Acquiring talent in financial services: ‘You’ve got to be attractive first and foremost’

Founder of independent financial advice business Verse Wealth, Mr Wastle, explained that work culture is crucial for new talent, with advisers needing to adapt their workplaces to lure in new talent.

Speaking on a recent episode of the ifa Show podcast, he said: “You’ve got to have an understanding of what kind of business do great people, progressive young advisers, great women advisers — what do they want to work in?

“If you’re not those things, then you’re probably just not going to be that attractive to them.”

Mr Wastle advised that young professionals in particular want to be “aligned to a purpose”, and are less concerned with “self-serving”, but are rather looking to serve “ a greater good”.

“Particularly younger people, more so than any generations before them, they want to be aligned to a purpose. They want to do work that is truly serving a higher purpose,” Mr Wastle said.

“I know that all sounds cliched to some, but in short, it basically means that they want to be helping other people. They’re not fixated on just having a career that’s self-serving and making their own money and setting themselves up. They want to do those things, but I think they want to make sure that what they’re doing is serving a greater good.

“And when advice is done well and it’s personalised and it’s values-based or it’s goals-based, it’s outcome-orientated, it’s not just about products and portfolios, you’re more likely to attract those types of people.”

Speaking more broadly, Mr Wastle explained that offering flexible working conditions is critical to acquiring talent in today’s changing environment.

“If people can’t integrate their work into their life rather than the other way around, I think you’re going to find it really hard to attract great people moving forward. And I do think this is one of the common challenges that I think a lot of advice businesses face in trying to attract and retain great talent,” Mr Wastle said.

“Having a workplace that is high on trust and autonomy, high on freedom and responsibility; I think that is really crucial.”

He stressed that “it’s about the culture, it’s about the philosophies that underpin the way that people work and engage with their work”.

Verse Wealth, Mr Wastle explained, has a hiring process built on two pillars — high performance and culture.

“They’ve [candidates] got to be a cultural fit, meaning they’ve got to fit well within our values, and in short they’ve got to be someone the teammates here at Verse [would] want to spend 40 hours a week with, and think that spending that 40 hours a week with them is going to make their life better,” he said.

“And then from a high-performance point of view, we need people to be great at what they do, not just okay, not decent. We need them to be great because we think our success is a reflection of the quality of our people more than anything else.”

To hear more from Mr Wastle click here.