The Stretch – On the Idea of Augmented Intelligence: How Zurich Canada is Keeping Humans in the Loop

Liz McSavaney 
I think I'm always pleasantly surprised with how receptive our employee population is to change and transformation.

Kevin Fyock 
We're gonna dig into empathy and why empathy is so important, particularly within human resources.

Liz McSavaney 
AI is wonderful, but it's not going to replace the things that we do best as human beings. We know how to connect with one another, we know how to collaborate with one another.

Kevin Fyock 
And we're also talking about artificial intelligence and human resources and actually having the human touch when it comes to AI.

Liz McSavaney 
Lance Armstrong said it this morning, he said there are two AIs. There's the AI that we know, and then there's the the augmented intelligence. And I really liked that aspect because it brought the people component into how do we augment our our level of what we do best as that human in the loop.

Kevin Fyock 
It's so apt that we're sitting here at Transform in Las Vegas and I'm joined here by Liz McSaveney, Chief People Officer of Zurich Canada. Liz, super excited that you're here with us today. 

So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about you, a little bit about Zurich?

Liz McSavaney
So I am the chief people officer for Zurich in Canada, but I've been working in the field of HR for more years than I care to admit publicly. I really love what I do because part of what we're doing, insurance is not always the industry that people think of when they think of transformation and excitement and really great careers. But what I found over the years of working in insurance, having worked in different industries over the course of my career, it's an incredibly interesting industry. It's very complex. There's a lot of opportunity for people to grow their careers. And it's ripe for transformation.

Kevin Fyock 
Sure. Yeah, that's great. And and I think that that focus on growth, you and I had an opportunity to to dig into that a little bit before we sat down today. So can you elaborate a little bit more on that, so this concept of growth specifically at Zurich?

Liz McSavaney 
Yeah, so we are going through a really interesting strategic realignment right now where our Canadian business has an opportunity to align to an international model. We are very competitive in the commercial space. We are known as a commercial carrier. We have a very reputable brand. In Canada, we have a long history of being over 100 years old. But where we're really trying to grow is in our middle market space and our small, medium-sized enterprises. And that's really where the competitive space is for us. And it allows us to transform the way our business operates, the way our employees show up, and how we deliver more value to our brokers and our customers.

Kevin Fyock 
That's wonderful. So we're sitting here at Transform and artificial intelligence has been the topic du jour, right? Well frankly it's been the topic du jour for the past 24 months, everywhere we turn. So, when I think transformation, a lot of that is rooted in technology, and you've hinted at that a little bit. So would love your perspective on sort of the way artificial intelligence is playing into the transformation that you're hinting at.

Liz McSavaney 
It's interesting, I've had several conversations over the last few days since attending Transform with senior people leaders, and someone said something yesterday which I thought was very insightful is instead of looking at AI as another bolt-on or another add-on that we have to think about as leaders, it is so integrated across everything that we do. And I really liked that approach because it feels less onerous that it's yet something else that we have to think about. You know, it's the new internet, it's the new whatever. It's how do we, we have to be able to get our business done with the use of AI. 

Kevin Fyock
Sure. 

Liz McSavaney 
And it's I think Lance Armstrong said it this morning, he said there are two AIs, there's the AI that we know, and then there's the the augmented intelligence. And I really liked that aspect because it brought the people component into how do we augment our our level of what we do best as that human in the loop part of the equation.

Kevin Fyock 
Sure. Well I love the term human in the loop. and and if if you know our listeners remember we've had lots of guests talking about artificial intelligence and I have very much been focused on the concept of human in the loop, the concept of upskilling and sort of supplementing expertise with these language models and nothing brings me greater joy than as a cyclist to have Lance Armstrong also say the same thing. so that was a that was certainly a fun tie-in.

The other thing that, you know, as we're we're digging in here, Liz, we talked a little bit around the the role that learning and development and apprenticeship and early career have in sort of aiding in transformation. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing in that arena?

Liz McSavaney 
Yeah, and so when I think about what Zurich is all about, it's if we think about how we show up for our customers, it's about resilience and making them better ready for what's coming next. And we bring that internally and how do we prepare our workforce for the pace of change that's happening, the pace of transformation, and be resilient in that. And what we've discovered with which I'm sure is no surprise to anyone who's who plays in this space, learning and development as a standalone functional lens does not does not work.

