Attracting and retaining talent continues to be challenging for single-family offices.
A recent survey found that family offices are increasingly vulnerable to retirements and staff departures: 70% of family office respondents reported difficulty hiring staff and 65% said they are concerned about retaining key staff.
As Scott Saslow, founder and CEO of single-family office ONE WORLD Investments and author of “Building A Sustainable Family Office,” recently noted on the Family Business/Business Family podcast, talent management tends to receive “very little airtime” in family offices.
Many family offices are “very unclear about what talent they need and how to build it, whereas the sustainable ones are very thoughtful about talent,” Saslow said. “In the same way that a board of the Fortune 500 company’s primary responsibility is hiring and firing the CEO, thinking about talent management, thinking about succession, some of those same elements are also warranted in a family office context.”
Complicating matters is the fact that single-family offices’ lean operating models leave fewer opportunities for clear career paths. Unlike large financial institutions or multifamily offices that offer structured ladders and predictable advancement, most single-family offices operate with limited layers of management.
“What is typical in multifamily offices or financial institutions like public accounting firms — where there is a career ladder and clear progression tied to individual performance, metrics and firm performance — doesn’t always translate into the single-family office world,” says Chris Dickson, family office advisory leader for RSM US LLP.
Much of the difference comes down to scale. A small number of family offices resemble operating companies, with fully built-out departments – accounting and finance, IT, HR, client service – and multiple levels of responsibility.
“In those larger, more structured family offices, career pathing becomes easier: you might start off as an associate or senior associate and then work your way up,” Dickson says. “But most family offices run lean and agile. For someone to move up, either the scope of services and operations has to expand, or there needs to be a vacancy for one reason or another.”
In most lean offices, that means an employee is unlikely to move through a predictable path — from senior accountant to controller to director of accounting and finance to CFO. Instead, family offices often look for employees who are satisfied performing a particular function on a day-to-day basis, knowing advancement opportunities may be infrequent.
The nature of senior roles presents another challenge. In multifamily offices, financial institutions, or public accounting firms, a controller or director typically oversees a team.
“In a family office setting, you don’t always have that team. You’re expected to roll up your sleeves and do the work — because the controller may also be the staff accountant, senior accountant and manager all rolled into one person,” Dickson says. “On top of that, there’s often little internal support — not just for technical questions, but for how to navigate family dynamics, evolving expectations and the constant need to adapt. The environment is lean and agile, and while that can be energizing for some, it can also create a different kind of stress. You may have autonomy, but you’re often wearing multiple hats, managing external advisors and working in a setting where it may be hard to say no — even when you’re at capacity.”
Evolving approaches to employee retention
To address these challenges, many family offices are taking a more intentional approach to employee retention, combining multiple strategies rather than relying on a single lever. Compensation structures are being refined to better differentiate pay for key executives, while at the same time families are expanding professional development opportunities — for example, encouraging participation in industry groups and events.
“Historically, the focus on confidentiality within a family office was very high — for example, they might use only on-premise servers instead of cloud solutions, and employees often didn’t attend industry events,” Dickson says. “Confidentiality is still of utmost importance, but I think there is now more willingness to support the learning and development of staff and to send them into these environments. As a result, more conversations are happening and peer cohorts are forming to share best practices and approaches for addressing various complexities that may arise within family offices.”
Even with this increased openness, it can still be difficult to find the right hires for family offices.
“A family office is an intimate setting for the family members. It’s relationship-driven. It’s trust-driven. It’s confidence-driven. You can hire the best technical person in the world, but if they’re missing those other three factors, or an ability to quickly build rapport with the family, they’re not going to be long for that family office,” Dickson says. “And even finding the right technical person can be hard — because most industries reward deep specialization, while family offices often need people who are comfortable wearing multiple hats and navigating across a broad set of responsibilities.”
A changing landscape
Meanwhile, technology is starting to reshape roles within family offices — particularly as more offices focus on data strategy and data governance. Dickson says roles like business analysts and data librarians are emerging to help family offices better leverage technology and prepare for the use of artificial intelligence.
“This raises some important questions,” Dickson says. “Will offices still rely on lower-level resources to conduct manual analysis, or will those roles shift toward a more strategic, analytical function — where employees evaluate outputs from large language models, refine prompts and think critically about how to use that data in decision making?”
Agentic AI is another area to watch.
“If family offices start adopting agent-based systems, will they need people who can build those agents — and, in turn, build guardian agents to then audit or monitor those initially built? Where does the human stay in the loop?” Dickson says. “The roles within a family office may begin to look very different going forward. While the nature of the work is changing, many of the same complexities around talent management and role identification will likely remain.”