By Joseph Neu
Treasury recruitment, compensation and staff development have been big topics of discussion for treasurers recently. On the one hand, there is the perennial mandate for treasury to do more with less and on the other there is a realization that treasury has been burning muscle since the crisis and thus needs to bulk up as much as trim fat.
Indeed, what’s made it possible for many treasury functions to work, with some help from process automation, has been treasurers’ ability to find, cultivate, and hold on to high performers. At some point, however, high performers burn out, see the need for new challenges or, if they are not advancing to their expectations, seek to take their skills elsewhere. The crisis response of the last few years has accelerated these time lines for many.
Thus, an under-reported lesson from the crisis is the high performers are absolutely critical for treasury, if not firm survival, and thus the need to cultivate and, to the extent possible, compensate high performers warrants a bit more of a treasurer’s attention. Since treasurers can’t go too far with compensation in a corporate environment, a larger effort must be made with cultivation.
Tapping into Programs
Generally speaking, treasurers report mixed value in HR assistance specific to treasury recruitment. Treasury skill-sets can be too specific and nuanced. However, treasurers are finding they can successfully tap into the executive leadership development programs that many corporations have adopted with HR help.
Executive development programs can serve two purposes:
1) Attract high-potentials to treasury. Treasury participation in executive development programs gives treasurers access to a select internal talent pool, as participants in such programs are usually pre-screened as high potentials. If treasury has a rotational program or the treasurer is open to internal recruitment from outside functions, they may find talent that will become high performers for treasury, provided that can be trained, while gaining people with tangible experience and knowledge of the company.
2) Cultivating high-potentials in treasury. Encouraging high-potentials in treasury to participate in executive leadership development programs gives them a sense that their value is recognized. It also gives them another avenue to pursue upward moves within the company, which many will find motivating. The risk, of course, is that exposing high-potentials to these avenues speeds their exit from treasury.
Promoting treasury
To balance the risk and reward, treasurers need to adopt a pay-it-forward mind set: if they lose a high-potential to another function in the business (or elsewhere) they gain an ally to promote treasury and the value it can add. In the meantime, having treasury high-potentials exposed to others, including those in the organization’s leadership program will serve as a powerful internal recruitment tool.
The goal is to position treasury as a highly interesting stop on the career path of all high-potentials. This way treasurers can cultivate high-performers among direct and indirect recruits.
That direct treasury recruits will see multiple potential advancement paths to motivate outstanding performance will be doubly helpful as advancement prospects within treasury become more improbable. A treasurer can only have so many direct reports.
Indirect recruits, meanwhile, must be incentivized to give treasury a try and invest the time for treasury-specific training. Thus, treasurers must not only promote how great it is to work in treasury, but design meaningful jobs for them and train them efficiently.
Most treasury functions have evolved away from the old “ivory-tower” to become a strategic complement to their lines of business. Why then should leadership development be siloed? The next logical step is to offer the business treasury’s best talent and recruit their best talent for a stint in treasury. This is a great way to cultivate and motivate high-performers, promote treasury within the organization, further integrate treasury and non-treasury thinking, all while making treasury a real part of the whole enterprise.