2023 Executive Outlook | Dave Partington, Gallagher

Dave Partington, CEO, Gallagher Global Brokerage – Canada

Resourcing our businesses to deliver for our clients will be the important issue in 2023. Job vacancies across Canada increased by 91% over the past three years; the labour market is tight, and unemployment is at an all-time low. Finding and retaining talent is a critical issue for all insurance firms and industry-wide to continue delivering for our customers.

To prepare for this challenge, we need to work harder to bring talent into the insurance industry. Telling our story to those who are about to be or are currently enrolled in post-secondary education is a great first step. We also need to look at talented people in other sectors and bring them into our industry.

Internship programs serve to advance new talent into careers in the insurance industry. Such programs can accelerate the learning curve for students by training them and sending them on a path to become insurance professionals. We need to deploy these programs with an industry lens.

We also need to retain the talent in our business by listening to the views of our teams and acting on them through initiatives such as employee engagement surveys and stay interviews. When we listen to our colleagues’ career aspirations, we can provide more training to support them — be it through mentoring or training in leadership, technical or sales skills — and help them build careers to fulfil their desires and goals.

Finally, we need to improve our processes and use of data. This makes our jobs more fulfilling by allowing our teams to spend more time providing solutions for our clients and less time on admin-type work. Investing in programs to support career growth and leadership development will be of benefit to both employers and employees and contribute major enhancements to our service processes.

Insurance is an incredible sector. We provide our teams with a career that has purpose, unlimited career progression and we are relatively well-protected from economic cycles. Let’s tell our story.