Crawford and the future of the industry
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Narrator: Between 2012 and 2017, about one-quarter of Canadian insurance industry professionals will retire. Currently, out of the entire industry, roughly one-half of all industry employees are between the ages of 41 and 60. People in the industry tend to retire two to three years earlier than their peers in other industries. So what’s going to happen to the Canadian insurance industry? There’s been a lot of talk about the impending staffing crisis and initiatives like the Canadian Insurance Scholarship Program have been started to tackle the problem… but is it too late?
ILSTV asked George Kehagias, Director of Human Resources at Crawford & Company (Canada) that question.
George Kehagias: I don’t think it’s too late but what’s happened I think is that there’s a lot of executives across all sorts of different industries who are focused on more short-term. You look at strategic planning, even two to three years out, I would consider that more short-term. You really need a people plan that’s going to focus on the next five to ten years, minimum. I think it’s been sitting on the backburner. “Yeah, we’ll get to it” kind of mindset. “Let’s focus on the next quarter, the next two quarters…” Especially within our industry, I mean the weather’s been great so claims volumes are down. We’re just trying to keep our heads above water and we’re looking at tomorrow as opposed to, like I mentioned, years down the road. I don’t think it’s too late, but we definitely have to get some action items in place.
Narrator: If you ask someone currently in the insurance industry how they got involved in it, they’re likely to say that they just fell into it. George explains what Crawford is doing to help people realize that a career in insurance can be an exciting one.
George Kehagias: Yeah, I don’t think the industry’s done a good job in selling itself. We’re attending career fairs. We did one in Halifax for all of the universities out there last year. We’re going to be doing it again this year. There’s going to be one out west. We try to partner up with the Insurance Institute when they’re doing these career fairs. We’re part of the Ambassador Program, so we have our insurance professionals from various divisions going out and speaking to classes. We just did one two weeks ago for our healthcare division at Mohawk College – spoke to a graduating class there. I’m a big proponent of getting out there and really promoting Crawford and the industry in general and showing the benefits of a career in insurance.
