June 19, 2023 — THE STRONGEST competition for labour in the p&c industry comes from within, new demographic research from the Insurance Institute of Canada shows.

It partnered with the Conference Board of Canada to survey human resource professionals and employees to produce an analysis of the industry’s labour situation for 2022 to 2026.

The overwhelming majority of respondents said that p&c organizations are competing with each other for available employment candidates.

And in an industry long known for employees hopping from one company to another, almost two-thirds of the HR specialists said that the next closest competitors are from other insurance fields.

Half of the respondents said the banking industry is a major competitor, up about 20 percentage points from the institute’s last demographic survey in 2017.

The researchers found p&c companies also saw greater competition from financial technology and consulting companies since the last survey but lesser competition from professional services organizations.

Hybrid work is expected to become the new normal, with nearly two-thirds of human resources professionals saying that the next two years will see an increased mix of on-site and remote work.

Respondents expected about two-thirds of the workforce to be in a hybrid style in two years.

Recruitment and retention difficulties varied across Canada, the researchers said.

They found that B.C. and Quebec have experienced the most difficulties in recruiting p&c workers in the last two years. Meanwhile, Ontario was ranked as the most difficult province for retaining p&c workers in the next two years.

Alberta became a much easier place to recruit and retain workers compared to the 2017 survey.

(For more details on the institute research and complete coverage of Canadian p&c industry news and trends, please choose the ‘Subscribe’ tab on our main page or email mpub@rogers.com for more information).