Addressing Talent Acquisition Challenges for Your Financial Institution

Monday April 19th, 2021

Estimated time to read: 2 minutes, 45 seconds

shutterstock-TA-blog.jpeg

Human resources (HR) departments across industries are facing new challenges when it comes to recruiting and onboarding talent – and financial institutions are no different. In fact, 65 percent of HR leaders working for a financial institution expect recruiting to be more difficult this year according to data from isolved’s Transforming Employee Experience report.

Although the pandemic brought on new challenges for talent acquisition teams, those challenges can often be addressed – and even remedied at times – with technology. In isolved’s report, HR leaders selected the top talent acquisition challenges for their enterprise. Read below to discover how an integrated human capital management (HCM) platform can help with the concerns that were identified for financial institutions: 

Challenge: Remote Work Environment

Despite many adapting to a remote work environment over the last year, it still brings a lot of disruption to organizations. According to isolved’s data, 60 percent of HR leaders working for financial institutions say that the remote work environment is the biggest threat facing talent acquisition. 

While meeting face-to-face certainly makes a difference when interviewing and onboarding, technology that enables self-service and offers intuitive collaboration capabilities can ease the process for both socially distanced and in-office employees. An HCM platform that offers robust talent and engagement tools, for instance, empowers new hires to fill out all necessary forms and elect benefits independently and electronically. Plus, with integrated engagement tools that leverage social media-style functionality, new employees are able to quickly communicate and collaborate by using familiar actions such as posting, commenting and liking. This can help new hires get acclimated even if their entire team is working in different locations.

Challenge: Hiring Freezes Due to Covid-19

isolved’s data shows that the second biggest talent acquisition challenge for financial institutions is hiring freezes brought on by the pandemic. Every organization has been impacted differently by COVID-19, but hiring freezes were put in place for many due to uncertainties within the marketplace. Once hiring begins again, HR teams will need an HCM platform with applicant tracking capabilities that make it simple to attract, identify, interview and onboard top talent.

To ensure these new hires are worth the wait (and because turnover is costly), it is important for HR teams to put measures in place to make sure that every interaction candidates have with their company is positive. This includes creating accurate job descriptions and being clear about career development during the interview process. Speaking of development, that brings us to the next challenge…

Challenge: Building critical skills and competencies across the organization

The third top talent acquisition challenge for financial institutions is building critical skills and competencies across the organization. This is why it is important for HCM platforms to offer integrated learning management systems (LMS). With LMS capabilities, HR teams can assign learning paths to new hires and confirm when the needed compliance and security courses are completed. Additionally, HR teams can use the LMS to train and develop employees in other areas – including critical competencies needed across the organization as well as department-specific skills. For example, HR can assign trainings to a new hire for commonly used programs (like Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint), while the employee’s manager may assign learning paths that are role- or department-specific.

Perhaps the best reason to invest in an HCM with LMS technology, however, is that it can have a big impact on employee experience. According to isolved’s HR Trends report, learning opportunities were identified as the top way employees would like to be engaged with by their employers in 2021. Since employee experience is a priority for 93 percent of financial institutions this year, taking steps to improve engagement will likely have an impact on experience as well.

Investing in Tech that Supports Flex EX

With the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. to all those who want them, it seems like the end of the pandemic is in sight. Yet the lessons learned over the last year shouldn’t be thrown to the wayside. It is important for businesses – and their HR teams – to be equipped with technology that makes it easy to recruit, employ and engage with employees regardless of location or social distancing requirements. Investing in an integrated HCM platform that offers self-service functionality, along with applicant tracking, engagement management and employee development capabilities, is not only an investment in HR, but also an investment in the future of work.

 

Interested in learning about the top talent acquisition challenges for other industries? Review the data in isolved’s Transforming Employee Experience report.

 

Schedule a Demo