You have to be concerned about how does your business win and tie that back to the business strategy. And that's what makes it successful. So instead of measuring things like, which we all do, we measure attendance, we measure how many courses have you completed, instead of asking what capability have we actually shifted or changed that has resulted in something for the business, and I think that's where we need to spend our time focusing, and that's what we've been doing from an early career perspective, from an apprenticeship perspective, is how do we… Insurance is a very complicated industry. It's highly complex, highly regulated, a lot of risk aversion by the nature of our business. So, anyone coming out of school, yes they'll have insurance training most often, but they still require a lot from us and a lot of investment.

So, when we're looking at our early career program, we've re-engineered that program to be more of a two-year, what we actually call an onboarding program. It's not even, it's not even a development program. How do we onboard you to the world of insurance through very clear performance measures and KPIs that are directly translated to the business KPIs? 

Kevin Fyock 
Yeah, that's wonderful. And Liz, we talked a little bit about this, but Aon also has an apprenticeship program. So and we're in similar industries, right? So, I think you're right, specific to insurance and brokerage and the adjacencies that exist there, the apprenticeship program has connected, to your point, people earlier in their career, those still in school and exposing them to maybe industries they otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to. So, for us as well, like yourselves, it's created a really cool pipeline of folks to grow and and thrive within our own organization as well. 

Liz McSavaney 
It has.

Kevin Fyock
So, let's shift to your hinting at internal transformation. And we talked a little bit about growth. What what, Liz, is driving the need for speed, for agility? Why don't you dig into that a little bit?

Liz McSavaney 
A lot of it is feedback we hear from our customers and our brokers.

As I mentioned before, Zerk is a very well-known brand. People want to do business with us. As a commercial insurer, we are very well known in the market. But we're a big global company. 

Kevin Fyock
Yeah. 

Liz McSavaney 
And sometimes it takes a bit of time to turn those types of things around. We're also in an industry that's not necessarily known for speed and agility. And probably rightfully so because we're handling very complex issues for our clients. But what we often heard is we really want to work with you, but we need you to be more agile. We need you to, you know, we need you to work a little faster, we need you to be a little less bureaucratic or have steps in the measure. Because our competitors that will take business away from us oftentimes are those smaller players that can work with that pace and agility. And so we've really been focusing that as a business strategy that then is backed into our people strategy. How do we work with pace, less complex, more speed, while still keeping that trusted name in the market and that trusted resource for our clients when they really need it?

Kevin Fyock 
Yeah. Well the the comment around sort of new entrance, the competition being maybe part of that driving force I think certainly resonates with me. as you've been leading through this transformation, what's been the biggest surprise? Have there been any aha's or things that, you know, maybe you weren't expecting?

Liz McSavaney 
I would say people are far more resilient than we give them credit for.

I don't know if COVID broke us all or or set a level playing field. I think I'm always pleasantly surprised with how receptive our employee population is to change and transformation. Insurance, much like the brokerage world, has long-standing tenure in the organizations or long-standing tenure in the insurance industry. But I have been pleasantly surprised touring and talking with our employees and talking with other insurers, how resilient our employees are, how how open they are and receptive they are to wanting to do things better for our customers and our brokers.

Kevin Fyock 
I think Liz, what you're touching on. I think it's so fun because for the first time in our podcast, we've focused on something outside of the borders of the United States. You sit in Canada, right? But the idea of resilience cross borders, right? The idea of supporting employees and helping them be their best version of themselves each and every day has nothing to do with where you live, has everything to do with sort of how you're supported and the resources that you have. So, I'm particularly excited about our opportunity to talk because when we think about the HR lens and building the capability for our employer, for our members for tomorrow. I'd love to just better understand from you, like when you think about your role within human resources, tell me more about the unique opportunity you feel like you have to maybe support people at Zurich the way you have at other places you've been as well.

Liz McSavaney 
So I think first we need to start we we start with ourselves. So we are very much focused on how do we set ourselves up as a as an HR function, as an enablement function, not as what we used to be known as the overhead or the the support function. How do we prepare ourselves, change management, resiliency? And I think HR has a very unique opportunity. 

