Industry needs flexible employment practices

A business sustainability expert has warned the financial planning industry to change its employment practices in order to attract more people into the industry and, in particular, increase the female participation rate of the profession.

Peter McDonald, a partner at McDonald Partners law firm, has told an audience of financial advisers at an AXA succession forum that the financial planning profession will have to deal with the poor female representation in their industry soon or run the risk of losing potential recruits to other vocations.

“In the law we have 52 per cent of graduates now who are female, and in the health sciences at Melbourne University it’s now 65 per cent in medicine and dentistry…Medical and health services are popular with women because they can do sessional work,” McDonald explained.

“It’s a message to people. We [financial planning] as an industry generally have said to people we will only take you on if you’re full time. Now that’s a challenge for you because if you maintain that thought process you’re locking out 52 to 56 per cent of potential candidates for your business,” he added.

According to McDonald, adopting a more flexible approach to employment practices will help the profession address shortage of new talent it is currently experiencing. He suggested creating more permanent part-time positions for staff to help solve the problem.

A second matter he feels financial advisers need to focus on to help them with recruitment and in turn succession planning is the profile of the industry.

“As an industry we [financial planning] are new, relatively speaking in historical terms, but we as an industry are not doing enough to develop graduates to make them realise that this is a good career opportunity,” McDonald said.

He cited the Australian Institute of Finance and Investment as one body that is already beginning to look at the problem in practical terms and proposed its lead should be followed.

“They’ve got a program now in secondary schools and at every school in Australia they are trying to get into with DVDs and booklets to introduce the whole concept of insurance and financial planning in the school environment just so kids and careers teachers are aware of the industry because too many are not,” McDonald said.