Keep track of top talent
Another priority you have to keep on the top of your watch list is talent.
It could be easy to worry about all the short-term things popping up, but at HPB, Jenkins gladly moves watching outside talent to the top of his priority list.
“We don’t just look for people when we need people, we are in the advisory business, so we’re always looking for top talent, good people,” he says. “When you have that in your DNA or your culture, we very often will interview or get to know people even if we don’t have a spot and, over time you build up a really strong network and you become what I’ll call an employer of choice.”
Whether or not you need someone right now, you will soon, so you’d better keep your senior leaders focused on people.
“As a senior leader, you have to walk the talk in terms of interviewing people and regularly meeting people,” he says. “We’ll have four, five, even six people on my senior team meet them. Even if we don’t have a spot, we will have them. It’s nothing for my head of investment to give me a call and say, ‘Hey, Terry, I just met this great lady; I want you to meet her’ and you know what, it goes to the top of my priority list and we’ll take 30 minutes or an hour to make sure we meet that person.”
Taking that time now is one of those long-term investments that can’t get lost in the short term.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is when you’re hiring really good people, there are two decisions that are made,” Jenkins says. “One is, are they right for us, which is why we have them meet a lot of people. But it’s also, are we right for them, and you need to get that connection done and you need to build those bridges long before they are on the job, otherwise you get three to six months on the job and they don’t stay.”
That means demanding that time of people upfront can prevent later problems.
“It’s an expectation of your managers and your leaders that they survey the best talent and when you have talent in the marketplace, you bring them in and you continually fill the bullpen. Our client retention is superb even through these difficult times because we’ve built our culture around that, and the best time to do that with new people is before they are on the job.”
Prioritizing talent is a two-pronged job: You also have to keep a strong eye on your current people.
“You need a robust talent management process, so you need to be very good at identifying talent within your organization a
nd developing them,” he says.
You may not have promotions available in tough times, but you can make notes for your next upswing.
“We identify what we would call top talent or those that we believe can go on to bigger and better things in the organization,” he says.
What’s important is to have leaders be talent scouts of the entire company. Have them work with other departments and share notes.
“We’ll make sure that my senior team members have the opportunity to meet other professionals in other parts of our business,” Jenkins says. “So, for example, if my head of trust is going into a marketplace, she’ll make a point of working with the investment people and the bankers and really understanding where the talent is across the business, and we identify those people for her, and it’s part of her job to get to know those people.”
