If Korn Ferry’s research has it right, governments, institutions, organizations and small business alike will be instrumental in growing the talent pool. Innovative approaches to training, education and continuous development will be required to feed the future economy.
When we turn our attention back to advisory firms, we see there is much to do. We need both immediate solutions and longer-term approaches to stop the strain on capacity and growth.
People are the leading indicator of success, and that idea should be central to the decisions made by leadership. The primary function of leaders is not simply to manage their firms. Instead, it is to assemble and grow the optimal combination of skills to serve clients. They must become “human capitalists.”
What if advisory firm leaders put career path planning first and built the infrastructure that allowed talent to continuously develop, ensuring that every team member was supported to reach their full potential?
Yes, team members would become more capable and better equipped to progress in their careers. Importantly, recruitment efforts could focus on backfilling the organizational structure with entry level positions, a far easier, lower risk undertaking.
Formal development programs also allow a firm to cast a wider net when recruiting people and tap other industries outside the expected ones. Entry level candidates with less experience and fewer qualifications can more quickly meet role requirements, becoming productive sooner.
This approach must be met with a formal process for bringing people on board: For example, new employees should get six months of structured training where they meet defined weekly milestones, receive internal and external coaching and follow other professionals. All these milestones should be tracked through to completion.
In “role shadowing” or “job shadowing,” new staffers follow an experienced team member to lead them through work activities while they observe, ask questions and even contribute to tasks. In this way, a firm creates regular, real-time opportunities for learning while building deeper connections that aid staff retention.
As the pandemic fades, albeit slowly, remote work practices are proving tricky to recalibrate. Executives and talent are frequently at odds over whether staff should have to return to the office. This will come at the cost of retention.
Businesses are in the meantime offering a growing range of benefits. Free meals, free parking, gym memberships, the freedom to bring dogs to work. … Anything to get talent back to the office.
The pandemic aside, are we missing an opportunity to reimagine a remote work strategy that increases access to talent? The pandemic has shown us which roles are genuinely “remote-able.” Not part-time remote, or largely remote, but full-time permanent remote.
If we stop asking people to relocate and instead set up formal programs to bring people on board remotely, ensure strong remote leadership and career paths, and create culture at a distance, could we improve access to quality talent?
It is not a stretch to imagine that if we create more fluid, agile workplaces, we’ll be able to find people with know-how who can contribute their skills from remote locations.
To ease the impact of the talent shortage, we can also outsource jobs: hire outsiders for their special skills in areas such as technology, marketing or compliance so that we can free up the talent in house to focus on other priorities.
In 2019, De Pardo Consulting produced a study called “The Six Dimensions of Standout Performance,” for TD Ameritrade. The paper examined the growth-producing habits of the largest and most successful advisory firms in the U.S. "Connectivity" was highlighted as a key contributor to their success. By that we mean that the large firms are playing the long game. They are constantly planting seeds and tending to external relationships that create opportunities for future harvesting: They find talent among friendly competitors, when engaging with centers of influence or working with strategic partners. They ask influential members of their communities for referrals. All these endeavors help them create a network of potential talented candidates. (These connections can also pave the way for mergers and acquisitions—which means accessing talent at a much larger scale.)
The most creative, agile and resourceful businesses will take the lion’s share of the talent pie over the next decade. Indeed, our most precious business asset is human. And it is at times like this we will rely most on human ingenuity to unearth solutions.
Eliza De Pardo is founder and director of De Pardo Consulting.