In the November/December 2022 issue of CPABC in Focus, we shared members’ thoughts on the economy and the labour market, as captured in the 2022 BC Check-Up: Work survey (23). In this issue, we draw from the same survey to tell you what members had to say about individual and organizational employment trends between August 2021 and August 2022.
Employee perspective
Job changes
26% of respondents changed their job position in the past 12 months.
- 50% of them moved to a new organization.
9% of respondents said they were actively seeking a new position.
Top 3 priorities
Members identified the following as the top three priorities guiding their decision to stay at their current place of employment or seek work elsewhere:
- Competitive compensation;
- Work-life balance; and
- Organizational culture.
Working from home
63% of respondents across BC worked one or more days from home each week (3.5 days on average), with the remainder of the workweek spent at their organization’s office.
- 20% of these respondents worked from home full time.
- 11% said they’d moved to a new residence in the past two years because remote work had given them the flexibility to make this possible.
- 59% of those who’d moved said they’d done so due to rising housing prices in their previous area of residence.
- The percentage of remote workers was highest in the Lower Mainland, coming in at 69%.
Employer perspective
Hiring plans
33% of senior CPAs (respondents at the manager-level) said their organization currently employed, or planned to hire, staff who primarily work somewhere other than at the organization’s main office.
Hiring challenges
Senior CPAs identified the following as the top three challenges their organizations faced in finding/retaining employees over the past 12 months:
- Inadequate supply of appropriately skilled people;
- Competition from other employers; and
- Cost of living where the office is located.
Hybrid work
When senior CPAs were asked how their organizations had approached the issue of remote work:
- 32% said employees were required to work in the office part time;
- 24% said employees were required to work in the office full time;
- 19% said employees were encouraged to come in to the office as needed;
- 16% said the decision was left to employees’ discretion; and
- 9% chose “other."
CPABC commissioned Leger Marketing to conduct a web-based survey of CPA members located in BC to gather their impressions of the economy and the labour market in their region. A total of 655 surveys were completed between August 5 and 26, 2022, representing an overall response rate of 9%
This article was originally published as a (print-only) infographic in the January/February 2023 issue of CPABC in Focus.
