It’s always a challenge finding and developing star performers for treasury and ensuring an attractive career path.
An unattractive legacy of treasury departments has been that of a back-office function that has to come in earlier than everyone else and do a lot of busy work. Execute that wire! Set that cash position! And so on. But the reality is that while there may be some truth to this view, prospective employees might be missing the bigger picture on the impact treasury can make on other parts of the company.
Take for instance the level of interaction treasuries now have with critical parts of the business as well as the value the department brings to risk management generally. Or the key part treasurers play in the company’s ability to fund growth and acquisitions. Consequently, treasurers often need to be the department champion to promote these various roles and help garner additional visibility.
This was a topic recently discussed at a NeuGroup Engineering and Construction Treasurers’ Peer Group meeting. In one meeting presentation, a member shared some of the strategies she used to attract and keep star performers. One of the first things this member laid out to prospective treasurers, however, was that they wouldn’t be getting rich as a treasurer. In other words, prospects won’t be drawn to treasury by the salary.
But that shouldn’t be a game-ender nor seen as a liability by recruiters. The key then is to sell new prospects on the career opportunities that come from being in treasury and the financial benefits associated with that. Referring to treasury’s value-add role of advisor to the business may attract talent and position treasury jobs as more interesting than others (in finance and elsewhere). And strong performers, who want to have exposure to the operations but do not have heavy engineering backgrounds, can also use this avenue to change perceptions of cross-over value on the part of project/business leaders and create evangelists for treasury in the process.
Go forth
As has been the case across The NeuGroup peer group universe, talent needs exposure and movement. Therefore, one key success factor in developing talented individuals is to be able to let them go for awhile, or even for good. The best thing for them, and for the company, is to get hands on experience in other areas, particularly operations to learn better how the business runs. A good way to start this is to align treasury with the business units where treasury people are assigned a particular business to support. This gives treasury a lot of good exposure and makes treasury a more desirable department to move to.
Whatever the angle of pursuit, one critical step is if that “pursuit,” once successfully pursued, doesn’t work out. For just as important as hiring well is firing well; be prepared to quickly terminate if the fit is not there.