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Careers & workplace advice from Hays

There is a unique sense of comradery that comes with working in a small-to-medium sized business (SME). While such comradery can of course be experienced in larger organisations too, in an SME it is amplified because there are fewer people involved in projects, and the roles are sometimes less rigidly defined. With SME employees often working outside the silos of their specific roles and pulling together when needed, there’s naturally a more unified culture.

Continue reading SMEs – look for these three traits when hiring →

A lot can happen in 60 internet seconds. It’s estimated that in just one minute we send over 29 million WhatsApp messages, 3.3 million Facebook posts, 448,000 Tweets and 150,000 emails. And as digital natives, i.e. a group who have grown up using the internet and mobile phones, I’m guessing you have probably communicated using at least one of these mediums in the past day, the past hour even.

As such, it’s probably also fair to assume that using technology is second nature to you, and that you are able to quickly grasp the latest online communication tools, from instant messaging to video conferencing, with relative ease. In fact, a recent study found that globally, 65% of Gen Z and Millennials prefer to communicate digitally both inside and outside of work. And whilst your digital literacy is one of the most coveted attributes today’s employers look for in candidates, there is perhaps a concern that this has come at the cost of one important soft skill: face-to-face communication.

No matter how much technology evolves, face-to-face communication will always be fundamental for employee learning, productivity, wellbeing, relationship-building and ultimately, career progression and good business. So how can you prove to an interviewer that you have the face-to-face communication skills that every employer is looking for?

1. Prove you can build a rapport with others

First off, when you arrive for your interview, greet everybody you are introduced to (regardless of whether they are your interviewer or not) with a warm smile, eye contact and a firm handshake. Whilst these people won’t make the final decision, they will often feed back to the interviewer.

Secondly, take steps to build a rapport with your interviewer. Listen intently as they speak, and be careful not to interrupt – pausing for a second before answering. After all, listening is a key part of effective communication.

You should also bear in mind that we mostly communicate through our body language. Looking around the room, leaning back in your chair or fidgeting a lot can imply your mind is elsewhere and that you are disengaged. On the other hand, positive body language, such as sitting up straight, leaning forward, and nodding and smiling as you are spoken to, will show the interviewer that you are paying attention and are engaged in the process.

You may also like to consider preparing questions to ask your interviewer about their own career journey within the business. This is another great way to build a connection. Some candidates hesitate to ask these questions in case this comes across as too invasive. However, more often than not, the interviewer will be flattered when a candidate shows an interest in their career journey, just as long as these questions are professionally and positively phrased. For instance, you could ask “what are your favourite aspects of working here?”

I would also advise double checking with your recruiter to find out if you are likely to be introduced to any other employees during the interview process. If so, prepare questions to ask your potential team members to further illustrate your rapport-building skills.

2. Answer the interview questions with confidence and clarity

Another common concern that we hear from our clients, is that because digital natives communicate so much online, and are thus used to being able to edit what they are about to say before they hit “send”, they are sometimes less confident and concise when it comes to standing up and speaking in front of others. Employers worry that this will be a hindrance when it comes to speaking in meetings, giving presentations or talking on conference calls.

You can actively tackle this concern during your interview by preparing to speak with conviction and answering interview questions confidently and clearly. Before your interview, follow some of the recommended confidence boosting steps, such as taking deep breaths, picturing positive outcomes and speaking with your recruiter who can put your mind at rest.

You should also practice answering common interview questions, and sticking to a structure in order to keep your response concise and relevant to the question asked. I would recommend the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action and Result):

Q: “You mention here on your CV that you have strong communication skills. Can you describe a time you applied these to a face-to-face situation?”

(Situation) In my current role, we recently launched a new service for our clients.

(Task) As a key account manager, I was asked to pitch the service to one of my accounts. The objective of the pitch was to communicate the unique selling points of this product.

(Action) I prepared my points thoroughly and practiced pitching to my boss. I was receptive to my boss’s feedback and adapted my communication style so that it was more simplified and used less jargon.

