BRINGING ON THE NEW RISK MANAGEMENT GENERATION

Airmic launches mentoring scheme to assist career development
Airmic has launched a mentoring scheme to help give young risk managers a boost in their careers. It is believed to be the first of its kind for risk managers in the UK.

The scheme reflects Airmic’s commitment to supporting members in their careers. Senior professionals are paired up with younger ones in different organisations to act as sounding boards and give advice. How the relationship develops, and how often they meet, depends mostly on the individuals concerned.

“I believe this scheme has the potential to change careers, enable young people to decide how they wish to develop and give them some ideas and encouragement along the way,” says board member Elaine Heyworth, who has overall responsibility.

“The need to develop the executive pipeline of risk managers is more pressing than ever.  A whole layer of very senior people will be retiring over the next ten years, and there are lots of newer entries to the market who are not yet ready to take their places. With additional help and guidance, many of them might fast-track their careers.”

The scheme has already been successfully tested by Maria Trouli, a young operational risk officer at Betfair, who has been mentored since the start of the year by Airmic board member Patrick Smith. They meet about once every two months, but Maria contacts Patrick by phone or email whenever there is a particular reason to do so.

“The arrangement is very valuable to me. I am the only operational risk person in my company, and to be able to turn to Patrick for advice and suggestions or just to talk things through is priceless.

“I recently, for example, gave presentations in more than one department with different interests and Patrick’s input here was to make me think how my talk would affect other people, to see it from their point of view and to make it more effective. In simple words he made me ask, ‘how can I engage them?’”

However, mentors also benefit, according to Heyworth. “From personal experience, I can say that the learning is very much a two-way process. Intelligent but junior staff from a different generation, and often from different backgrounds, can have an uncanny ability to ask awkward questions that you may never have considered or to see different ways of doing things.”

As well as her activities with Airmic, she is on the board of the European Professional Women’s Network, with responsibility for UK-based and cross-European mentoring.

Airmic represents UK risk managers and insurance buyers, including 70% of FTSE 100 companies. Their annual conference, Embracing New Horizons, takes place in Bournemouth from June 6-8.

For further information contact Mark Baylis, Complete Communications, +44(0)7775 693994, mark.baylis@airmic.co.uk