Tips to strengthen your agency's culture

Below are some tips for how to strengthen your agency's culture, and bring employees closer together as a team, throughout the year.

Encourage and maintain open lines of communication: Team members should ideally feel that their time, effort and input are valued. CEOs and team leaders at advisory practices can give employees regular opportunities to freely express their opinions by scheduling monthly one-on-one, closed-door meetings with every team member. They should also make a conscious effort to encourage employees to proactively come to them with feedback and ideas — both positive and negative. When employees feel they are free to come to their supervisor about anything, they are generally happier and more enthusiastic, and believe they are truly part of a team.

Help employees meet professional development goals: In regularly scheduled meetings with employees, ask them if there are areas of your practice in which they would like to become more proficient, or if they would like to learn more about certain aspects of wealth management or client relationship management. Look for opportunities to bring these employees in on projects involving areas where they want to learn more, and invite guest speakers to your office to discuss certain wealth management products, strategies or workflows in greater depth for the benefit of your entire staff. You can also encourage employees to locate and attend professional development conferences, seminars or workshops, and help subsidize the attendance fees. Employees who feel their company managers are taking an active interest in helping them blossom professionally are more likely to bring their A-game to every task.

Bring employees together to work on team-building projects: To give employees the opportunity to participate in something that will improve the quality of life for others in your community — while also bonding as a team — you can set aside one day per quarter, or one day every half-year, as a community service and team-building day. Volunteering at a local food bank, or working together to build wheelchairs for the handicapped or bicycles for underprivileged children, are all projects that remind employees that they are part of something greater than themselves, and enable them to troubleshoot and grow together in pursuit of something to benefit the greater community. When employees work better together, they work better for clients.

A defined and strong company culture is essential for finding the right people for an advisory practice — and helping them grow as the firm grows. When all employees are on the same page as far as their mission and core values, an advisory practice is best positioned to help clients achieve their financial goals.

Chris Radford (info@ae-wm.com) is president of AE Wealth Management.

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