How to recruit and retain top talent for your practice

If your firm plans to add new talent this year, that’s good news. According to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence Index, 44 percent of financial services workers are planning to look for a new job in 2024. That could open your practice to a broad talent pool.

Recruiting top candidates

Has it been hard to attract and retain highly skilled employees in the past, or maybe the labor market has led to hiring challenges? How can you attract and keep top talent?

Looking at your company benefits can be a good place to start. Compensation packages are getting more competitive, and more creative, in response to hiring challenges. For employers, that means people are more incentivized than ever to pursue new career opportunities. Benefits that line up with what people want from an employer can help attract quality candidates.

• First, look at your health insurance and retirement plan benefits because they are the two most important benefits affecting job decisions, according to the latest Workplace Wellness Survey. How do they compete within your industry? 
• Consider what employees value the most, aside from income and compensation. How do your firm’s benefits compare? Tailoring them to optimize employee satisfaction could be the deciding factor in attracting, and keeping, top talent.
• Think about a skills-based approach to hiring. Omitting degree requirements in job descriptions could open up a bigger pool of job seekers to choose from. It could likely attract qualified candidates that would have been looked over in the past. Over 70 percent of recruiting professionals say hiring based on skills is a priority.
• Emphasize your organization’s professional development and growth paths to help you stand apart from others.
• Don’t underestimate the value of promoting your company culture. People want to join organizations where they feel like they belong and can be their authentic selves at work. Effectively communicating your company culture can help attract candidates who can be happy at work and fit in well with your team.

Retaining quality employees

Once you find and hire the right candidates, it’s important to continue efforts that will help valuable employees stay motivated, engaged and productive. Incorporating these strategies could help:

• Offering everyone learning and development opportunities
• Clearly communicating career growth paths
• Implementing an effective, ongoing onboarding program

As hiring managers are getting more creative in their tactics to attract talent, it’s especially important to provide your team with the tools and support they need to feel satisfied and motivated in their current roles. Practices must focus on creating a more personalized experience for workers, like how they might tailor services to help meet each client’s individual needs.

A key step: understanding the different types of workers that you may have and what drives them. This knowledge can help you adjust your office’s best practices and incentives to meet the expectations of your current and future workers. To help, we’ve created a short video featuring three common worker archetypes and how to identify them.

Watch the video

Learn about three worker archetypes

Get the most out of your team by understanding common worker archetypes*, including:

• Explorers are free-spirited and enthusiastic workers who value their autonomy in the workplace. Consider offering the explorers on your team:
  • remote or hybrid work options
  • flexible hours
  • alternative hours that best suit their work style
• Strivers are motivated by professional success and often assume leadership positions within the company. Consider providing the strivers in your office:
  • ongoing professional development
  • opportunities to build their skills
  • one-on-one coaching sessions
  • Mircrolearning and e-learning opportunities to help accommodate increasingly busy schedules at work
• Operators thrive in an environment that promotes efficiency and stability, rather than competitiveness or flexibility. For your operator types, consider:
  • having a technology consultant provide ongoing worker training
  • reviewing relevant company software annually to make sure your systems are state-of-the-art

Knowing what motivates your workers, or what might not, is key to building a more desirable workplace for them. Learn how to bring the best out of everyone on the team and reward them with the resources or benefits that are most meaningful to them. These five highly valued employee benefits, aside from income and compensation (according to the 2023 Workplace Wellness Survey), may give you some ideas: 1) work-life balance  2) flexible work schedule  3) generous paid time off 4) quality health insurance  5) quality retirement savings benefits.

Position your practice for today’s competitive job market

Understanding the differences among worker archetypes may also put you in a better position to recruit top talent. Rather than assume all workers (present and future) share the same motivations and working styles, some organizations today adjust their approach to match their employees’ varying styles and needs.

The result? Tailoring the environment and certain benefits to your staff may help you improve worker satisfaction, build loyalty and longevity with your staff, which can be a critical component to your overall success.

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*Bain & Company, bain.com, accessed March 2024