In today’s rocky job market, employees are leaving and changing jobs at unprecedented rates. Some employers cannot fill roles because they cannot afford the higher wages that a candidate expects, and others simply cannot find candidates with a suitable skill set.
For finance teams at banks and credit unions, an unfilled role may mean that you do not have the collective skills needed to perform daily tasks, analyze the business, and provide the necessary financial insights to guide strategic decisions. A gap on the team also places current employees at risk of burnout.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. This challenging job market brings opportunities for innovation and outside-the-box thinking, namely, in the form of your tech stack. Financial institutions can harness the power of technology to help protect teams from burnout, attract top talent, and propel the business forward.
Put Your Tech Stack to Work
Does “do more with less” sound familiar? Finance leaders often struggle to keep current employees happy and engaged while meeting the daily demands of their own jobs — nearly 30% of bank and credit union finance leaders believe that labor shortages will be a top driver of business model changes in 2023, according to Syntellis’ 2023 CFO Outlook for Financial Institutions.
Fortunately, technology can help. From budgeting to reporting, innovative and integrated technology can positively impact teams and strengthen an organization’s recruiting value proposition. A modern tech stack can:
- Make open roles more attractive compared to manual methods a competing institution may use
- Highlight a positive company culture where technology makes day-to-day tasks easier and supports work/life balance by creating efficiencies and increasing accuracy
- Demonstrate opportunities for career growth by learning a new system and upskilling
- Allow for succession planning and eliminate the challenge of having an employee as a single point of failure should they leave their job or take an extended leave
Grow the Business Without Growing Headcount
Of course, attracting and retaining top talent is not the only benefit of a robust tech stack. More efficient processes, increased accuracy, and better visibility into the business cannot go unmentioned, as they all contribute to your institution’s long-term success. At Oregon State Credit Union (OSCU), business grew 100% over the past decade without having to add additional finance or accounting roles. Onboarding time for new finance staff decreased as much as 20% over the same period, with all training performed in-house thanks to user-friendly enterprise performance management software from Axiom.
“We have staff following the same outlines I used as an assistant manager years ago to conduct the training. We don’t need people to have SQL skills. They just need to know a little bit about Excel, and that allows us to ‘hire for fit,’ with the confidence we can train the right people,” says Bobbie Warner, Chief Finance Officer at OSCU.
Debbie Bianucci, President and CEO at BAI, reinforces the notion that upskilling and professional development impact more than the individual: “When a bank’s employees tell their networks that their employer has encouraged them, trained them, and prepared them for new opportunities, the bank develops a reputation for having a culture of development and advancement and for being a highly desirable place to work.”
Software That Supports Your Team
The highest-performing banks and credit unions have long understood that organizations are only as strong as their teams. Success hinges on attracting and retaining top talent for those organizations. Now, in response to record high turnover among white-collar office jobs and staff burnout after a tumultuous couple of years, it’s more critical than ever that banks and credit unions continue to adapt as labor shortages persist.
If you’re having trouble filling open roles or worried about transferring legacy knowledge that runs your homemade, Excel-based reporting processes, consider how technology can help. Many finance teams are using this as an opportunity to transition to tools that integrate with their native data systems.
Take time to explore new tools and technologies — including AI — that can build efficiencies for existing staff and excite candidates about coming to work for you. Seek robust capabilities that track profitability and highlight performance improvement opportunities so that your institution can respond with agility as markets evolve.
Learn more about the Axiom Financial Institutions Suite and how our robust performance management solutions can help position your organization for long-term success.