Firms need to attract and retain necessary talent whilst also ensuring that the existing workforce remains on board and can acquire the necessary skills,

When it comes to recruitment, graduates priorities have changed when they are looking for an employer.

Results of a 2017 marketing survey found that the top career choice of those born in the mid 1990’s and early 2000s was entrepreneur and if we are being honest, most tech savvy people would rather work for a tech firm than an asset manager.

"The top career choice of those born in the mid 1990’s and early 2000s was entrepreneur"

What the tech firms can do is offer that entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to innovate without getting bogged down in layers of politics and bureaucratic red tape that tends to exist in larger legacy companies.

Interestingly, a 2017 ‘mind the skills gap’ report found that 37 per cent of UK workers do not believe that they need to learn a new skill at present, 26 per cent have not considered the impact of automation in their roles.

Technology requires us to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn skills if we are to add value and future proof our careers. But it is not only the learning of the technology but also a change in mindset.

Amongst these ingredients will be the role of leadership to embrace these new ways.

""Technology requires us to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn skills if we are to add value and future proof our careers."

One of the things that we have done within asset management is introduced technology champions into our teams which are tech savvy employees who are enthusiastic about assisting their business unit, learning new I.T skills and sharing this knowledge with their teams.

This isn’t about being a replacement of the IT helpdesks or service desks, but what it will do is compliment that role, provide development opportunities for those employees and also bring benefits to the business.

They also receive regular invites to bespoke training and meetings where they are provided with information in relation to the latest key hot topics and innovations.

"One of the things that we have done is introduced technology champions into our teams"

This isn’t a huge time commitment, no more than four hours a month, but it enables people to get to know teams, understand processes, understand pain points and think about things differently.

We have also taken a step back and looked at how we recruit talent into our teams.

When [we recruit, we] look at that existing team to see what skillsets would best compliment the team as our business and needs have evolved in terms of future thinking, what are the skillsets that are needed or missing within the team and then trying to fill this gap.

A phrase my teams always hear me use is “jack of all trades, master of nothing and accountable for everything”.

Every single bum on a seat matters and having employees who can flex, be dynamic and change and evolve as the business continues to change and evolve is key.

"We have also taken a step back and looked at how we recruit talent into our teams."

This brings me back to another consideration for our global operating model which was how we could encourage an agile mindset in the teams.

Once we had aligned our teams with a set of best practices, standardised the process and automate the process, we had to consider how we could ensure that this consistency remained over the goodness of time.

We established what we call best practice leads, SME’s within each administration practice and discipline and within each one of our global locations who not only shared ideas with other best practice leads but also provided those same ideas back into the team.

We wanted to ensure that any enhancement or issue resolved in one location was shared broadly across the globe.

This not only afforded us the opportunity to reduce the potential for operational risk and human error but naturally enabled us to bring our teams closer together. We increased productivity, our overall employee engagement changed, and we increased job satisfaction.

 

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