COVID-19 has caused a massive culture shift in advisory firms today, largely because most employees are working in a virtual environment.
In fact, 46% of advisory firm leaders are worried about the impact working from home in the crisis is having on their firm cultures, according to the recent Herbers & Company Culture and Client Service Study.
This means they are concerned about employee satisfaction, productivity, engagement, client service standards, burnout and how to they can best connect with their teams.
For the past two months, independent financial advisory firms — their leaders, advisors, investment management teams, and client service and operational staff — tirelessly have been working to serve clients and recalibrate their firms' operational processes and procedures for the new virtual environment.
As these have been designed, created and deployed, improvement and development of advisory firm' culture has taken a back seat to serving clients.
The "new normal" of COVID-19 has become an accepted reality for many advisory firm leaders, and that means leaders are seeking to improve their firm cultures.
In doing so, they are attempting to get a handle on what impact the coronavirus will have on their relationships with staff, the next generation of leadership, their own leadership styles and methodologies, how they interact with teams, and the best ways to manage employee productivity now and in the future.
Why Happy Cultures Are More Productive
"Culture" comes from Latin meaning care. One of the major cornerstones to caring for a group of people is helping to cultivate their happiness. By doing so, firms can raise staff productivity and keeps remote teams connected.
Starting in 2008, we began studying the happiness of staff working for independent advisory firms. Our goal has been to figure out what firm leaders can do to influence and enhance happiness in their teams.
The results were published in 2011 in our research paper, "P4 Cultures: The Key Elements to Creating Great Business by Creating Great Cultures."
The past six years we have continued to study happiness in firms and their cultures, especially in those firms with remote staff.
