Clockwise from left: Tania Tonkin, Abbie Gellatly, Amanda Cassar and Charles Badenach

The tight labour market has made it particularly challenging to attract and retain talent in the financial services sector, which is already struggling to recruit people into the industry.

But financial firms reveal that there are ways to incentivise talent to ensure they aren’t lured into a competing firm.

Wealth Planning Partners director and certified financial planner Amanda Cassar allows team members to work at home a day a week and covers the cost of additional learning. School runs are built into the working day for one team member, along with the ability to work from home in the afternoons where possible.

“We also finish at midday on a Friday so we can get an early start on the weekend, and close for a full three weeks over Christmas,” Cassar tells Professional Planner.

Many of the benefits of working for the Main Street Financial Services are non-financial, pointing out that business owners need to be mindful of viability and profitability, principal Charles Badenach adds.

“With the expectations of the workforce constantly changing, we’re conscious that we need to adjust our offering,” he says.

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Working from home, flexibility when engagements arise during the day, up to five days of unpaid leave a year, flu shots, catered work lunches regularly, staff functions and drinks at 4pm every Friday are among the benefits, Badenach says.

“For example one of our staff lives 40 km from Hobart and when they started at 8.30am they spent an 45 minutes in traffic each way,” Badenach says.

“By offering a 7.30am start with a 4pm finish avoiding peak hour we were able to save her nearly an hour a day. In addition to this they now work on Mondays remotely from home, so by thinking outside the square we have fundamentally changed the nature of work for this employee.”

Making progress

Career progression is also an important way to incentivise talent. Apt Wealth Partners head of people and culture Abbie Gellatly sits down with each team member to chat through a tailored career plan every single month.

It’s a tall task – these regular meetings make up half of her role in the business. The firm also offers a pathway to equity ownership, among other initiatives.

“These meetings allow me to chat through the direction they’re heading and trying to understand how we can best support them,” Gellatly says.

“The monthly process includes extending the offer of additional training as people adapt and evolve in their roles.”

Gellatly says these open discussions and forums where people get to have a say in what elements of the role they enjoy and where they want to go recognises that everyone has different needs.

Recognising that everyone has different circumstances outside of work is also important, she adds.

An Employee Share Scheme has emerged as a powerful option for dmca advisory, according to director Tania Tonkin.

“As well as providing our people with the chance to share in the success of the business, it also creates a way to retain people in the business for succession purposes, including when directors retire or take leave,” Tonkin says.

The firm also advised several clients on ESS schemes in relation to selling a business or succession planning, but hadn’t thought of doing it ourselves in their own firm before.

“Once we got our heads around the government regulations and tax structures that we needed to address in order to implement the program to the benefit of both our employees and the business, it was quite straightforward,” Tonkin says.

“Essentially our ESS is open to all employees who meet particular benchmarks, but our most senior people can now buy a stake or equity in the business as well as sharing in company profits.”

Reducing churn

Tonkin adds via the ESS method, it also gives employees the opportunity to join the management team.

“When they finally leave the business there is an agreed formula built into a shareholder agreement to determine the valuation applicable to their shares and available payment options,” Tonkin says.

“This provides clarity from the beginning and has been deliberately planned with the eventual exit in mind.”

Tonkin adds that there has been a considerable amount of research done on the benefits of employee share schemes in SME businesses, with evidence showing there is much lower rates of employee churn, better profits, and higher value-add.

“People are now able to share in the success they helped to create, and to play a role in the decision-making which allows different perspectives to be applied to management of the business overall,” she says.

“It also helps to share the load with responsibility areas allocated across the management team.”

The practice has tried a number of other incentives, including offering a percentage of fees raised over the year, but it created a silo mentality, so was dismissed.

“We also tried a bonus scheme paid when the team reached defined targets, but that can create a division with some people feeling they contributed more than others to the outcome, or others feeling they were lumped into things they didn’t have control over, or that wasn’t fair,” she says.

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