Attracting the Younger Employee

We have been having quite a few conversations lately about attracting younger employees to work at financial institutions; and, as a member of Generation Y, I would suggest the following as a very simple way to think about attracting younger employees. This is suggested as a starting point and will hopefully challenge your thought process as it relates to hiring at your institution.

First of all, think about “coolness” – and I realize this is difficult for many of today’s financial institutions as most members of Generation Y wouldn’t consider many financial institutions to be cool (or attractive) places to work. For reference, think about today’s high profile companies like Google and Starbucks that are attractive and considered “cool” places to work by many younger people. Sure the perks are great at each of these employers, but perhaps more important is the environment that each has created for their employees. These environments are modern, sophisticated and fun places that are conducive to self-expression and creativity - characteristics that wouldn’t normally be associated with banks.

So take a look at this graph and think about the coolness that would be associated with your bank - by someone under the age of twenty-five. It’s probably fair to say that there is an inverse relationship between coolness and compensation required to attract the younger generations of employees; and that if you rank low on the coolness side, than your compensation offering would need to be higher to attract valuable employees in this age group. However, the flip side to this is more important. Banks need to shift focus to make the workplace more attractive to younger generations – this then has a rippling effect as a bank with younger employees becomes more easily marketable to younger generations as well.

This topic is deserving of more careful attention by banks around the country – and I plan to revisit this topic in future blog posts, articles and presentations.