Capri Insurance, a Kelowna-based brokerage, has been ranked among the best places to work in Canada. The brokerage, which offers a wide range of services including personal and commercial lines, group and individual benefits and wealth management, ranked 44th on the Great Place to Work Institute’s annual list. They beat out over 300 nominations, representing 60,000 employees.
Winners are selected based on a score from a 58-statement survey and comments submitted by a random selection of employees, as well as an in-depth review of the organization’s culture and evaluation of HR policies and procedures. Companies are then assessed by the “five trust-building dimensions of a great place to work”: credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.
Capri, which was founded in Kelowna in 1975, has since expanded to over 12 locations across British Columbia, and employs over 300 people.
Tim Miller, President of Capri Insurance, says the brokerage first started applying for the list not to win awards, but to learn more about the needs of their workforce.
“We’ve identified our internal culture as a sort of competitive advantage,” Miller says. “When we came across this survey… we used it as a way to put some measurement around that. We believe a strong culture and environment, that’s going to be good for our people, is going to be good for our clients.
“We started getting involved in the program and over the years we’ve been able to use it as a 360-degree feedback loop between ourselves and our people, to let them tell us what we’re doing well and need to do more of, as well as what we’re not doing well and need to correct.”
Miller, who has been with Capri for 19 years, says that throughout the 41-year-old’s brokerage’s history the focus on client service hasn’t changed – but insurance consumers continue to evolve.
“I think consumers have more choice than they’ve ever had before and their standards and expectations are higher,” he says. “They also have experience in many other interactions in markets, and that establishes a new standard that we in our field have to be responsive to… All of us in the industry have to be responsive to that, and I think that’s a real challenge for some brokers, we have to consider that we have a much more educated, must more experienced consumer.”
