Attracting and retaining skilled staff is the biggest threat to corporate profitability in Canada, according to a survey of Canadian business executives.

The purpose of the Accenture survey of 250 major businesses in Canada was to prioritize the threats to corporate profitability and understand how executives' priorities shift over time.

When asked to identify factors that threatened their companies' profitability over the next six months, the greatest number of respondents - 40 per cent - selected "inability to retain talent."

Government and communications executives ranked inability to retain talent as the No. 1 threat, selected by 38 per cent and 44 per cent of executives in those industries, respectively.

"Over the next six months, retaining talent, keeping customers, and pressures of the local and global economy will be keeping Canadian executives very busy," said Bill Morris, Canadian managing director for Accenture, a management consulting firm.

"These are core business challenges that executives must find new solutions for in order to become high performers."

Following the inability to retain talent, Canadian executives believe that certain economic forces pose the greatest threat to corporate profitability over the next six months.

For instance, 31 per cent of respondents selected "fluctuating Canadian dollar" as a threat to profitability, followed by 30 per cent who selected "macroeconomic forces."

The manufacturing and retail industries selected the fluctuating dollar as the No. 1 threat, selected by 62 per cent of respondents.

Other issues in the top five are "poor customer care" (selected by 29 per cent to rank fourth). For large enterprises (more than 500 employees), 32 per cent of the executives ranked poor customer care as the second-largest threat, while 27 per cent of executives at mid-size enterprises (100 to 499 employees) ranked it at No. 4 out of the top five threats to profitability.

The finance and insurance industries ranked poor customer care as the No. 1 threat, selected by 44 per cent of executives in those industries.

Finally, "compliance with government regulations" was selected by 23 per cent to rank fifth as a business threat.