“We have a culture of making sure that we’re building up our community to be the best that we can make it,” Poole explains. “We’ve adopted a charity each year that we raise money for throughout the year, and we engage in other fun, smaller activities, like delivering a food drive to a local charity. It’s a core part of our culture.”
Bartlett has tried to stay ahead of the curve by forward-looking thinking that involves not only trends in planning and investing, but also recruiting, developing and promoting next-generation talent and establishing continuity for its clients.
The firm’s planning approach allows younger associates to work beside established advisors as part of a client-facing team. Bartlett also has a mentoring program to help prepare its next generation of leaders. Mentees are required to be engaged, active participants in the program, which often results in reverse-mentoring, where the junior advisor teaches something new to his or her senior.
“Most of these mentors are organically assigned through their roles and friendships with more senior advisors at the firm. There are a lot of opportunities for a younger advisor to help their mentor and other more senior advisors. If there is an investment or financial planning project an advisor feels passionate about, they then get the opportunity to help contribute or even lead the project.”
Bartlett does not have a formal training or development program, says Hagerty, because young employees are expected to be “self starters” with the initiative to learn and develop independently and under the auspices of their mentors. Shortly after buying the firm back from Legg Mason, Downing hired three young advisors and established a Progressive Leadership Committee (PLC) to help build the next generation of leaders at Bartlett.
“It’s a strong leadership development initiative: How do they become owners? How do you lead a company?” says Downing. “In a lot of accounting, law and investment management firms, you enter the business expecting to someday do those things, but when you’re in a small-to-medium-sized company, you have to understand how to manage a company.”
The PLC is being groomed to take the helm at Bartlett. Along with professional development to instill leadership skills, members of the committee are also taking on leadership roles in volunteer and community organizations and boards, says Downing.
Bartlett also supports employees seeking credentials, designations, further education or other forms of professional development. Currently, the firm has more than a dozen chartered financial analysts, six certified financial planners and two certified public accountants.
Part of the secret to Bartlett’s success lies in advisor retention, says Hagerty. Keeping advisors on staff often translates into the ability to retain clients as well. Hagerty estimates that the average Bartlett employee currently has 20 years of tenure with the firm, even with five or six relatively recent hires.
The firm’s employees work within a professional, but relaxed, environment, Hagerty says, where all employees are treated as stakeholders and given a great deal of personal freedom to pursue their own initiatives. An incentive structure that uses bonus pools with clear, transparent goals, like a certain level of client retention, is part of maintaining a happy, harmonious workplace.