. Mentoring programs, digital knowledge databases or structured succession management processes are often missing or only take effect too late. The result: gaps in competence, friction losses and, in the medium term, a decline in service quality and innovative capacity.
In addition, there is an increasing age diversity in teams. In future, managers must manage across generations, adapt communication styles and ensure that younger and older employees are equally involved and promoted. Continuing vocational training plays a central role in this: Learning formats must be modular, practical and age-appropriate in order to effectively impart knowledge.
In addition, customer expectations have fundamentally changed in recent years. In the service sector, today, you expect seamless, fast and personalized communication across all channels — from the website to the chat to the telephone conversation. This is not just about digital availability, but about real accessibility, transparent communication and simple, self-explanatory services. Companies are therefore faced with the challenge of consistently adapting existing structures and processes to these changing requirements — technologically, organizationally and culturally.
On the part of large service organizations, these challenges are often exacerbated by historically developed, often fragmented system landscapes. Processes run in silos, information is isolated, responsibilities are unclear. If you want to overcome demographic challenges, you must remove these structural barriers — and create integrated, cross-departmental solutions.
Growth with fewer hands — how digitization specifically alleviates the burden
Technology alone does not replace skilled workers, but it can specifically relieve scarce capacities and enable more productive work processes. Intelligent solutions can bundle tasks from different areas, analyze them in real time and distribute them to the appropriate employees based on skills. Both availabilities and qualifications are taken into account. As a result, employees only receive tasks that they can process efficiently. Overload or underdemand is minimized.
Such central control provides noticeable relief, particularly in service with multi-channel channels — for example with telephone, e-mail and chat. This is because customer concerns are no longer processed multiple times or are lost in distributed mailboxes. Intelligent routing prevents redundancies and guarantees compliance with service levels.
In addition, the use of artificial intelligence offers concrete advantages: In synchronous channels such as telephony, a voice dialog system automatically identifies relevant information — such as type of damage, customer number or date of birth — and forwards this to downstream systems in a structured manner. In asynchronous channels such as email or chat, AI algorithms analyze content, extract data and initiate automatic processes. This combination of automation and human know-how opens up completely new efficiency potentials.
Another technological lever is the targeted use of data analytics. Companies that evaluate their process data in real time can identify bottlenecks at an early stage, flexibly manage capacities and adapt services as needed. Scenario simulations — for example for seasonal peaks or disease-related absences — also enable predictive resource planning.
Think digitally, act humanely
Despite all digital options, people remain the central element of every successful service. Because complex and emotional issues cannot be standardized. They require empathy, decision-making skills and situational action. Digitalization should therefore not be seen as a rationalization measure, but as an opportunity to empower.
Technologies must give employees time — for example by automating repetitive tasks or using intelligent assistance systems. At the same time, targeted investments in continuing education and cultural transformation are needed. Because only those who take their employees seriously promote their willingness to change and gain valuable experiential knowledge within the company.
Modern work cultures rely on transparency, personal responsibility and lifelong learning. They create an environment in which new technologies are not seen as a threat but as support. This creates a productive balance of efficiency and humanity — the decisive prerequisite for being able to cope with demographic change in the long term.
Three factors for sustainable companies
The pressure to act is high and the time window for response is limited. Companies that now invest in modern, integrated solutions are not only securing an operational advantage, but are also strengthening their resilience to future changes.
A first step is to objectively analyse your own initial situation: Where are the biggest bottlenecks? Which processes are not sustainable? Where does valuable knowledge go unused? On this basis, targeted measures can be derived — from the introduction of smart automation tools to strategic personnel development.
In particular, this includes three categories of measures:
- The development of flexible working models that also keep older employees with the company for longer.
- The digitization of repetitive tasks to reduce manual effort.
- The targeted transfer of knowledge, for example via generational tandems or digital learning platforms.
These building blocks work together and enable a stable transformation path. The advantage: These measures can be combined, scaled and adapted to the individual requirements of a company. They create resilience to the effects of demographic change — not just in the short term, but also structurally.
Source reference
[3] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Demografischer-Wandel/Aeltere-Menschen/stadt-land.html
Dr. Moritz Liebeknecht
IP Dynamics GmbH
Billstraße 103
D-20539 Hamburg
