Is your financial services organization doing enough to fill skills gaps?
Can your skilling programs meet the demands of digital transformation — or help you compete in this volatile labor market?
Financial services organizations have always been ahead of other industries in prioritizing skilling and career development.
Employees expect to see pathways to grow in their careers — and they are eager to explore new opportunities and technology to get them to their goals.
But the competition for talent is only heating up.
- Retention: 70% of CEOs in banking, asset management, and insurance indicate that talent retention will have “a significant impact” on their institutions in the next 3 years.
- Recruitment: Time-to-hire for many roles is on the rise.
- Skills gaps: Nearly half of workers will have to retrain this decade.
Leading organizations have figured out that the traditional approaches to talent development are simply not enough to meet the rising demand and need for skills.
Instead, they’re taking a new approach — one that focuses on the entire employee experience, combining their employees' passion for career growth with targeted skilling opportunities to move them into focus areas of the business.
Here are three strategies that set these organizations apart.
1. Don’t rely solely on internal DIY programs or one-off content partnerships to solve all skilling needs. Instead, seek a comprehensive solution.
HR tech stacks tend to be in a state of flux. They are constantly expanding or contracting as organizational needs evolve, and more importantly, when what is and isn’t working becomes apparent.
This can make finding the right approach to employee experience a challenge. With internal academies or one-off partners that meet a specific need (for example, an LXP), organizations may be able to achieve one or two skilling objectives.
But these solutions often end up feeling disjointed for employees, and are simply not enough to move the needle in driving internal mobility outcomes.
16+ priority pathways into high-demand areas
Forward-thinking organizations instead partner with Guild to design career pathways that lead to high-demand roles. Our close partnerships with vetted, high-quality skilling and education providers empower employees to easily choose from, and apply to, an array of fully or partially funded programs directly via the Guild platform.
850+ Business and Technology certificates, bootcamps, and degree programs across 30 areas of study in Guild’s catalog.
These offerings provide both scale and depth for skilling efforts at every level of the organization, with the ultimate goal of moving employees along popular career pathways into jobs your organization needs to fill.
Guild’s Learning Marketplace currently offers 850+ Business and Technology certificate, certification, bootcamp, and degree programs across 30 areas of study.
This includes high-demand financial services programs in:
- Executive leadership and management
- Cybersecurity
- Data analytics
- Cloud computing
And more. Guild’s Credit for Training program can also help eligible employees obtain actual college credit for the training they complete on the job, with an average $1,900 in potential savings.¹
Guild’s comprehensive approach helps employers leverage data to implement and track results of the program.
We also have product features — Priority Pathways and Talent Development Analytics — that help connect business priorities with the skills, interests, and career aspirations of employees.
These product capabilities synthesize labor market analytics and employer-specific metrics to create clear, skills-based pathways that deliver workforce outcomes.
Priority Pathways are curated career pathways that show your employees what skills and credentials are required to get from their current job into high-demand job families in your organization, like Financial Advisor, Data Analyst, or Software Engineer.
Talent Development Analytics give you real-time visibility into your employees’ learning journeys. That includes:
- Application numbers
- Enrolled employees
- Stalled employees
- Graduated employees
This data helps HR teams better predict when employees will be ready to move into a new role.
2. Design career mobility at scale to build internal talent pipelines for high-demand roles across the organization.
Financial services institutions tend to struggle the most with scaling career mobility efforts across complex organizational and business structures.
Guild specializes in helping employers navigate these hurdles. We work exclusively with the nation’s leading largest, often complex organizations to build scalable talent pipelines, meet mobility goals, and grow impact — including Discover, PNC, and more.
In practice, this looks like implementing best-in-class policies to make your programs more widely accessible and attractive by:
- Removing financial barriers to education and skilling
- Providing more visibility into in-demand career paths
- Marketing career mobility opportunities strategically
- Offering access to personalized coaches
Financial services institutions that work to grow and scale career opportunities with Guild see better internal mobility outcomes.
- Financial services learners are 90% more likely to be promoted than their non-engaged counterparts.²
- Learners at one Financial Services employer are 2.3X more likely to have been promoted and 1.7x more likely to change title compared to non-engaged employees.³
Financial services employees who learn with Guild are 90% more likely to be promoted than their non-engaged counterparts.
Guild’s marketing support broadens your reach and impact.
In addition to design and custom insights, Guild offers marketing support in generating awareness and excitement of the program companywide.
We work with you to communicate at scale and:
- Educate employees on the learning programs and career pathways available to them
- Encourage employees to continue on their skilling and career journey
- Provide ongoing communication support to optimize your strategy and maximize employee engagement
3. See high churn employees as high potential — and support them accordingly.
Leading financial institutions see potential in all their workforce.
In fact, the employees most likely to turn over — entry-level and hourly roles, or frontline workers — offer a huge untapped talent pool.
70% of the workforce are frontline workers.
Designing skilling programs for this population with program features such as tuition assistance, dedicated coaching, and additional support services expands adoption and program impact.
More people empowered to learn means more employees skilling into the roles your organization needs.
The employees most likely to turn over — entry-level and hourly roles, known in other industries as frontline workers — offer a huge untapped talent pool.
Guild’s solution offers a supportive, best-in-class employee experience for everyone.
Guild’s Career Opportunity Platform is designed to streamline and simplify the employee experience for everyone. It helps each individual to:
- Explore available roles within their institution, see eligible programs to help them skill, and access coaching support to reach their goals.
- Hone the career readiness skills they need to take the next step in their professional journeys through Guild’s Career Accelerator tool.
Download the full Financial Services Talent Trends & Insights Report
Access our latest Financial Services Talent Trends & Insights report to learn more about:
- Costly talent trends: 3 financial services talent trends that drive up costs — and how to beat them
- Proven retention tactics: How to improve retention for your employees churning at the highest rates
- Why career mobility is hot: Why career mobility is critical to a competitive employer value proposition
- Why outcomes (not intentions) matter: How leading financial services institutions are realizing better mobility outcomes
