Artificial boom creates ëunnecessaryí pay rise across financial institutions

Major financial institutions in the City may be creating an unnecessary rise in rates of pay for HR staff employed to develop shared services operations, according to Praxis Executive, which specialises in recruitment for senior management roles in the City. A shortage of directly relevant skills in the Square Mile means that candidates are being head-hunted and offered over-the-odds pay packets because of an unwillingness to look further afield than the financial sector.

ìWe are seeing an insistence on sourcing candidates who have specific experience in launching a shared service function in a financial institution,î says Simon Cutner of Praxis Executive, ìand this overlooks staff that have transferable skills from backgrounds in other forms of project management within HR. In the past year we have seen pay rates increase by almost 20% in an attempt to attract HR staff with shared services experience. People who launch a shared service function tend to stay on with the company to monitor what can be a very lengthy bedding-down process, and so there just arenít enough candidates in the job market with directly relevant experience to fulfil the current trend.î

ìIn reality there are candidates in a number of different sectors ñ retail and IT for example ñ who have a history of successful shared services management and who consequently have skills which would be perfectly transferable to handle the task in question,î continues Cutner, ìItís up to us as recruiters to demonstrate to banks how directly transferable these skills can be. We have a massive pool of untapped resources that could potentially serve institutions that are on the verge of declaring a skills shortage for this particular function.î