Your People, Your Workspace, Your Future

Nearly every firm we know has — or is in the process — of evolving their workplace in order to recruit and retain key talent and grow their business.

Without question, much has, is, and will be written about changes in the workplace. Call it what you will … Remote; Hybrid; Remote First; Agile Working; Hoteling; Hot Desking (yeah, that’s a thing) … nearly every professional services organization is in some phase of considering, testing, embracing or altering their work/space/culture/service continuum.

This is certainly true in the banking and wealth managements sectors. And I find it particularly interesting because financial services firms are so diverse. Small-to-large; decades-old to nearly-new; individually-focused to institutionally-focused; specialists to generalists. Yet nearly every firm we know has — or is in the process — of evolving their workplace in order to recruit and retain key talent and grow their business.

In our experience, there is no single or best answer. Every organization is different and therefore every solution is different. When it comes to the financial services industry, one size definitely does not fill all.

That said, rather than yammer on about all the things that can and should be considered, I prefer instead to share two recent articles from McKinsey Consulting.

The first, entitled “The Workplace Will Never be the Same: Imperative for Real Estate Owners and Operators,” goes deep on the changing relationship between tenants and landlords.

Even if you own your headquarters, there are still some good takeaways with regard to culture, space and their relationship to recruitment and retention.  Here’s the link.  https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/real-estate/our-insights/the-workplace-will-never-be-the-same-imperatives-for-real-estate-owners-and-operators?cid=eml-web

The second, “Reimaging the Future of Financial Services Headquarters,” focuses on potential changes in physical workspaces and interactive technologies.  While this article appears more focused on the banking and credit unions sectors, I also believe there are solid insights and tips that correlate to Wealth Management firms.  Here’s the link. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/real-estate/our-insights/reimagining-the-future-of-financial-services-headquarters

As we’ve all learned during the past three years, the approach to how we recruit and retain staff has changed.  And so has the lens through which we view our current and future workplace needs.  That’s fine because change can be great as long as the change management decisions we all make are well-researched and supported by verifiable examples and assessments.