On The Job

One of the lesser discussed issues of an economy operating at full employment is the reduced calibre of staff gravitating into senior roles.

In a market where essentially everybody who wants a job can get one - the downside for financial services groups, and firms in every industry, is having to appoint their second and third choice candidates as better applicants pick and choose the jobs they want.

Next week marks Financial Services Careers Week 07 – an initiative of the Financial Services Institute of Australia’s education division, which was sold to global education group Kaplan earlier this year.

The event has two primary aims, one is to promote financial services education to individuals not presently working in the sector, while on the other hand promoting Finsia’s wares in improving the abilities and understanding of those already currently employed in the sector.

This event is certainly a positive one for promoting financial services and growing the pool of talent available over the medium to longer term, however it’s unlikely to solve the immediate needs of companies struggling to fill new and newly vacated existing roles with competent staff.

Another problem for companies seeking to fill roles is the fact education is often a poor substitute to experience when it comes to senior management and strategy development.

So what does full employment mean for an industry that is also growing – it potentially means larger groups can use their weight and spending power to attract the higher calibre candidates and make it difficult for smaller groups to compete.

So what can groups do?

The one thing that flies in the face of this is the notion of part-ownership and aligninment of management and shareholder objectives.

Funds management, and increasingly financial planning, has long used part-ownership and equity sharing as a strategy to attract, retain and provide incentives for quality staff – and this is not going to change going forward.

In fact this strategy is the best chance groups – having to settle for second and third best – have in order to thrive in the current tight market.