Case Study Description of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment
Zurich Insurance was undergoing organizational change after implementing five new people practices focused on: manager development, diversity and inclusion, job model and data analytics, recruitment, and talent pipeline. The case "Zurich Insurance: Fostering Key People Management Practices" (417-035) provides background of the company and an outline of each people practice, as well as a description of how the company's culture was changing and how its allocation of resources was being examined as it tried to improve its position in the marketplace. This case takes a closer look at the adoption of new recruitment practices.
Swot Analysis of "Zurich Insurance: Recruitment" written by Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Zurich Recruitment facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Leadership, Organizational culture, Talent management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Zurich Insurance: Recruitment casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zurich Recruitment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zurich Recruitment operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zurich Recruitment
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zurich Recruitment
Strengths Zurich Insurance: Recruitment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zurich Recruitment in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Zurich Insurance: Recruitment firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Zurich Recruitment to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Zurich Recruitment to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Zurich Recruitment is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Zurich Recruitment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Zurich Recruitment is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zurich Recruitment has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Zurich Recruitment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Zurich Recruitment has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
High brand equity
– Zurich Recruitment has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Zurich Recruitment to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Zurich Recruitment is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Zurich Recruitment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Zurich Insurance: Recruitment Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Zurich Recruitment is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Zurich Recruitment is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Zurich Insurance: Recruitment are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Zurich Recruitment is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Zurich Recruitment are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Zurich Recruitment
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Zurich Recruitment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Zurich Insurance: Recruitment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Zurich Insurance: Recruitment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Zurich Recruitment is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Zurich Recruitment is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Zurich Recruitment has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Zurich Recruitment is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Zurich Recruitment needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Zurich Recruitment to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Zurich Insurance: Recruitment HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Zurich Recruitment has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Zurich Recruitment needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Zurich Recruitment has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Zurich Recruitment has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Zurich Insurance: Recruitment should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Zurich Recruitment, firm in the HBR case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Zurich Recruitment has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Zurich Recruitment even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Opportunities Zurich Insurance: Recruitment | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment are -
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Zurich Recruitment can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Zurich Recruitment can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Leadership & Managing People segment.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Zurich Recruitment can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Zurich Recruitment can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Zurich Recruitment has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Zurich Recruitment to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Zurich Insurance: Recruitment case study. Zurich Recruitment can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Zurich Recruitment can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Zurich Insurance: Recruitment, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Zurich Recruitment to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Zurich Recruitment to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Zurich Recruitment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Zurich Recruitment can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Zurich Recruitment operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Zurich Recruitment has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Zurich Recruitment to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zurich Recruitment in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Zurich Recruitment to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Zurich Recruitment in the consumer business. Now Zurich Recruitment can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Zurich Recruitment can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Threats Zurich Insurance: Recruitment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment are -
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Zurich Recruitment.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Zurich Recruitment is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Zurich Recruitment with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Zurich Recruitment in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Zurich Recruitment can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment .
Regulatory challenges
– Zurich Recruitment needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Zurich Recruitment needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Zurich Recruitment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Zurich Recruitment high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Zurich Recruitment needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Zurich Recruitment
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Zurich Recruitment.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Zurich Recruitment business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zurich Recruitment demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Zurich Insurance: Recruitment is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Zurich Insurance: Recruitment is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Zurich Recruitment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
