Working from home, subsidised gym memberships, yoga classes or staff wellbeing days. What are your weapons in the talent war among professional services firms?
It turns out attracting and retaining the best professionals does not need to involve expensive office gimmicks. Indeed, new research suggests the most effective weapon firms can add to their arsenal is to invest in improving the client – rather than the staff – experience.
The ongoing talent war
The war for talent is a universally a hot topic for professional services firms right now.
The Commonwealth Bank’s annual CommBank Accounting Market Pulse Report and Legal Market Pulse Report have flagged the phenomenon among law and accounting firms for the past two years.
Firms, the CommBank research shows, are facing a shortage of quality professional staff. This is compounded by trends such as the Great Resignation and slow reopening of borders in the wake of the pandemic (limiting the option to recruit internationally). CommBank’s most recent legal market report, published in May 2022, calls this talent war the sector’s “biggest challenge so far”. It says 93 per cent of firms are reporting that finding quality staff is difficult.
Dr Margaret Beaton, Executive Coach of Beaton Executive Coaching, agrees. She notes professional services managers are consistently telling her about the “lack of talent, poor consistency of service, decline in CX, overload and stress, less responsiveness, reduced discretionary effort and generally less care”.
Failed attempted solutions
Clichéd solutions to attracting talent and winning the talent war have tended to make headlines. Some of these include firms purchasing ping pong tables, offering free yoga classes and wellbeing days or increased flexibility. Ever-growing salaries and bonuses are now also being dangled in front of in-demand practitioners to encourage them to switch firms.
But research shows pay increases have a relatively minimal and fleeting effect on wellbeing or staff satisfaction. Researchers in 2017 tracked the pay and job satisfaction (measured on a scale of 0-10) of about 35,000 German workers over several years. The study found that the anticipation of a large (100 per cent) pay rise bumps up job satisfaction ratings by about 0.25 in the year before the raise. The satisfaction increases by one fifth of a point when the raise is awarded. However, by the fourth year, the increase falls to less than a fifth in total.
Many of these so-called solutions fail to acknowledge why employees are re-assessing their career paths in the first place. As Gallup finds, many are feeling disengaged and disenfranchised.
In other words, staff feel they don’t really matter in the greater scheme of the firm’s success. Additionally, money is not an enduring weapon in the talent war.
Client experience and employee experience are two sides of the same coin.
How to win the war for talent: invest in client experience
In September, Beaton released a report called The State of Client Experience in Professional Services 2022. It details the results of a survey about firms’ focus on client experience (CX) completed by 263 individuals from 199 professional services firms across Asia Pacific.
The research found firms that engage their employees in strategies to improve the client experience enjoy markedly higher employee satisfaction scores.
The process of improving CX appears key to creating a fulfilling work environment. The most successful firms engaged, educated and upskilled staff. They reported celebrating the success of team members who delivered excellent CX (93 per cent). They also created environments where people said they felt empowered to improve processes (92 per cent) and act on client feedback (85 per cent).
In fact, firms that were most successful in CX had higher net satisfaction scores and were much less likely to report decreasing employee satisfaction scores. Of CX succeeding firms, a net 43 per cent of firms experienced employee satisfaction growth, compared to 17 per cent of developing firms.
What experts say about winning the talent war
Kim Wiegand is a Beaton partner with two decades’ experience in marketing and business development for law firms. She has been at the frontline of the talent war over many years. She says, “the data shows there is a significant correlation between employee experience and client experience.”
Tony Fittler, Chair of HLB Mann Judd Australasian Association, agrees that “the client experience is intrinsically linked to the employee experience”.
“Our staff enjoy supporting and engaging with the clients. It is important to consider the benefits of seeking employee feedback and how it fits into your CX strategy,” Fittler says.
Experts say investing in CX sparks a virtuous cycle whereby the process of upskilling and engaging employees simultaneously improves the employee experience – known as EX. Briana Millar, Client Experience Specialist at Tonkin + Taylor, confirms this.
“You can only get so far with CX alone, before you reach a ceiling,” she says.
To deliver a superior CX and create sustainable CX improvements, you have to develop EX in parallel: assess the employee journey alongside the client journey and look for opportunities to influence change
In today’s war for talent, it appears professional services firms are overlooking a double-barrelled weapon. Improving client experience can attract and retain the best staff while at the same time improving the business’ bottom line.
Invest in CX and kill both birds.
Download the full CX research report.
Interested in improving your firm’s CX but unsure where to start? Check out Beaton’s market-leading CX transformation services.