• Henry Morse, Associate Director at Robert Half UK


• 17.06.2021 05:30 pm
corporate

That the financial sector has a culture of long hours and hard work is hardly a revelation – employees often work through the night and investment banks burn through 85% of people within the first two years. But with headlines about junior staff at Goldman Sachs voicing their unhappiness over the 18 hour shifts, and executives calling for a return to in-office ‘presenteeism’, a long-standing tension over the culture in the industry is once again becoming a national talking point.  

In the current market, where businesses from every industry are fighting over the best available talent, stories about an off-putting office culture are deeply problematic. Finance needs a new look as soon as possible and no one is better placed than the UKs 2000+ fintechs to be at the vanguard of this movement. The sector is growing at a remarkable 8% year on year and, as naturally agile and disruptive companies, British fintechs are ideally positioned to change the culture conversation by embracing hybrid, flexible working. 

Embracing the shift to hybrid

Many in the financial sector have struggled to adapt to remote working because that isn’t how it’s been done before. In an industry with so many long-established giants, it can be hard to shift with the times. But the remote working genie isn’t going back in the bottle. Having had a taste of home-working, an overwhelming majority (92%) of employees want to retain it, at least in part, with most business leaders (89%) acknowledging that hybrid working is going to be a permanent fixture moving forwards. By focusing on ‘presenteeism’ and face time in the office, financial services is deliberately disadvantaging itself compared to other industries. 

But, while changing deeply ingrained cultural norms is hard at large institutions, digital-first fintechs are innately agile and have the openness needed to make the shift. By adopting an ‘anywhere working’ hybrid model that allows people to choose their own hours, fintechs can offer employees a much better work-life balance and jobs which prioritise valuable outputs over ‘busy work’.  Giving staff more freedom is crucial to reducing burn-out and improving employee satisfaction, but it also opens up a much wider pool of talent across the UK and lessens the real estate cost burden, which can be particularly difficult for start-ups and SMEs.

Making the switch

To make the process of transitioning to a hybrid model easier, it’s important to be clear on which functions lend themselves best to remote working and how job roles could be redesigned to better facilitate that. Before having conversations about who will work from home when, executives should conduct an organisation-wide analysis to understand everyone’s roles and responsibilities and review how well each one could be done remotely. Importantly there is no need to go overboard –81% of employees are still want to be in the office at least one day a week, so there will be ample flexibility on both sides in the vast majority of cases. 

To start with, focus on some of the quick wins – roles that lend themselves particularly well to remote or hybrid working. Recent research found that, on the financial side, functions such as financial planning or risk and compliance are among the easiest to be done remotely, along with database administration and business intelligence on the technology front. 

Managing a remote team

Finally, by taking time to anticipate and pre-empt some of the more common challenges associated with hybrid working, leaders can prevent headaches down the line. For example, on-boarding new starters can be difficult if they’re not meeting their co-workers face-to-face. Therefore, organisations should prioritise creating a comprehensive induction process which involves meetings with all the key team members they’ll be working with, and developing an ethos of regular, open communication across the board, so nobody feels isolated. Similarly, monitoring workloads can be more problematic if people aren’t in the office, so making sure that managers are checking in regularly with all their team members so that nobody ends up feeling overwhelmed. 

Above all, trust is essential when shifting to a hybrid model. If people are at home, they’re more likely to take care of life admin throughout the day, so there will be times that they’re not available at their desk between 9 and 5, which is why it’s essential that KPIs reflect the value created instead of metrics like number of hours worked.

Embrace the ‘new better’

The pandemic has accelerated so many existing trends in the working world and created a ‘new normal’ that we’ve all had to adapt to. But now that we can see a time beyond COVID, leaders in every industry need to ask themselves what does the ‘new better’ look like? For the financial industry, the core of this ‘new better’ needs to be a more open and flexible culture, built on mutual trust from all sides. 

By making their company culture the cornerstone of their offering, fintechs put themselves in pole position to capture not only disaffected financial professionals already in the industry, but the best talent available anywhere on the market.