Flexibility needs to be front and centre to attract women to the profession, according to a panel discussion.
A BT-hosted morning tea celebrating International Women’s Day heard during a panel discussion that part of what is holding back gender equity in advice is the perception the industry isn’t flexible.
“Traditionally, financial planning was seen as you’ve got to be a full-time financial planner, work 60 hours, be available to your clients to meet them at six o’clock at night, but that’s not true,” Lush Wealth financial planner Christine Lusher said.
“It’s just about rephrasing the work and that women can do it and it can be a flexible job.”
Lusher’s firm has four support staff who are women, and she said it was important to help entice female support staff into taking on advice roles.
“I’m very passionate about encouraging women to be financial planners, so encouraging students or people starting off their career to actually consider financial planning as a career,” Lusher said.
“There’s a lot of female lawyers, accounts – there should be an equal amount of female financial planners well.”
Lusher said she predominately hires part-time employees who are all working mums.
“I find the benefits of a working mum is they do want to get out, they want to come in and work, they want the brain exercise of coming to work every day and they love the flexibility,” Lusher said.
“It’s a win for me: I get people at their peak every day they come in, do their job, it’s not eight hours they have to drag themselves through, they’re very energised for that period of time. Our clients relate to them as well because a lot of our clients are balancing work-life or mum-life.”
Lusher said because advice as a profession is built around the standard nine-to-five workday, it’s not a role that requires people to be available at call around the clock at all times of day.
“We’re financial planners don’t brain surgeons, no one is going to die if something doesn’t happen today,” she said.
“Just keeping our workloads real and manageable because we’re all part time, we support each other. If someone is off on holidays, we pick up each other’s slack and have that respect for each other’s time. I just expect my staff to come in, do their jobs, then switch off and don’t check their emails after work, you’re done. They appreciate that in terms of living their lives and their flexibility.”
Striver is hosting a roadshow series this year to attract university students into financial advice, and the business’s founder, Alisdair Barr, said he hoped raising awareness of the profession would convince more women to get involved.
“Then hopefully you can work on the balance within that as you get more people coming in, which is a direct reflection of the community that you serve,” Barr said.
Westpac senior associate economist Illiana Jain said that while attracting women to advice was important, it was also important to boost female labour force participation to help with financial literacy.
“One key issue is that we see is that while we have more women earn more money in varying high-paying jobs over the last decade or so, financial literacy among women is still quite poor,” Jain said.
“That means they’re not making the decisions to set them up well later in life that they could.”
While the government’s announcement of paid super for maternal leave was welcomed this week, Jain noted that more men taking paternal leave would help support women’s long-term financial outcomes as women would be able to prioritise their careers.
“About one in 20 men will take multiple weeks of paternity leave – Australia’s a laggard in terms of that,” Jain said.
“We have less men taking paternity leave than other comparable economies like the US and UK.
“Part of that is because there’s no legislation about splitting leave up or taking equal shares of parental leave. Part of that is also attitudes, it’s also not quite as common and celebrated for men to take more of caring role after their wife has given birth. That’s a cultural shift we need to see changing.”
