— In last month‘s Human Factor, Technology Decisions brought you industry-wide perspectives on hiring IT professionals. Gary Spaulding, project leader of Indiana-based Meridian Insurance‘s information resources division commented about the company‘s policy of providing its tech people with additional industry training. We thought the idea of teaching the "art" of insurance to folks with traditionally inhuman workloads was a novel enough concept to write about in detail.

Maybe Meridian Insurance isn‘t the only company that teaches the insurance business to its IT department. Professionals at the company were shocked by the possibility that other insurance companies don‘t. In any case, Meridian (with $217 million in earned premiums last year) feels it has benefited greatly from building solid insurance backgrounds in their IT workers