Ensuring staff have the correct skills to enable them to flourish in the workplace is one of the key employment issues currently affecting the insurance industry.
The recent CBI’s Employment trends survey 2008 revealed that one in three insurance companies cited skills as the most important factor influencing the competitiveness of their business. Indeed, as the report pointed out, with the economy slowing, it is essential that employers ensure their staff “deliver to their potential”.
The issue of skills is a particularly pressing concern for smaller employers – a category into which many insurance brokers fall – with 41 per cent saying it is their “top concern”.
However, the survey also showed that companies with more than 500 employees are also worried about skills, with one in four “prioritising the issue now”.
One of the ways in which the Government could ensure people acquire the necessary skills to boost the competitiveness of UK industry would be to raise awareness of apprenticeships among young people.
Over half (54 per cent) the insurance companies surveyed as part of the CBI research said the Government should “prioritise the promotion of apprenticeships”.
Unfortunately, successfully promoting apprenticeships will not be easy. To begin with, there is a problem in relation to how apprenticeships are perceived – they are commonly viewed as a fallback option for young people who may have failed to make sufficient progress in pursuing their preferred career.
The CBI has called on the Government to address this problem and, in its employment trends report, urges MPs to take action to “encourage young people of higher abilities to apply – apprenticeships should be promoted as a high quality route to success for all, not a second-class option for low achievers”.
But this is a long term solution. In the short term, it seems the insurance sector is one of a number of industries that is relying relatively heavily on the recruitment of migrant workers to plug skills gaps.
While only one-fifth of companies in the energy and water sector, for example, had hired migrant workers in the last twelve months, more than half (57 per cent) of companies in the banking, finance and insurance had recruited migrant labour.
