For the last six months, RLF has consistently heard from members that hiring is a challenge. We heard it in early November at our Sales Executive Forum and it is a topic of interest for this week’s RM Executive Roundtable (virtual). The sales and RM leaders are not so much seeing it with their teams as they are with the day-to-day account managers and operations staff. Unfortunately, turnover in these roles often results in client service issues, which then occupy the time of relationship and sales teams. This problem seems to be fairly consistent across our membership.
As we look ahead, it may become even more challenging as the number of recordkeepers continues to shrink. Less competition is nice, but it also means fewer firms training the next generation of talent, so there are fewer places to look for experienced staff when a firm needs to fill a role. We think hiring knowledgeable retirement staff is going to get even more difficult and we are already seeing firms get creative about building future talent pools with looking outside the typical roles/sources to find candidates and rethinking career mapping. As they do this, members are focused on increasing the diversity of hires as well.