Financial services organisations fail to maximise their return on talent

Research* conducted by TalentMax, a leading talent management consultancy, found that 61% of HR directors at financial services organisations describe their firms as failing to develop their talent.

However, 88% of respondents believe that talent is an important contributory factor to business performance and nearly half of all financial services organisations interviewed have established a talent management programme, with many others planning to do so. TalentMax interviewed HR directors from 56 financial services organisations of all sizes in investment banking, investment management, insurance, retail financial services and private banking.

The bear market has not yet played itself out from a hiring perspective with organisations confident about their ability to attract top executives and two thirds describing themselves as very successful at talent acquisition. Unfortunately, financial services organisations often neglect their expensively acquired talent by leaving it to sink or swim. Only 21% of all respondents claim to be very successful at assimilating new talent and just over 10% very successful at engaging their talent.

Moreover, just 18% of financial services firms are able to describe themselves as very successful at retaining talent, a factor which increasingly worries many who fear that their key executives will be easy prey for competitors as the job-change merry-go-round gathers pace.

ìThere is rising awareness that money is a blunt tool for recruitment and retention that can too easily be beaten by competitors eager to lure talent away. Few firms are confident that they are genuinely engaging and motivating their talented executives,î said Susannah Pringle, partner at TalentMax.

Career development will become a very serious issue for financial services organisations as the still benign recruitment climate of cherry-picking redundant executives is replaced by bitter talent bidding wars when the economy picks up.î

Future Focus: The Hottest Talent Issues

The areas where organisations most want to focus their future development of talent are:

1.Giving line managers the skills and tools to manage, engage and develop staff

2.Designing flexible career development frameworks

3.Creating pools of multi-skilled executives to fill the leadership pipeline

4.Developing tailored development and retention plans

5.Accelerating the value contribution rate of new employees

6.Making talent an organisation-wide rather than team/unit-hoarded resource

ìIt is encouraging to note that in financial services, a sector which is so notoriously talent-dependent, talent management has finally arrived and is becoming mainstream,î added Pringle.