Skill insurance for entrepreneurs and professional leaders.

According to data from LinkedIn, skills for today’s occupations have changed by 25 percent since 2015 and that number is expected to double by 2027, with soft skills like leadership and communication rising to the top, and the most in-demand hard skills include customer service and sales.

As we hang in the balance of economic uncertainty, many business leaders are living in the moment trying to remain profitable without a contingency plan to protect the talent within their organization.

Skill insurance provides that coverage for both entrepreneurs and employees while sheltering them from potential termination in the future.

1. Appraise Your Skills

Insurance underwriters evaluate the proposed insurer to determine whether to provide the proposed insurer deserves the insurance and under what terms.

Business leaders can serve as underwriters to appraise the value of their employee’s skills. However, the industrial market (including the customers and external board members) serves as the ultimate underwriter. Entrepreneurs hold the ultimate burden of inspecting which set of skills are relevant in today’s market and which skills need to be upgraded or replaced.

There are a variety of ways business leaders can sharpen their skills. Leaders can expand their skills through education via traditional means (like formal education through matriculated courses), or progressive and more affordable means such as LinkedIn Learning and the Harvard Business School online.

While many employees rely on hard and technical skills to remain marketable, most business leaders must put as much emphasis on their soft skills (communication, leadership, time management and strategy) to remain competitive in an uncertain economy.

Business leaders do not have to be the jack of all trades, but they can take advantage of valuable resources to be the master of some.

2. Avoiding Lapsing on Your Skills

Insurance lapses occur when managers and employees don’t have skills insurance coverage because they didn’t pay their skill insurance premiums.

Many business leaders must rely on their skills and the skills of their employees to deal with certain business conditions. However, it’s extremely difficult to rely on your proficiencies if you can’t keep up with your insurance payments.

Thanks to the advancement of technology, some skills become obsolete when we do not use them over time. Therefore, we must keep up with our premiums and sustain the top skills in demand today.

3. Keep Up With New Tools to Stay Connected

Insurance representatives tend to keep up with their network of clients to provide them with updates and new products that may be available.

During times of uncertainty, keeping in touch with your network is crucial, and many are increasingly turning to their online communities for help. More than one third of job seeking LinkedIn members in the United States said they reached out to someone in their network to discuss their career plans.

But it can be challenging to know who’s hiring or where to start.

For business leaders, it can be even more difficult looking for top-tier job seekers. On LinkedIn, leaders can now see their talent pool within their network when they visit the home page. While employees can be notified of relevant jobs when people in their first- or second-degree network are hiring, entrepreneurs can be notified when their first- or second-degree network applied for their job posting. These new networking tools makes it easy for both employees and business leaders to connect directly.