How can Financial Services leaders build a resilient workforce?

July 12, 2024

The financial services industry is no stranger to change, but the current environment demands a unique approach to workforce management. To safely sail through these turbulent times, leaders must focus on developing a workforce that is not only skilled but also resilient and adaptable.

In four years, an awful lot seems to have happened. Teams who enjoyed high performance during the pandemic have in many cases struggled. Geopolitical events and the rapid rise in interest rates since 2022 have significantly reshaped the industry. Cash has re-emerged as an asset class, asset management revenues have declined, and IPO activities have dropped significantly. Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) firms are facing challenges in exiting investments, raising capital has become arduous for everyone, and debt is increasingly expensive. It’s understandable that workforces feel a bit demoralised and support needs to be on hand to counsel people through this difficult time. It’s often difficult to process that despite working harder, your results are worse.

From a leadership point of view, it’s also important to accept that change and challenge are a part of life. Frequent and fast change is now just the norm of an interconnected world, with a 24/7media. Therefore, helping, preparing, and building a resilient workforce is key to ongoing success.

The financial services industry is no stranger to change, but the current environment demands a unique approach to workforce management. To safely sail through these turbulent times, leaders must focus on developing a workforce that is not only skilled but also resilient and adaptable.

Avoid the temptation to put dates on predictions

Management are often asked to read the economic runes. Of course, forecasting is an essential part of the job and experience helps, but avoid putting a certain date on recoveries when addressing the wider business. The Stockdale Paradox was highlighted in the book “Good to Great”. It’s a fascinating concept and taken from the story of a captured serviceman. Essentially, it’s acknowledging that things are bad now, but not losing belief they will improve in the future. However, Admiral James Stockdale coped better, as he knew his situation would improve, but he wouldn’t put a date on when it would improve to avoid crushing disappointment.

Promote Learning and Development

In a fast-changing environment, continuous learning is crucial. Firstly, there are skills shortages in all industries and existing employees are well placed to bridge these. If their usual workload has dropped off, time can be spent wisely on learning new skills. Secondly, it acts as a great retention tool. It reinforces the true situation that when the economy improves there will be more opportunities within the business. Finally, we all like to feel we are learning something new. It’s win/win as all parties benefit from new skills entering the business.

Develop a Culture of Innovation

Innovation is the key to resilience. Creating an environment where employees feel empowered to think creatively and propose new ideas is vital. Encouraging cross-functional collaboration brings diverse perspectives together, leading to more effective problem-solving. Implementing a culture that rewards innovation can drive the organisation forward, developing a workforce that is proactive and ready to tackle new challenges. Ideas can come from all parts of the business and so small work groups to focus on process improvement and innovation are to be encouraged.

Enhance Digital Competence

The rise of digital technologies in financial services cannot be ignored. We’ve seen so much change since the pandemic in data and digitalisation. Product development, client segmentation, process improvement, and marketing, are some of the areas undergoing digital disruption. Equipping your workforce with the necessary digital skills to leverage new tools and platforms is critical. Greater data insights also significantly improves competitiveness.

Promote Agility and Flexibility

Agility in the workplace is about being able to pivot quickly in response to market changes. This is often an advantage of working in an SME or owner-managed firm, where committees are kept to a minimum and decisions centralised. However, larger firms can improve agility by reviewing decision making processes and rather than centralising decisions, like in an SME, they can go the other way and devolve decision making ability to those closer to customers.

Focus on Well-being and Resilience

We’ve been saying for some time that we feel teams are tired. Pitches are hard to secure, and even harder to win. Tired athletes don’t win much, tired workers don’t win anything either. The mental and physical well-being of employees directly impacts their performance and resilience. Implementing well-being programmes that address stress management, work-life balance, and overall health is essential. Time away from the business doing other things increases perspective. A resilient workforce feels supported and valued, which in turn enhances productivity and loyalty.

Encourage Leadership Development

The speed and force of the recovery when lockdowns were lifted created a huge war for talent. In order to plug the gaps, many firms appointed first time managers. It was a great time to build a career and I suspect many will look back at this period fondly, a time for some when they made a real career breakthrough. However, as markets have changed, and a lot of experienced people have taken early retirement, we need to ensure that managers are invested in, and their skills developed. Effective, empathetic, and confident leaders can inspire resilience in their teams and guide them through challenging periods.

Whilst things seem in a state of flux at the moment, there is no guarantee that the next five years will be any more certain. Building a resilient and adaptable workforce is not a one-off exercise but an ongoing strategy. It’s often hard to measure if your efforts in building resilience have paid off, but if a challenging set of circumstances appear and your team have a “we’ve got this” mentality and roll their sleeves up, then you know you’re on the right path.

About Fram Search

Established in 2010, Fram Search is a specialist financial services recruitment consultancy. We focus on mid-to-senior hires in the UK and internationally.

We provide high quality contingent and retained recruitment services to boutiques and global brands. We have long established relationships, outstanding market knowledge, and access to deep talent pools. Fram takes a highly consultative approach, combining outstanding tech with a human approach. We are proud that our contingent fill rate is nearly three times the industry average and we augment our retained search methodology with rigorous psychometric testing. We take ESG seriously, we are champions of diversity and all staff have undertaken unconscious bias training. We also carbon offset.

Please contact us on 01525 864 372 / [email protected] to learn more.