Qualified trustees are in demand in the labour market. What is important in the job for the fiduciary professionals of today and tomorrow? How can fiduciary companies offer their employees a constructive working environment? To what extent do digitalisation and innovative technologies help you to use the talents of your employees effectively? In this blog post, you will get tips on how fiduciary companies can develop and retain their employees.
According to the Job Market Monitor of the University of Zurich, the fiduciary sector in Switzerland is suffering greatly from the shortage of skilled workers and is even one of the five sectors most affected. Many trust companies have difficulties in finding suitable employees and quite a few directors have to give up the dream of early retirement due to a lack of suitable junior staff. Due to the shortage of skilled workers, a real battle for qualified trustees can be observed in the labour market. It is, therefore, all the more important to offer good employees the right working environment and to retain them in your company.
This is what the fiduciary professionals of today and tomorrow expect from an employer
Digital natives currently make up the majority of the labour market in most sectors. According to the Gabler Business Encyclopaedia, the term digital native refers to a person “who has grown up with information technologies and the internet since childhood and does not know a world without digital media.”
What do employers need to know about digital natives? “What probably distinguishes all those born after 1980 is their affinity with PCs, mobile phones, and social media. The members of Generation Y are the first digital natives and have already fundamentally turned the labour market upside down with desires such as home office and flexible working hours as well as with their self-evident use of social media. Rigid working hours are unattractive to them,” writes the international management consulting firm Mercer in an article on the expectations of generations Y and Z in working life.
How do younger digital natives who are currently in education or taking their first steps in the world of work differ from their predecessors? “Although the second generation of digital natives is highly technologised (life without smartphones and social media are virtually inconceivable), they deal with it completely differently than the generation before them. They react with pure serenity to the flood of online information and the possibilities to communicate and work at any time and any place – but they also clearly set themselves apart,” the Mercer article continues.
More flexibility is required from employers
The option to work remotely can contribute to the satisfaction of your younger employees. In surveys conducted years before the Corona pandemic broke out, many digital natives stated that flexible working hours and the possibility of remote working were aspects that should not be neglected when choosing an employer. Self-determination is an important good, especially in Western culture. For many employees, it is motivating to be able to work in an environment that suits them and, in some cases, with working and break times that they choose themselves. New tech solutions for trusts help ensure remote teams can collaborate constructively at all times.
Contemporary technologies are increasingly important to recruiting and retaining employees
The work of trustees is changing. Routine work – with high automation potential – no longer represents a major benefit for many SMEs. Fully automated accounting solutions often perform routine tasks more efficiently than fiduciaries. Accounto’s machine learning technology, for example, extracts all receipt information fully automatically. This completely eliminates the time-consuming typing of receipts for you and your team. This allows you to develop new services instead. This will also help you score points with SMEs in the future.
What role do digitalisation and the associated emergence of tech solutions to speed up routine tasks play in the development of your employees? Digital natives find it much easier to delegate repetitive work to technology than their older colleagues. The use of innovative software solutions and tools is therefore becoming a crucial factor in workplace design in fiduciary companies. The current and next generation of trustees expect innovative technologies to deliver a better customer experience than before. They no longer want to struggle with partially digitised solutions. Processes should function seamlessly and run via a single platform that is intuitive to use. This transformation of customer expectations started in the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector but has long since spilt over into the business-to-business (B2B) world.
Motivating young fiduciary professionals: what you can do as leaders
Flexibility, focus and modern technologies thus support fiduciary companies in their employee development. As a manager, how can you help your employees feel more connected to the company? Representatives of generations Y and Z expect continuous feedback on their work. The annual compulsory exercise of the classic staff appraisals does not meet this need. Rather, it is about regularly exchanging ideas and giving feedback to the employees. Praises exceptional commitment, pays tribute to superior performance and, if necessary, points out areas for improvement. The reverse is also true: Be open to feedback. Accept criticism and requests for changes.
“For many employees, it is important to know that their superiors will continue to count on them in the future and are committed to their development within the company,” writes job portal provider JobCloud. Show your employees with words and deeds how central they are to the company. For example, you can involve them in decision-making and give them more room for manoeuvre and responsibility. Also, by supporting fiduciary talent to acquire new skills, you will increase motivation and strengthen employee loyalty to your company.
Reading Tip: Satisfied employees and more innovation – in this blog post you can read why fiduciary companies should get rid of steep hierarchies.
