A new take on talent
Financial services (FS) CEOs are more concerned than ever about the limited availability of key skills. The growing challenge reflects the fact that the people they need to succeed and how they're recruited and deployed are undergoing fundamental change.
- Disruption transforms talent demands
- The diversity dividend
- Realising the digital potential
- Using digital to enhance performance management
Disruption transforms talent demands
Businesses aren't just competing for seasoned FS professionals, but also the more diverse types of talent demanded in a sector facing the disruptive impact of new technology, more complex regulation, shifting customer expectations and growing competition from new entrants. From the development of sharper HR analytics to tapping into new pools of talent, most FS organisations are only just beginning to get to grips with these challenges, creating opportunities for forward thinking and faster moving businesses to pull ahead.
The diversity dividend
CEOs now see diversity as a bottom line issue. When we surveyed CEOs in 2010, barely 40% were taking active steps to attract more women, younger and older people. Today, 59% of FS CEOs have a strategy to promote talent diversity and inclusiveness and a further 14% plan to adopt one.
Diversity is seen in its widest sense. This includes ensuring the workforce and its leadership better reflect the organisation's customer base in areas such as gender, generation, ethnicity and disability. It also includes seeking to attract people with a wide range of skills, experiences and industry backgrounds. The benefits cited by around 80% of CEOs include enhancing business performance, strengthening customer satisfaction and fostering innovation.
So are FS CEOs and their HR teams doing enough to make diversity a reality within their organisations? When asked whether they're actively searching for talent in different industries, geographies or demographic segments, nearly 40% said no and less than 20% strongly agreed.
Realising the digital potential
FS CEOs see dedicated recruitment and training and ensuring that digital is everyone's responsibility as the keys to making the most of their investments in digital technology. The survey also highlighted the importance of the CEO as digital “champion”.
Creating a fully digitally-enabled organisation calls for the right training and tools. It's also vital to break down the silos between IT, innovation, marketing, trading and other frontline teams. As part of this trend, IT professionals will be increasingly embedded into business teams as technology advisors.
Using digital to enhance performance management
FS HR sits on massive amounts of data. Yet barely 40% of FS CEOs are deploying data analytics to provide better insights into how effectively skills are being deployed within their organisation (only 6% extensively).
Specific areas where advanced talent analytics can enhance HR capabilities range from identifying performance issues and helping to develop a targeted response to more systematic and proactive identification of candidates for succession. Other uses for digital include more effective surveillance of abnormal behaviour, using both structured and unstructured (e.g. text and voice) data, which could greatly improve the organisation's ability to detect fraud or rogue trading.
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