Hiring staff for a family office can be a challenge, especially in a tight labor market. But recruiting employees is just the first step. Next, you need to figure out how to retain them — and that can be just as daunting.
According to the 2024 RSM Family Office Operational Excellence report, just over half of single family offices say they face challenges retaining staff. Families often value stability in their family offices, which makes retaining staff a key priority. But family offices, particularly smaller ones, don’t have access to all the same tools that large corporations have for enticing workers to stay long-term.
Still, family offices do have options for retaining staff members:
- Career paths – One of the easiest ways to retain workers is by offering a path for promotion, with higher pay and greater responsibilities. Yet in a small office, this can be difficult to achieve.
“The career path is not as clear as it is in public accounting or wealth management,” says Jill Barber, president of CYMI Holdings, the family office of the Clay and Mary Mathile family. Barber started at CYMI 25 years ago and has grown her career there, most recently becoming president, and other employees have also moved to new positions. But that was possible because the office was growing, which is not the case for every family office.
“We have five people in wealth advisory services right now. If our head of wealth advisory services left, we only have one spot to fill. It’s not like we have five heads of wealth advisory. We only need one CIO, but we have three investment analysts. So it makes it harder,” Barber says.
The key may be in thinking beyond simply having employees move straight up within one function.
“We think more about breadth of experience instead of climbing the ladder,” Barber says.
- Realistic job responsibilities – Employees are more likely to stay if they feel successful in their job. Long-tenured family office employees can see their responsibilities gradually expand until they are doing a wider range of tasks than would typically be expected of one person.
“It is really important to set clear expectations to the marketplace and to the individuals that you’re speaking to and to the family,” says Janet Arzt, founder and managing partner of Parere Advisory. “Maybe the job is actually three jobs. You may want to consider hiring three people, because if you hire one person and you give them all of these responsibilities, I don’t know how long they will be here in this seat.”
- New opportunities and exposure – For some employees, the opportunity to broaden their skills can keep them engaged in the job.
“Some people want to know where they’re going to be in five years. Other people get really excited about the opportunity set that a family office brings — because you never know,” Barber says. “A family member might buy a business in a year and there could be an opportunity to work with or for that business.”
Even without new opportunities such as a new business, there are ways to build employees’ knowledge outside their immediate position. For example, at CYMI, lower-level employees are invited to be part of strategic planning conversations.
“They aren’t in every conversation, but we do a lot of whiteboarding and brainstorming and small group activities and try to surface their ideas around it,” Barber says. “It gives them an opportunity to see the process in a way that usually lower-level staff might not be able to see, and it also gives them a voice in the process, which helps with buy-in. We think that kind of inclusion, that cross pollination of ideas, will create more value long term.”
- Training and development – The RSM report found that 70% of family offices said upskilling existing staff is difficult.
CYMI helps employees with development in several ways, Barber says, including sending them to conferences and other educational programs and offering executive or leadership coaches. They also offer on-the-job training, something they are working to expand.
“We try to create opportunities that you wouldn’t have in larger organizations because they are more hierarchical,” Barber says. “How do you allow them to see more, be a part of more? We can do it because we’re small and are able to get everybody in one room and have that conversation.”
Finally, it’s important to remember that although the goal of family office leaders is to retain employees, some turnover is normal and can even be beneficial. When employees leave, it can provide opportunities for others in the organization to take on new responsibilities — and for new employees to bring in fresh ideas.