(Result) My pitch was well-received by the client who not only understood the service, but rolled it out within their business shortly after the meeting, which increased our monthly revenue by 15 per cent.

3. Be responsive in your communications, both before and after the interview

Lastly, your interviewer won’t just be assessing your communication skills during the interview itself, they will also be looking at how communicative and responsive you are before and after as well. For instance, they may well consider how quickly you respond to emails and phone calls, and how forthcoming you are in opening up the lines of communication yourself, albeit this will all be via your recruiter – but your recruiter will feed this information back to their client nonetheless.

Therefore, I would advise that you keep your phone close by both before and after the interview so you can respond quickly and easily. You should also be proactive in contacting the interviewer via your recruiter after the interview to thank them for their time and to reiterate your interest in the position.

No matter how much we evolve our online communications, nothing can replace the human interaction needed to build lasting professional relationships that can power your career forward. And just because you are a digital native, it doesn’t mean you don’t have the face-to-face communication skills needed to thrive in the world of work. I know this and you know this, it’s just a case of taking pro-active, smart steps to prove this to the interviewer.

Job interview coming up? These blogs will help you ensure it’s a success:

For as long as I have been working, there has been an ongoing dialogue surrounding the “confidence gap” between men and women. This gained momentum after a 2003 study by Cornell University, which suggested that men tend to overestimate both their skills and performance when presented with a task, whereas women tend to underestimate these, even when both genders are equally qualified to complete said task.

Continue reading When applying for a job, who are more confident – men or women? →

To be at our best in terms of performance, life satisfaction, and ultimately our psychological health and wellbeing – we need to experience both a sense of purpose and pleasure.

We feel a sense of purpose inside and outside of work, when we’re engaged in a task or activity that has real meaning for us, which fits with our values and identity, and is contributing to one of our bigger picture goals. When we experience pleasure, we feel a rush of positive feelings or a deeper sense of contentment and happiness. But one without the other is rarely sufficient in bringing about success in the long-term, neither in a personal or professional capacity.

What is purpose without pleasure?

Purpose without pleasure is being occupied in an activity you are tasked with, but don’t really enjoy doing. In other words – it is behaving dutifully out of a sense of responsibility. And whilst there isn’t anything wrong with that in the short-term, trying to sustain this way of life without feeling some pleasure or fulfilment along the way can lead to eventual burnout.

What is pure pleasure without purpose?

Conversely, what is pure pleasure without purpose – party time? There’s a lot to be said for just cutting loose and enjoying an occasion without any concern about meaning. In fact, when you see some people in full party mode, it’s probably just as well that they are not preoccupied with what it all means! However, a life dominated by pleasure without purpose would almost certainly leave you feeling rudderless and eventually dissatisfied by the pointlessness of it all. In addition, when we experience significant setbacks in life, it is revisiting our sense of purpose that provides the foundation for recovery and rebuilding.

How does this all relate to career progression?

From time to time it’s worth reviewing where you are with your work in terms of your purpose-pleasure balance. There may be times during your career when you have purpose without pleasure, and when you spend a significant amount of time working on something you consider important but just don’t enjoy. If that is the case, it is important to get some respite and ensure you can intersperse the core work with a least some activity that just makes you feel happy.

If it is pleasure that is lacking:

Discuss with colleagues how you might have more fun at work. Are there short activities you might all enjoy that you could legitimately build into the working day?
Take a proper lunch break and indulge in a hobby or activity that brings you pleasure, such as reading a novel, going for a run, or just meeting friends for a good chat
Reflect on whether there is a deeper level of satisfaction or pride you get from doing your job even when some aspects are not intrinsically enjoyable as you undertake them

Equally, you may be enjoying what you are doing, but consider it meaningless or trivial. In this situation you can either try balancing this with activity you find more meaningful or you can try to find purpose in what you are already doing.

There is the somewhat over repeated anecdote about the man sweeping the floor at NASA who when asked what he was doing said “I’m helping put a man on the moon!” Of course, he may not have been getting any pleasure from sweeping the floor and relating it to the mission was the only way to tolerate it.