No matter what industry you work in, you get things done through people. And I have a very unique and interesting role where I get to connect the people strategy to the business outcomes. 

Kevin Fyock
Sure. 

Liz McSavaney
And we look at it holistically across how are we supporting our employees? How are we attracting the right talent that meets the business needs? How are we developing and supporting that talent? And how are we helping them feel connected to one another? 

That could be through so many different things. Our talent acquisition strategy, our learning and development approach, health and wellness and health and benefits, and how and how we're helping to support. Looking at, we look at feedback from our engagement surveys every year to try to dig into what do our employees, what are they responding to really well, what do they need more from us? And ultimately is it's a very coordinated effort with our business leaders. 

If you are in an HR function within an organization, likely you're not in an HR organization, we're in the insurance business. So, we need to be connected to the business. We need to be working in partnership and in tandem with them to ensure that whatever we are developing, whatever we’re putting out, meets the needs of our employees and our people leaders. 

Kevin Fyock 
Well I love, I love your touching on sort of HR isn't necessarily reacting, but you're in the throes of redesigning yourself, right? So tell me more about that. Like what what is the future of human resources within Zurich look like?

Liz McSavaney 
The thing I love about my job is I get to experiment a little. 

Kevin Fyock
Yeah. 

Liz McSavaney 
I love transformation. I'm always attracted to a good change transformation journey. 

Kevin Fyock
Well, you picked a good conference to!

Liz McSavaney 
I picked a great conference to come to. I'm in my I'm in my sweet spot here.

But we've been, I I've been at Zurich now for four years and what attracted me to this role is the opportunity to be a bit of an out-of-the-box thinker. Do a little bit of experimentation and creativity with how we're structuring, looking at different models. Gartner has a number of different models out there, and talking to people across different industries and looking at how do we leverage technology to better service our roles so all of my team leverages AI. But how do we structure our teams in different ways to move away from that traditional HR model?

And experiment. So, we've done some experimentation, and I'm happy to say that for the most part it's worked. And when it doesn't work, we we fail fast and we learn very quickly. But we've really been focused on really playing around with the model, talking to our business leaders, asking them what's working. And in fact, this year when we came up on redoing our talent strategy for the next couple of years to meet the business, we intentionally set aside a fourth pillar of delivery that is 100% focused on the HR team. That we recognize that we need to transform, we need to be more agile. If we're going to expect that of the business, we need to be ready ourselves to be able to deliver on those principles so that we can lead by example.

Kevin Fyock 
Yeah. So my interests are peaked around the the fourth pillar 'cause I think the other pillars that you’ve hinted on here, but then when we were talking as well, we're focusing on sort of a high performance workplace, talent speed, talent readiness, both of which you you've talked about, and then just this concept of development, and no better way to highlight that than things like your apprenticeship program. 

So, future readying your leadership, I think is something every employer should endeavor for. So, tell me more about sort of like your goal there and potentially closing the gap between business demands and then what you're doing in HR. How do you sort of accomplish that with that fourth pillar?

Liz McSavaney 
I think about, you know, first of all, we need to be much more closely connected to our leaders. So, I ask that from everyone on my team. It doesn't matter what role you have, what level of the organization, you need to be out. I say to my team, we are market-facing, and our market is our employee population. And I want everyone from our pension and benefits admin all the way up to the individual that leads talent from my organization to be talking with our business, to be getting feedback. 

If you're on the front line of talent acquisition. We do talent acquisition surveys. How did it go? Reading that data, understanding that. And the data component is so important, I can't emphasize that enough. To be seen as a credible function in an organization, I love a good data point. It's not enough just to have the data, but how are we drawing the right insights for the business? And I have someone on my team who is a super whiz when it comes to data, and now we're trying to shift that to more of the predictive analytics which is being very well received by our business because we work with people in actuarial science and very technical roles. And so we've been trying to shift from, let's see that the data to me is very reactive in terms of where we are now. But that shift now, and we're not there yet, we're on that journey of predictive analytics to how do we predict the likelihood of potentially attrition in one particular area. Or how does engagement scores tie to how we're driving the capability gap on learning and development. 

And so trying to take those pieces of what we do in HR using a predictive analytics model and looking at how does it then translate to our business being able to deliver ultimately for what we're trying to do. And I think that's the sweet spot for HR now.

