We’ve all been there with the proverbial “first-day jitters” – a new job means getting to know new people and new processes. Even if we know the work very well, each firm is unique in its approach, tech stack, and culture. Onboarding is a crucial moment in your new employee’s journey and can have a lasting impact on the years ahead.
Studies show that employees who have a positive onboarding experience are more likely to stay with a company for three years or more. Studies also show that it takes eight months for an employee to reach their full productivity. Onboarding financial advisors then is a high-stakes game that must be efficient and well-aimed, or a lot of time will be wasted.
Knowing the Why Before the What
Knowing your mission helps the journey make sense. This is how great onboarding starts: Before training, before orientation, new hires need to know the “why” behind your firm.
You’re not there just to make healthy returns and air-tight plans; you’re there to help people align their finances with their values—to put strategy to their dreams. These larger, more complex motivations give your work culture meaning which makes it more effective and helps it have a lasting impact.
An important part of this step, which is easy to forget, especially if we are passionate about our firm’s vision and history, is to show the new hires that they are woven into that story. They need to not only know the mission but to know they are vital to its fulfillment.
As one commentator wrote: “Individuals who are treated as instruments, rather than investments, will always keep one foot out the door and one eye on the horizon.”
The Technology Question
Technology is vital to any firm in today’s world and takes up more and more of the onboarding process. You’ll need to train new hires on your internal advisor tech: systems for tracking tasks, creating client reports, comparing financial plans, and project management.
You’ll also need to train them in the client technology your firm uses. What does it look like on the client’s end? Advisors will need to be conversant and communicate with clients according to company guidelines and culture.
The only way to create a consistent AX (advisor experience) and CX (client experience) are if everyone follows the same workflows. You need technology that allows you to create workflows, track tasks and ensure consistency across processes.
The Skience Answer
Too often, onboarding becomes scattered and prolonged because new hires have to learn siloed technology tools.
Instead of an integrated approach, the new hire goes from one piece of tech to another, becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. What should take a matter of weeks gets piecemealed out over several months.
Skience technology offers financial institutions an integrated hub that connects to all the tools you’ll need.
The Skience platform is designed to optimize a wealth manager’s workday through an end-to-end guided workflow solution that enables a rich flow of data between the CRM, managed account platforms, and clearing and custody providers.
You can save time and speed adoption with guided workflows that deliver a consistent user experience across leading custodian and clearing firms (eTrade, Fidelity, Pershing, Schwab, and TD Ameritrade) and product providers, ensuring that advisors are working within a compliant framework and along a familiar path. You can also build your own workflows to customize to your needs, and our guided workflows can get you started.
Onboarding financial advisors with Skience means you can send them through one system that integrates the other systems. Rather than a host of different machines and operations, you’re connecting new hires to the main circuit board.
This means clarity, efficiency, and most of all, confident new employees.
It Doesn’t Have to be Sink or Swim
The flood of information at the start of a new advisory position is overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be sink or swim. A guided workflow can help your employees navigate uncharted waters and give you a map of where they’ve been and need to go.
In the financial profession, tomorrow doesn’t happen without technology. Equipping your team with a digital solution that integrates disparate technologies and gives your new employees a starting point for the adventure of working with you can be the difference between keeping advisors for life or watching them depart in tech-driven frustration.