If you conclude you are lacking purpose you could:

Review with your manager the range of work you are doing and discuss how it relates to what is important to the business and to both of you personally
Think about how what you are doing has an impact on others or makes a small but important contribution to success against larger goals
Consider whether you need a fresh challenge in a new role or in another part of the business

As I say, purpose and pleasure are closely intertwined, especially when it comes to our careers. It is possible to have one without the other, but this isn’t conducive to our wellbeing or progression; therefore we owe it to ourselves to occasionally check in and review our purpose-pleasure axis, and take action when we are low in either area or both.

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As a senior business leader, you will no doubt appreciate the well-understood and well-publicised benefits of cultivating a diverse and inclusive (D&I) workplace. And, as a leader you will also of course be expected to fully champion and support the necessary changes in policy, processes and behaviours needed to effectively drive forward the D&I agenda within your business – that’s a given, but it’s not the end of the story.

In fact, the influence you have, and the degree to which change can happen, is also highly dependent on the level of buy-in, understanding and support you can garner from your entire workforce, but particularly your middle management tier.

Your middle managers are very much at the coal face of your business. They are highly visible across all touch points and the impact they have in successfully delivering change, particularly around D&I should not be underestimated.

So, if you neglect to engage them in driving your D&I agenda forward, you likely won’t gain the traction you need. With that in mind – how can you engage and empower your middle managers to make D&I a reality within your business?

Change the way they approach hiring

Your middle management tier both hire and manage the majority of talent within your business, therefore they are key to embedding your D&I principles in real, tangible terms, and importantly, in a way that is sustainable. That is, provided that they fully understand and accept the importance of these principles, and the impact they have on building and developing teams.

So, work with your middle managers to investigate their existing hiring patterns. As I mentioned in my last blog, you should be on the lookout for biases they might unwittingly have towards selecting or rejecting candidates on more obvious demographics like gender or age or on attainment versus potential. There may also be seemingly less obvious biases in the way they hire, for example around preferred ways of working, personality types and so forth.

Have an open, honest and non-judgemental conversation with your middle managers about the reality or risk of recurring biases when hiring, and why they think these are happening. And, importantly, educate them on why they need to be addressed. From here, you should then work together to develop revised guidelines and procedures for future reference, based on your discussion.

Delve deeper into how they manage and develop talent

So, find out how your middle managers manage talent day-to-day within their teams. Do any patterns which might stem from biases stand out to you? Making this assessment may require you to attend/shadow team meetings or performance reviews, as well as objectively analysing selection criteria and processes when it comes to awarding work and giving promotions. Of course, you should also invite feedback from team members themselves, in a safe environment, to gain some real insight.

From here, you are far better placed to 1. Identify any biases that exist, and 2. Educate middle managers around the negative impact these can have on their teams in terms that will resonate with them – for example, groupthink, a lack of innovation, lower employee morale and engagement, and ultimately poor retention.

Improve awareness around biases that may play out within their own teams

It’s not just about how middle managers recruit for, and manage their teams, it’s also about the way that their team members interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.

The reality is that in many work settings, similar employees have a tendency to group together in cliques, and anyone who is “different” to these groups, can end up being in a minority and feeling isolated. This can happen in teams of any size and can impact on individual team member’s mental wellbeing in the workplace, how comfortable they feel contributing to the life and business of the team and limits the potential value and benefit that different perspectives and experiences can bring to decision making and performance.

Middle managers must therefore understand, be attuned to, and be mindful of the impact this can have on the specific dynamic within their own teams, as well as on company culture, employee wellbeing, productivity and retention. Ideally, they should be informed and supported to spot the signs of stress, withdrawal and even potential workplace bullying with their teams. This can be provided by peer learning, external training as well as support from leadership and HR.

