With unemployment rates at historic lows, competition is fierce in the marketplace, and employers are at a risk of losing candidates—or even key employees—to competitors offering additional perks and benefits. So, it’s more important than ever for business owners to understand how they can maximize employee engagement and, therefore, retention. The good news is there are a number of small enhancements you can make—ranging from communication to professional development—that can help keep your employees happy in their roles. 

Running an efficient and profitable advisory practice, with happy, satisfied clients who refer you to their colleagues, friends, and family is the goal of financial advisors everywhere. But over time, as your practice grows, you may find that you have too many clients, leading to bandwidth issues among your staff and diluting the client experience. Or, you may not have enough ideal clients to maintain your continued trajectory, which is a different problem altogether.

Many advisors often struggle with determining when to hire a new employee, and it can be difficult to decide if the costs—whether it be money or time—are worth it. Is it better to be proactive and add someone to the team ahead of time to avoid disaster, or to save money and wait to see if existing employees can handle the additional work?

While changes in the financial services industry are occurring at breakneck speed, so too are changes in human resources best practices as we face new regulations, increasing human capital needs, and other outside pressures. Firms of all sizes that have a strong HR strategy at their center are poised to hold onto talented employees for the long term. But that strategy needs to evolve with the times and the firm’s growth.

If I asked you to define partnership, what would you say? It’s a challenging question because partnerships mean different things to different people. For many advisors I speak with, a partnership is a structure that provides certain benefits. Specifically, it allows them to expand scale and capacity, maximize operational efficiency, create economies of scale, foster redundancy of skill sets, and establish a firm identity rather than one based solely on the personality of the founder.