Attracting Talents

In response to the digital development and sustainability trends, Cathay Life is pro-actively building a diversified talent pool by establishing various recruitment channels to attract talents, so that they can have opportunities to find suitable positions for them.

We offer summer internships to students, so that they can blend into the workplace earlier. In 2020, we organized a number of digital skills development workshops, as well as meetings with senior managers to better acquaint students with the philosophy and strategies of Cathay Life’s digital transformation. As of 2021, 22% of CIP interns who completed the internship have become employees.

Since 2018, Cathay has initiated the Cathay Agile Program (CAP) to cultivate students into digital technology talents. In this half-year program, centered on the agile project, participants work jointly as a team to implement projects and present their results. During this process, students and our office staff conduct agile collaborations to spark more creative ideas. In 2021, 39 interns participated in the program and produced 17 project ideas for the company to put into practice.

Since the “slashies” trend has kept growing in recent years, Cathay has been offering the π Golden Project since the second half of 2019. Over half of our units in Taiwan have participated in the program to offer part-time job opportunities in the finance and insurance industry. Through diverse digital learning tools, along with the unique physical courses at the “Golden Academy,” and the one-on-one mentoring mechanism, this project offers mentoring and counseling to strengthen participants’ professional and commercial skills.

Aims to cultivate well-rounded investment planning talent highly sensitive to investment opportunities, and develops professional knowledge of the stock market, foreign exchange, bonds, risk management and financial accounting through a year of rotational appointments among investment, transaction and planning departments. 6 people were accepted into this project in 2021.

In order to better acquaint young people with the work of life insurance consultant and invite them to join us, Cathay Life has engaged with campus, cooperated with new venture, and set up “Tree Campus,” a website that offers more diversified and innovative ways to know better of Cathay Life.

Personnel Elite Internship Program
Every year, we offer university and college students “workplace internship” opportunities to work in our business units. In the last four years, there has been a considerable increase in the number of interns. To date, the number of interns has amounted to 2,884, of which 49.2% have become part-time personnel, and 5.6% have become full-time employees.
Career Diary
To familiarize more students with the workplace, Cathay Life and City Wanderer have been continually organizing the Career Diary Challenge since 2017. Through interviews, experience sessions, and various other missions, participants can quickly improve their understanding of job careers. In 2021, this event was implemented using the online software Gather Town for the first time. A total of 70 students participated in the event with an average satisfaction score as high as 4.8 (out of 5) and an average recommendation score of 4.7 (out of 5), and reached 908,000 individuals via social media, successfully engaging students online.

Competency Upgrade

A healthy talent development system is the key to the sustainable development of an organization. We have developed training frameworks and established a comprehensive training system according to each employee’s individual career needs and talent levels, thereby enriching talent pools at all levels as well as elite insurance sales agents and digital technology talents at home and abroad. In 2021, the turnover rate of head office staff was 4.69%, which lay within a 1 standard deviation in the past three years. On the other hand, the retention rate of sales personnel has increased on a yearly basis, reaching 66.8%.

Cathay Life has established a comprehensive career training system, ranging from a diverse job-rotation system and digital learning resources to international talent development, thereby progressively improving the depth and breadth of our talents experiences.

Cross-boundary Department Rotation
To encourage office staff to continually explore their diverse competencies, we introduced systematic operations since 2020 to allow departments recruiting new employees to offer job vacancies online and provide channels of advice to lower employees’ uncertainty during transitions. The job rotation percentages in 2021 were 16.7% for specialized staff and 16.2% for administrative staff. In addition, we arranged transfers of professional office staff to sales or policyholder services departments to further familiarize office staff with life insurance operations. In 2021, office-to-field transfers amounted to 23 individuals.
War Room
In response to the trend of digital transformation, we introduced agile thinking and established the “War Room.” Operated by heterogeneous teams, it encourages employees to step out of their domains and create new ideas through cross-domain cooperation. As of 2021, 18.6% of all personnel have contributed to this transformation process, which reached 33 departments.

“The power of technology is important, but human beings are even more important than technology.” In response to the intense global competition and digitizing trend, cultivating digital literacy of business talents to exert the collaborative synergy of men and machines is the key to increase the impact of insurance technologies.

Fostering the Seed of Agility
In order to promote agile thinking and methods within our organization, we not only organize courses and workshops, but also encourage employees to obtain international certifications. In 2021, a total of 81 employees obtained agile certifications, such as the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM), while internal agility seed coaches amounted to approximately 50, driving the development of agile thinking in our organization
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
We are pro-actively introducing the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool to replace repetitive processing tasks, helping employees improve work efficiency. We also implement programs to transform administrative staff into computing programming personnel to work on RPA development at our IT department. In 2021, a total of 11 staff members were successfully transformed and will act as internal professional lecturers in the future to assist other employees in using RPA resources.

JoSeal Co-learning Platform
In order to promote community co-learning, Cathay Life has introduced JoSeal, a highly interactive, practical knowledge-centered learning platform, and established a model for (III) Community Shared-learning through the “RSC” (Reading, Sharing, Creating) model.
● Reading: Courses viewed over 290,000 times
● Sharing: Responses to courses exceed 60,000
● Creating: Over 426 micro-courses created
MDRT Ambassadors Sharing Network
The promotion of MDRT Ambassadors in Cathay Life was launched in 2018. It accepts applications from employees and has selected 100 applicants with excellent performance records to become MDRT Ambassadors, who introduce knowledge extraction techniques, collaborate with full-time lecturers to analyze stories behind their success, and share them with others. Furthermore, through the expert matching platform - Cathay Speaker, we managed courses and invited lecturers according to different learning demands. In 2021, we held 22 MDRT Ambassador live-streaming sharing events and 340 MDRT annual sharing sessions. 71% of our business units participated in the Ambassador sharing events with an average satisfaction score of 96.7%.

A healthy way of life

In addition to pursuing an comprehensive career development, we also encourage employees to “Advance Dreams and Working Together.” Through various welfare systems, employee care and healthcare, we allow our employees to be passionately committed to their careers under Cathay’s shelter and live without worries.

Since 2016, we have been organizing the Weight-Loss Competition. The theme for the 2020 event was self-challenge. Participants who successfully lost 5%, 10%, or 15% of weight received awards. A total of 8,513 participants lost 17,842 kg, up 37% from the event in 2019. In addition, Cathay donated NT$100 for each 1kg lost to Dingshan Elementary School, Tainan for the installment of solar energy panels on the rooftops of its buildings. All earnings from green energy have helped fund activities for local elderly people.

We introduced the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) in 2018, through which a 24-hour helpline is offered to help prevent and solve employees’ psychological wellbeing issues. 3 free external professional consultations are available for each employee every year. In 2021, a total of 153 employees used the consultancy service. All users have found it helpful for solving problems and improving work performance.

Creating a considerate work environment, Cathay Life promotes the Cathay Pregnancy Club under our Maternity Healthcare Protection Program. We not only seek to understand the requirements of workplace protection from pregnant employees through questionnaires or interviews, but also prepare prenatal and postpartum gift (e.g., baby care products) for new parents to allow them to take care of their babies with peace of mind. 1,175 gifts were given in 2021.

This is an innovative program in the industry. With just a modest daily contribution to the premium, Cathay employees can enjoy insurance for specific types of cancer worth NT$300,000. The policy also combines methods from charitable donations, so that every dollar of insurance premium is spent on those in need. Since its launch in August 2020, 3,658 of such insurance policies have been underwritten, with total donations reaching NT$1.02 million.