The insurance jobs market is definitely improving but has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Aviva.
There insurer told MPs in Parliament that the financial services sector had been particularly hard hit in terms of recruitment after the first quarter of 2022, with much more churn and higher turnover in the market.
Aviva diversity, inclusion and resourcing director Jonny Briggs (pictured) was speaking at a Parliamentary session on a plan for jobs and employment support.
When asked about challenges in filling roles, Briggs revealed the insurer, which employs around 16,000 people in the UK, would normally carry around 750 vacancies in the UK, but has typically had 1,000 vacancies since the onset of the pandemic.
“That’s a 25% increase and we plan to have it at around 750. So the challenge has been the number of vacancies,” Briggs said.
“That is coming down, the market is definitely softening. We’re still ahead of where we want to be so we’re not quite down at that 750 level.
“The challenge for us is we split the type of roles we are attracting in two.
“One would be volume, so that would be more into contact centres and early careers. That’s really tough; we’re hiring big numbers and we’ve got challenges and competition so most people are looking for people in that sort of area.
“It’s just harder. But we fill all of our jobs so I wouldn’t turn around and say there is a shortage that we can’t get – it’s just harder to fill the jobs and the volume is great.”
Briggs further revealed at the peak vacancies hit around 1,250 last summer amid increased churn across the jobs market with financial services particularly hard hit after the first quarter of 2022.
“We’re now down to 860 or so and it’s been coming down for the past six or seven weeks,” he continued.
“The commentary I get from colleagues from other organisations in our network is that we’re starting to see a softening, but don’t forget that’s still not going down below what we’d expect it to be – it’s just a softening from a high.”