As more and more insurers become technology companies that sell insurance, whether they call themselves InsurTechs or just insurance carriers, the whole group may face a problem already challenging the tech sector: employee turnover.

Online sources vary about whether technology or retail is actually the sector with the highest amount of turnover. A 2018 LinkedIn report puts technology on top with a 13.2 percent turnover rate, and retail closely behind at 13.0 percent, while financial services and insurance firms had a 10.8 percent rate.

The 2019 North America Mercer Turnover Survey (published January 2020) reports that the average voluntary turnover rate across all types of U.S. organizations was roughly 15 percent in 2018, with retail experiencing a high of 37 percent. Insurance actually ranked among the sectors with the highest headcount increases in 2018.

Elsewhere, we read anecdotes about startup technology companies watching their best employees depart to competitors who can pay more. In a CNBC.com article about his small IT firm in Massachusetts, Paragus CEO Delcie Bean recounts how his tech stars moved on in spite of perks like beer on tap, dogs in the office, unlimited PTOs and even an ESOP, giving employees 40 percent of the company. With all that failing, he now celebrates departures, calling them graduations and creating a “Wall of Fame” to honor exiting employees who made positive contributions.

But he didn’t just throw in the towel. Bean’s company also paid more attention to desires for professional development, providing checklists of skills that employees need to move up personal career ladders.

While InsurTechs have similar experiences, seen in movements between firms—and to tech startups outside insurance—some of the best-loved traditional insurers we spoke to for this edition report success in reducing voluntary turnover.

Are worries about sought-after IT and analytics talent being lured to the Googles, Amazons and cool tech startups history? We doubt it.

And there’s a bigger elephant in the room: involuntary turnover brought on by automation.

Insurers are addressing voluntary and involuntary exits with bigger commitments to professional development. Terms like “reskilling” and “upskilling” appear in media announcements from industry giants.

In early January, Nationwide announced a five-year, $160 million Future of Work investment to equip associates with digital literacy and future capabilities training. Every associate will have a personalized learning curriculum focused on future skills, Nationwide said.

State Farm, in early February, announced a partnership with Arizona State University to create a “Pathways for the Future” career development program targeting students in high school and college—and employees wanting to learn new skills, “including State Farm employees.”

So far, we haven’t heard any insurer talk about “outskilling”—what a recent Wall Street Journal headline suggested is “A Counterintuitive Fix for Robot-Driven Unemployment,” in an article that begins with the story of a hypothetical bank teller that is trained for a cybersecurity job six months before being laid off and hired by a local hospital system. (The hospital system, bank, other local employer and community colleges are part of a local consortium that design and fund the outskilling courses.)

Today, P/C insurers and InsurTechs are still trying to bring and keep employees in, not help them out of the industry. And so far, HR experts agree that there are plenty of opportunities to combine soft skills and data analysis skills in the industry’s “super jobs” of the near future.

But good risk managers always need to have their eyes open for potential changes.