Kevin Fyock 
Liz, you're hinting at the future, and it's funny, at the end of most of our episodes, I ask our crystal ball question around asking people to look, you know, three, five, ten years down the down the path, but I want to ask you actually now, because I think it's a perfect time. As you're looking into your lens of where your business needs to be, where HR needs to be, I'll just ask it directly, what capabilities do you think HR needs within the next three to five years to actually accomplish, not just at Zurich what you're doing, but just more holistically across the entire sort of industry in which we stand.

Liz McSavaney 
I think the empathy is big. Yeah. You know, AI is wonderful, but it's not going to replace the things that we do best as human beings. We know how to connect with one another, we know how to collaborate with one another. Using your judgment, being able to analyze vast amounts of data, be it data that you threw into ChatGPT or any type of AI model, and being able to leverage and synthesize your knowledge and your human intelligence, I think is a skill that we really need to spend a lot of time on because that’s where machines don’t replace us.

Kevin Fyock 
I agree. Yeah. You know, we had a leadership meeting at Aon not too long ago and the person who was leading this session asked us to really think about the core attributes of a leader. And so we had to spend some heads down time, five minutes or so, thinking about like what attributes did we want as leaders and I was so so excited to see that the folks at my table, almost everybody, the number one attribute they had was empathy. And I think to your point, Liz, in a world where artificial intelligence is what everybody's talking about.

To your point, what can't be replaced is empathy, right? Sort of this connection we're doing right here. Right here. But then even more broadly, like empathy should lead what we're doing, I think, across industries, across business functions, but especially within within human resources. 

So, let's go back to the beginning of our conversation where you hinted at transformation, then we dug into transformation. So, you know, in from your lens, what do you think leaders need to do differently if they really want their teams to thrive through transformation?

Liz McSavaney 
I think they need a little bit of the empathy component of it, right? 

Listen, I've been working in HR a long time, and I think the developing great people leaders was a task we had to do back in the early 2000s, and it's still a task we have to do today. And why? Because it's humans and we're we're technology might be complex, but we are way more complex than any system. And so how how do people connect with their people? Yes, how can you leverage technology to make your jobs easier?

I often hear from people leaders. The job of a people leader is tough. And depending on where you are in the organization, you have to do your day job. You have to do all these people conversations, and oftentimes people get promoted into these roles, maybe not because they're the best with people, but they're great technically. 

Kevin Fyock
Yeah, sure!

Liz McSavaney 
And so how do we help them with the aspects of dealing with human beings? A former colleague of mine used to say the saying that I use all the time now: people are people, and we're all different, and we bring different things to the table. So, teaching our our people leaders how to lead humans, how to deal with the complexities that come with all of that, how to listen better, how to leverage the tools that they have, and most importantly, where do they go when they have the questions? Because they're not experts in this field, and I think that's where HR plays a big role. Especially if you're in a business partnering role where you're very connected to the business, how do you know who to lean to to help you support and grow? 

I mean, we've experimented and are doing it right now with an AI-powered coach for managers, so they can leverage an AI tool. If they're looking at how do I have a difficult conversation which is I think most often the the one that they struggle with, they can use AI to help prepare for that. But then the human connection comes with connecting with someone HR to say, here's what I've gotten from the tool, can I play this out with you? Can I spar a little bit with you? So that when I then get in front of the employee, I'm better prepared and I've and I've had that human test point. 

Kevin Fyock 
Sure. Well, I can think of no better way to sort of wrap up our podcast than to really anchor on your comment that people are people, right? I think that's been the thread that we've talked about throughout this discussion, right? Across transformation, across artificial intelligence, across supporting new hires. But I think at the end of the day, the reason why you're successful, your business will be successful, and I think I'm bullish on our industry is the fact that like we need to rely on each other, we need to rely on people. So I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you joining. This has been a lot of fun, Liz.

Liz McSavaney 
It has been. Thank you so much.

Kevin Fyock 
Of course. And to our listeners, thanks so much for tuning in. Again, we're live on the floor of Transform in Las Vegas. And as a reminder, this is The Stretch, a podcast that's bringing you fresh perspectives, real conversations, and on-the-ground insights from leaders who are actively redefining what better looks like. 

Thanks so much for joining and we'll talk to you soon.