(September 2006)

Your financial advisory practice is doing well, but you are working harder for longer hours without seeing the rewards. Perhaps it’s time to consider bringing other people into your business. This third instalment in a series on building an office team looks at the skills needed by team members.



In a perfect world, your team members’ skill sets would complement one another like a nice Burgundy and a well-aged steak. In reality, you may have an office full of great financial advisors — but no one who knows how to work the photocopier.

That doesn’t have to be the case, says Steve Hemphill, co-founder of Advisor Pathways consulting firm in Oakville, Ont. Much of the foundation for developing a team with complementary skill sets should be laid before any actual hiring takes place.

“One of the key ways to tackle the issue of skills is to look at workflow,” Hemphill says. “By the time an advisor is ready to hire a team, he or she probably is following a set of investment processes and service strategies, however informally.”

Having a clear set of processes in place leads to another element Hemphill considers key to fostering offsetting skill sets: the job description. “Many advisors don’t use job descriptions when hiring team members. And if they do, typically they rely on generic descriptions provided by their company,” he says.

Hemphill argues that detailed job descriptions for all employees — based on the processes and strategies you expect each to follow routinely— are essential to building a team of people with offsetting job skills: “Each job is then seen with a high degree of clarity, and it becomes easier to hire someone to replace an existing role or fill a new one.” He also notes that detailed job descriptions serve to highlight performance issues as well as any gaps in a team’s skill sets.

SOFT SKILLS CRITICAL

While job descriptions tend to focus on the hard skills required in certain roles, such as holding a mutual fund licence in order to assist in sales or the ability to create an Excel spreadsheet, hiring an employee with an excellent set of soft skills is also crucial. However, doing so is far more difficult than ensuring a potential team member has a certified financial planner designation.

“Soft skills are by far the hardest to evaluate,” says Jamie Switzer, an advisor with Ray-mond James Ltd. in North Vancouver, B.C.

Bradley Roulston, CFP and founder of Toronto-based Roulston Financial Group, concurs: “An advisor can learn about income taxes. But if he or she isn’t a good communicator, that’s not something [you are] going to pick up.”

Using a personality testing system — such as Kolbe RightFit or Myers-Briggs KnowYourType — can help. “Teams don’t use tools such as Kolbe nearly enough,” says Hemphill. The software helps existing team members understand one another’s strengths and weaknesses, he says, and can identify the ideal characteristics a new employee should possess in relation to the present strengths of the team. Candidates can complete a personality test prior to hiring to ensure a good fit.

“You hire someone based on your workflow and the role you need to fill,” Hemphill says. “But you also need to ensure he or she has an aptitude for following the workflow specific to the role for which they are being hired.”

Both Switzer and Roulston tend to hire for soft skills as opposed to hard skills. “Personality is the most important asset, and we’ll fill in the blanks along the way,” Switzer says.

“We always want to hire someone who has his or her CFP or who is very close to attaining it, but being a good communicator is the cornerstone,” says Roulston. Job shadowing helps him determine whether a potential candidate has the people skills required for the job.

Roulston tends to take three to four months when adding a new member to his team. During this time, job candidates accompany advisors — he currently has seven on his team — to appointments and presentations aimed at drumming up new business.

“Seeing someone in action is the best way of assessing his or her soft skills,” he says. Potential recruits come out about twice a week and are not paid for their time.

@page_break@Identifying your investment processes and service strategies, developing detailed job descriptions and hiring for soft skills are half the battle when it comes to building a team of diverse and complementary skill sets. Regularly evaluating your team’s skills and motivating members to develop new strengths is the other — equally important — part of the equation.

“It’s crucial to have a minimum of one formal work evaluation a year,” says Hemphill.

Advisors should aim to spend some one-on-one time with team members each quarter. Touching base with the team as a whole is also essential after making a new hire.

“A new team member affects workflow,” says Hemphill.

In the first few months after making a new hire, he recommends the team discuss how a new employee’s role and skill set are meshing with those of other team members.

Switzer and partner Marc Latta meet with their team members — three support staff and two insurance advisors — on an individual basis at least twice a year.

“We talk every six months, at least, and also any time there’s an opportunity for advancement or if we’d like them to take on a new set of goals,” says Switzer. “We are constantly trying to figure out ways to create efficiencies.”

The duo also uses the promise of new roles within the firm — combined with a cash incentive and time off for study — to motivate staff members to upgrade their skills. “When you’re working hard at a computer all day, the last thing you want to do is take a course at night or on the weekend,” Switzer says. “You need to know there’s a carrot being dangled.”

Only those employees who have been with the firm for a year or more are eligible to take advantage of training incentives. “We don’t want to help someone if they have one foot out the door,” Switzer says. “That’s a huge problem in the industry.”

Roulston also uses a cash incentive — he covers half the cost of CFP courses — to motivate employees to update their skills. As well, he tries to uncover and encourage skills that team members are most interested in. “People are going to excel in what they like to do most, whether it is insurance or tax issues,” he says.

A mentoring process that pairs junior advisors with seasoned reps also helps develop the skills of green employees. IE



The team-building series continues in the October issue of Investment Executive with a look at compensation. For articles in this series, go to www.investmentexecutive.com.