Middle managers should also be encouraged and, importantly, have the confidence to inform and where appropriate, educate each new and existing team member, regardless of seniority, around the why and what of the D&I commitments made by the business and invite them to input their ideas and feedback if they wish to. By doing this consistently, middle managers can help you as a senior leader ensure that the wider workforce understand, accept and support inclusivity as part of your organisation’s DNA, and are more likely to act as ambassadors for your D&I principles.

Hopefully this advice will help you work in better and more effective collaboration with your middle managers, in order to really make your D&I vision a lived reality for every person within your business. In turn, you will together create an environment which benefits from everyone feeling valued and engaged.

You can view some more of our Diversity and Inclusion content below:

Global mobility, moreover, the expansion of work forces overseas is nothing new, but thanks to the vast host of productivity, management and communication tools available- from Google Hangouts to Skype for Business, managers today are able to lead international teams without even having to get on a plane.

And whilst a globally expanding workforce is a strong indicator of company success, it can present its own challenges for a leader, namely the question of how one person can lead an international team from their home base. During my thirteen years at Hays, I have been based in offices across the Asia Pacific region and Europe, and in this podcast, I will be sharing what I have learnt about successfully leading an international team.

Podcast notes:

1. What would you say is the number one challenge leaders face when running an international team?

I think from my perspective, and probably many others would say this – is communication. But there is an element within that that is additional to communication. I will delve into the communication in a bit, but to have effective communication across your teams, you need a level of trust across those teams as well and that is trust in you as a leader, as part of the communication framework that enables successful communication.

So one of the things that I do, obviously having worked around the world with many different cultures, is work on building that trust with my leadership teams and the people that report into them around the world as well. And how do I role model that trust and show them that I am not just there to manage and lead them, but I am there to support them. So one of the rules that I gave to myself in building that trust is – whenever I go and see the people that work for me in different parts around the world… (and I lead five Managing Directors who have teams that sit underneath them in different regions around the world, so the Americas, different groups within Europe and the UK and then also Asia Pacific, and the cultural variations are quite significant within that)… one of the things that I have as a rule for myself is whenever I go and see them, I am not there just to review what they are doing and to manage them. I make sure that when I am in town I also help them grow and develop their business.

I make sure I go and see external clients with them, and help them be successful in the roles that they are in and lead by example. And I think that makes quite a big difference in them seeing me as a trusted leader that is, enabling them and supporting them not just managing them. And then that is kind of the framework that you can have successful communication within. Leading people thousands of miles away is quite a challenge and sometimes people can be misinformed, misdirected. They can misunderstand communication that you think is quite obvious.

So for me it is also about then following up with formal and informal communication as well. So when you are actually talking to them on a one-to-one basis, making sure that they understand what you’re meaning is and then following up later with further one-on-one communication when you also, then looking from the perspective as a team and getting team meetings together, making sure that you are bringing the people who are less able from a language perspective into the team meetings and making sure that you have got equity within the team as well.

So one of the things that I typically do, and I use video a lot in managing my teams and communicating across my teams is, I make sure everyone has the same experience. If there is a group of people say, in one of my largest team which sits in the UK, they are not allowed to sit together in the meeting. Everybody has to get on their own PC, and turn on their camera so everyone has the same experience. So the person that had been sitting by themselves in Beijing, has the same experience as the guy who is sitting in London, who has another three people that are also in the same meeting, but they will look and feel the same. And actually for myself, it is one of the things I find really effective.

I actually sometimes have better global meetings when I have got everyone on a video conference. I can see everyone’s faces at the same time. I can see their engagement, but there is some tools as well in the background. You can monitor their engagement. You can see whether or not they have shifted to another, I do not do that, but they are there and available to you. But creating that equity and then from my perspective, making sure that I am facilitating the process of that meeting and making sure I am bringing different viewpoints in. And to a certain extent, making myself vulnerable in that communication and letting people see that it is okay to be vulnerable. That is how we get the best results. That there is an equity within that. I think that is one of the things that facilitates better communication.

