Super’s talent drought

As the superannuation sector increases its appeal and forecasts predict significant increases in contribution flows, the talent pool for super could be getting dangerously close to dry. Faced with such a shortage, recruitment specialist Simone Mears says super funds need to challenge their thinking.

 

Ten years ago, the idea of working in superannuation had people running for the hills. Superannuation was viewed as dull, underpaid, and definitely not the sexiest of sectors in financial services. However, as the dark cloud of the Global Financial Crisis seems to be slowly dispersing, superannuation has emerged as the industry’s “new black”.  But as a result of this increasing strength and growth within the sector, the talent supply is struggling to keep up with demand.

 

Current trends suggest that the superannuation employment market has made a strong start in 2011 and we are anticipating 2012 will be even stronger. This is good news as 2010 was ultimately a disappointing year for people looking around for new opportunities. While there was consistent hiring for much of 2010, there was a “wait and see” attitude by organisations, with attention focused on the Federal election outcome and Government policy rather than the creation of new roles. However, hiring activity at all levels (executive, mid and junior) has been very strong since October 2010 and, as confidence continues to grow within the economy, we are expecting this surge of activity to continue. As a result of increased hiring in the first half of 2011 employers are starting to report talent shortages across a range of job families, in particular, distribution, product and marketing.

 

More specifically, recent trends suggest a rise in demand for managers and team leaders specialising in various areas of superannuation to accommodate the rapidly growing member and employee services teams. There has also been an increase in demand for those with actuarial qualifications or with a highly-developed technical skill set. As for the senior roles, recruitment activity has been particularly focused on executives with strong client facing skills. The ability to ‘sell’ an organisational message and to powerfully lead and influence thinking and outcomes in an organisation, or across the industry, has never been in higher demand.

Employers cannot afford to rely on market fluctuation to supply candidates; they need to have a proactive and effective recruitment strategy in place to ensure growth.

 

We are only going to see superannuation grow, particularly when contributions increase, and we don’t believe there will be enough talent to meet business growth. After three tough years and a soft employment market, it is easy to forget how difficult it is to do business in a talent-short market. Within two to three years, we expect to be facing a talent shortage across the whole sector, similar to what we experienced in 2006-2007.

 

There are five main challenges typically faced by employers when recruiting in the superannuation sector:

• The first challenge is the superannuation industry itself; it is a small community with a limited number of organisations and candidates. The close knit nature of the sector means that when someone is available or is looking for a new role they often move very quickly (you may not even know they are in the market or, even if you do, they move so quickly you don’t have time to act).
• Superannuation is a highly-specialised sector and it can take years of professional development and experience for an employee to develop a specific skill set.  Therefore, the talent pool that employers are drawing from is extremely small.
• Frequently we are finding that employers’ expectations are not aligned with the financial expectations, skills and experience level of the talent available in the market.  We are encountering clients who are either unable to afford the candidate they want  to hire or they are unwilling to pay for the available level of experience or skill set the potential employee has to offer.
• We are witnessing an increasingly prevailing view by employers that industry consolidation will provide a resulting fall-out talent pool from which to draw new employees. In our experience, this is not proving to be the case and consolidation is unlikely to alleviate talent shortages.
• Large and broadly-based financial services groups (yes, the Big Four) have re-focused on diversity over the past eighteen months. This means offering a range of flexible workplace options, career development and progression which can be difficult to compete with when you are a significantly smaller organisation with far fewer resources to invest in your people.

 

Organisations must recognise the importance of these challenges and their impact on their own firm. Employers would benefit from reviewing their talent management strategies and addressing talent issues both prior to recruitment and after the employee is hired. This includes the recognition of talent needs through strategic human resource planning.

 

Apart from the obvious solution of attracting candidates with salary, another option is to offer job flexibility. While we have all been hearing about flexibility for many years, how many organisations have truly undergone a true paradigm shift in this area?

 

Many organisations are “stuck in a rut” of setting up expectations and narrowly defining roles based on what “we have always done” or what is traditionally done by everyone else in their sector. While it is true that many organisations now offer flexible hours and working from home, how deep have employers really gone? As recruiters we frequently hear, “this is a senior role, we need someone five days a week”, “this is a key role, we have to have this person based in head office. A commute or working remotely just isn’t going to work.” This attitude is not necessarily bad in itself, but in changing times it is important for employers to be challenging their thinking in a much more profound way; using yesterday’s criteria to solve today’s problems is not an effective solution for matching our current needs to the available supply (or lack of) talent.

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