And then after the meetings, so when I have got a structured global meeting, I make sure that I follow up with different people afterwards to make sure that they have the same understanding of the outcomes for that meeting as I do because there are many instances where there is a slight nuance or slight difference, that if you do not address and make sure that they understood that part effectively at the very beginning, you can find yourself two or three weeks down the road and then doing something completely different to what everyone within the group agreed. And obviously from a business perspective that is bad, but also from an inclusion within the group perspective that is bad. Because people within the group then start to think that they are not contributing to the extent that they should be.

So for me it is one-on-one, front-end communication. Then making sure that I have effective team meetings and that I have got effective communication across that. And there is equity within it. And then lastly following up again on one-on-one and reinforcing and making sure there is clarity in the messages.

Read more: How to lead from afar

2. You touched on the vast cultural differences that you can experience in a large international team. Do you have any other advice for leaders on how to manage that specifically?

For me, cultural diversity is obviously a massive benefit actually, if you bring the cultural diversity to the fore and you show what the value of that is. I suppose from my perspective it is getting your global leadership team to understand the cultural variations and understand why people put things in certain ways and why not. And it is from my perspective making sure that I have an understanding of people’s perspectives and the context under which they operate.

But from an organisational perspective and the culture within which they live on a day-to-day basis – I am beneficial in that I have worked and lived all around the world. So originally South African, I did quite a bit of work and business in South Africa, so I understand African context. I obviously worked then in the UK and Europe and understand the different cultures across Europe. I then ran our Asia-Pacific business for a long time. And so I understand the variations and you know, one of the things that I always find is people say who have not lived in Asia, they say ‘Asia’ as one group and it is not, you know. Asia is multiple cultures, which are very, very different. So for me, I suppose bringing some of that to the fore, quite often in the beginning of meetings.

So if I have got a meeting with the global leadership team, whether it is on video or the infrequent times, we are able to get together as a team in person, bringing together and showing people what those cultural variations are and allowing people to articulate them and respecting those, and kind of bringing out the value and showing the value of that. It provides a context of understanding for the leaders who are operating in different environments. So now I have got a leader who runs my Americas’ business who is based in San Francisco, with an understanding of what the guys in Shenzhen China are talking about in the context under which they are working.

And then cultural celebration for me is also something that kind of helps. And it was something that I learned when I was running Asia Pacific and it was actually a guy that worked for me in Southern China. He said to me, “it is moon cake festival at the moment, so it is the norm for you to bring mooncakes to the people and take it to clients” et cetera, et cetera. And so at the back of that, I got a bit of understanding of “well, what is moon cake festival? Why are we celebrating it?” And then I saw the effect of actually celebrating that with the people and following the customs and norms, and how much trust that built in the relationship that I had and how much better my communication as a result was.

So it is bringing those things to the fore with my global leadership team for them to understand what is happening in other people’s parts of the world and why they celebrate certain things the way they do. I mean, it is pretty simple to be entirely honest. And it is just having a certain level of emotional intelligence to understand people’s context and then make that real for other people around the room. You look at the teams that I have got say, in the Netherlands versus the teams that I have got in Germany. There are massive similarities, but there are also really big differences, and making them understand what the differences are and the value that this brings to the fore.

3. What about teams working remotely from one another? How else can you help bring them together in order to better and more effectively collaborate?

Obviously the best form of bringing them together is in person, but that is prohibitively expensive to do all of the time. I tried to bring my global team together once a year if at all possible, and spend a few days together really brainstorming about what the future is and the things that we need to focus on, and are we going in the right direction. And then following that up with regular global meetings on a video basis, coming back to video conferencing.

The tools that we have today are really there to enable us to collaborate and be able to talk as a global team and brainstorm. I think brainstorming is the right terminology to use as well, as opposed to just having meetings, but it does not mean you do not set agendas. I think it is very important that you set agendas and people know what you are there to talk about. And then also having people from different parts of the world with different areas that they have to contribute in the agenda. So it is not my agenda, right? I get everybody else to contribute to the agenda in advance of meetings. And then I give responsibility for leading that part of the conversation or brainstorming session to different people. Sometimes that is because they are the experts in that area, and sometimes it is because I want them to be more vocal in the environment that we are in and to be seen and to have more of a kind of leadership position within that. So it is enabling cohesion across the group. And I think that is really effective, and bringing those teams together and enabling good communication.

4. When it comes to hiring people to join an international team – what traits do you think leaders should look out for specifically?

Increasingly from my perspective, it is about emotional intelligence and also the soft skills. The skills of managing a business to some extent can be taught, so the soft skills and having emotional intelligence and understanding is one of the first things that I always look for in people. And then a previous exposure to working across different cultures and geographies is beneficial. If they have got a high emotional intelligence, it is not necessarily essential, because they should therefore be culturally sensitive. But if they have got a previous disposition or experience of doing that, all the better when coupled with the softer skills.

And then also kind of looking at the way they manage relationships. So are they proactive in the way they manage relationships? How do they adjust the way they communicate with people? And I quite often have very different ways of communicating with different people within the groups that I manage, because I understand what their preference in communication style is.

And just yesterday I was chatting to a Chief Commercial Officer. He was talking about his son and the fact that his son never uses the phone to phone. It is all sending WhatsApp messages to friends and he could not understand it. He was like, “you have got to pick up the phone and talk to people.” And interestingly enough, from my perspective, I was thinking about it just the other day as I was walking home from the train station, that short form of communication that requires a quick response. My preference of communication is text message or WhatsApp or Instant Messenger, because it allows for quick assimilation of the idea and response, and it is effective at managing disparate teams. Lots of people, multiple reports, but you have got to adjust your communication to the people that are receiving that communication.

So it is using the telephone, it is using text message, it is using Instant Messenger, and then looking at people that you are managing – their ability to do that. And we know what their preference is and if they are able to change their preferences. That is one of the things that I look at in people. One of the other things that I look at when I am recruiting people for my management structure, is their proactivity and communicating with me. Will they be coming and telling me everything that’s going on in their business? Are they comfortable with me having a completely open door? And so, you know – at any time of the day or night they can communicate with me and if I am up and around I will respond to them.

But then, also, their comfort that I will have an open line of communication with the people that report into them. Because one of the things from my perspective in managing a globally dispersed team, and teams that are kind of close to me is understanding the context of the environment within which they are operating themselves. And how do I add value to them in that? If I only listened to their voice, I am only getting their view. But if I hear the voices of the people that report to them, I can hear what is happening in the organisation, and I can help them make sense of what is happening in the organisation and support them better.

That, for a leader, who is reporting to me, can be an uncomfortable position because it can make them feel like I am undermining their leadership position.

So from my perspective, I have got to manage that very carefully and make sure that I am not doing that, but they also need to be comfortable with the fact that I am talking to the people that report to them, really to get better context of what is happening within their business so I can provide them greater support and not to undermine them. So their comfort and to a certain extent, I think therefore their own sense of purpose and their own sense as a leader that they are comfortable with, why they have got that job and that they are not insecure or do not show the tendency to become insecure in the future, are some of the things that also look for when I am recruiting someone in that position.

Read more: How to lead other leaders

5. Would you say it is fair to say that with such a disparate team, there is sometimes a need for a much more fluid hierarchy?

Yes, and I think if you see modern teams today, the old organisational hierarchy of – you can have maximum of eight reports – all that is no longer really true. And so I have got too many. I have got 16 direct reports, and I would love to change it, but I keep on trying to and it does not necessarily work. So yes, I think there needs to be more fluidity in your management style and how you have your reports organised. And more and more it becomes how well do you lead people across a matrix, because many times they have got me as the boss, right? But they have also got a local boss that has got a different part of the business, and so how did they manage that dynamic and how do you support them within that.

I think the old school way of running and managing a hierarchical organisation is quickly changing, and when we service clients, we look at how most of their organisations are changing as well. It has become much more how quickly – do you adapt and change the environment that you are in and therefore, how you are enabling that with project teams that are executing change programmes. And for you to be effective at that, you need to have different project teams reporting in to you at different times, which means the people that report in to you change relatively regularly.

6. This is a question that we ask all of our podcast guests, what do you think are the top three qualities that make a good leader?

First and foremost, for me, it is – lead by example. Role model the behaviours that you want to see in others, support them in doing the same. It is your job as a leader to, as a group, come up with the direction and then finalise on the direction and set the direction for where the business is going.

Then from my perspective, it is putting the trust in the people that report in to you to execute on that direction. Empower them to do that and give them the space to be able to execute on. Do not then try and step in and micromanage them, trust them that they do what they need to do. Obviously guide them along the way and be there as the sounding board, so that you can identify when things are not quite going in the direction you would want them to be. But you really need to set the direction, give them the space and then empower them to do that and really resist closing the space down. When things are not going perfectly sometimes people’s natural reaction is to close the space down really quickly and start to manage. And that removes all of that trust and space that you have built up over time. So resist the temptation initially try and guide first, and only really close down the spaces when you are in a crisis moment and you know that things are not going to be successful if you don’t step in and help.

So you know from my perspective, it is my job is to set direction, guide, trust and empower.

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In the financial sector, 2018 will likely be remembered across the globe as ‘the year of compliance’ after the launch of the second iteration of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive’ EU framework (MiFID II) in January, followed by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May. Add to this a string of national initiatives, such as the review of the financial sector by the newly-formed Banking Royal Commission in Australia, and the financial industry has never been under such scrutiny and accountability. However, there is an opportunity in every crisis, and candidates with a compliance background are in high demand with attractive packages on offer.

A raft of new regulation

The financial sector globally is currently being hit by wave upon wave of new regulations. After Basel 4, the Dodd-Frank Act and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), MiFID II came into effect in January. Its objective is to prevent conflicts of interest in the sector by requiring asset managers to distinguish between trading commissions and investment research fees.

Furthermore, the sector was hit by GDPR this spring, which is another, far-reaching regulation. It aims to increase data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area, but the impact of GDPR stretches far beyond Europe as any organisation worldwide which deals with EU consumers and organisations has to comply.

Industry shake-up

GDPR is a ‘game changer’ for the financial services industry. Many small firms have found it difficult to dedicate the time and resources to get it right and will continue to struggle to be fully compliant; especially as many are still struggling with the costs and demands of Mifid II and other complex regulatory reforms, says Nigel Green, the boss of deVere Group.

“GDPR represents a watershed moment for the financial services sector. This is an opportunity for all firms to redouble their efforts to overhaul their business practices where necessary, ensuring the clients’ interests are always front and centre,” explains the founder and chief executive of the independent financial services organisation.

He continues: “Holding data without good reason to do so will no longer be allowed. Not only is it protecting clients further by putting them back in control of their personal data, but it is going to make the industry work smarter, harder and better.”

Green believes that one of the key ways that GDPR will affect the operations of financial services companies is in the storage and management of the data; therefore, experts in this highly specialised field will likely benefit from good opportunities.

Compliance and data experts in demand

Meanwhile, in Australia, change is also coming to the financial sector in the wake of the Royal Banking Commission, which was set up last year by the Australian government to focus on misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry. Many Australian banks have ‘significant issues’ with compliance the commission heard; suggesting this will be at the forefront of efforts to clean up the sector in the country going forward.

There was a time in the financial sector when compliance was almost an after-thought, where officers were relegated to the backwaters of the industry. The financial crisis of 2008 changed all that. A recent study by Accenture showed that institutions expect to increase investment in compliance by 89% over the next two years and its strategic role continues to grow, with over two-thirds of chief compliance officers reporting directly to the CEO or the board of directors. Demand for candidates with skills across the full range of risk and compliance has never been higher, from legal experts and specialists in risk framework design and implementation, to risk data analytics and monitoring, as well as risk management experts.

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