Retaining Your Treasury Team in the New Age of Hybrid Working

Foreign. We're going to talk about hybrid. We're going to be talking today about retaining your treasury team. Also Katie's done a lot of hard work of doing analysis of the salary survey. Yeah, we do the salary survey. Craig and I graft away and she gets all the glory. Joking aside, I'll go through some of the slides. For those of you who don't know me, most of you hopefully should I run the treasury recruitment company. Been going since 2002 and we've been a Treasury recruiter from before that been recruiting corporate treasury professionals right the way across the world, right the way from Texas, Chicago, New York just after the summer and then San Diego end of the year. So that's across the us. Katie and I and Craig as well will be Euro finance later this year and also we do. Craig's got a conference in a couple of days. Treasure Career Corner live in London. So we get to meet lots of you. Katie.

Yeah, so I head up the European side of the business. If you needed any advice on treasury across Europe, my experience is slightly different, it's a blended experience. So I've got 20 years experience in both specialist agency recruitment but Also I spent 10 years heading up in house teams as well. I've kind of been on both sides of the coin.

You've been on the other side as well. She's been gives you more of an understanding and also some of the issues we're going to talk about today as well. And lovely Mr. Perkins, Tom, Craig.

I look after, I look after head up our UK division. Been with the business coming up to very soon, two years. It's been an absolute roller coaster ride. It's been lots of fun. Got to know some amazing people. I actually came from a very technical kind of it kind of project program management background before joining Mike at the treasury recruitment company. And it's been absolutely fantastic as I expect some fantastic people now look after the vast majority of the UK kind of client portfolio here and got to know some fantastic people both professionally and personally. It's been been very good and looking to crack on and carry on meeting.

Some great people and this is one of the reasons as well. These guys helped me get amazing guests. I do a weekly podcast as of today, 112000 downloads, 260 plus episodes. The reason I show this isn't an advertorial, it's more because one of the key topics I talk about a lot of the time with treasurers out there in the world is hybrid working. Here we go. What it's like post Pandemic and some of the topics of discussion here, how you retain your treasury team. Seems a bit weird, doesn't it, that we as three recruiters are going to try and tell you about how to keep your treasury teams, how to work with blended treasury teams. I'm going to be talking San Diego, actually. One of the key topics there is going to be and in fact, New York with Steve Rosenthal from Broadridge, one of my previous guests. Great guy. He has a blended team. That's what we're going to call it because he's got some people 100% in the office, some people 100% working from home, working remotely, and the hybrid guys in the middle. How do you balance all of those? Now, I'm going to get Katie to deep dive into that a little bit later when we were talking to you guys 2023, again, what a weird world. Five years ago, if someone had actually said to me, even in our office, and Craig and I have talked about this and we come on to Katie's unique situation. If I had someone who said, I want flexible working because I didn't really believe in it, why? Because I'd been brought up in a traditional working environment. Thirteen years on the train every day to and from the West End. What a waste of two and a half, three hours at least of my life every single day. There was no need for it at the time. However, did we have the tools that have the broadband to be able to support zoom and everything else and be able to work remotely? Not really. Yes, I could do phone calls with people, but could I present like this? No, didn't have this set up. The tools weren't quite there. If I had the tools there, I'd probably, you know, Pandemic forced us into this new way of working. And Katie, let's go to you and then we'll come to you. Craig, your first observations. I know that we're going to go through some other. Some other topics and you know about opportunities and things, but what are your first observations and thoughts?

You mentioned earlier about my unique situation in regards to hybrid. I joined Mike before the pandemic and I am actually a fully remote worker. So, yeah, so they say. So I'm not based near the office. I have my own home office. But I think with anything comes benefits and comes challenges. The challenges you have to have more awareness of ensuring that you stay in touch with the team and that you are still connected to the business and what's going on on a daily basis. I think one of the things that is key and I guess that does come from my background in house still being able to create a certain culture within a business and you are tapping into both the experienced individuals as well as the more kind of junior individuals who want to be in the office environment a lot more. And I think one of the biggest challenges is to ensure that your team leaders are actually TR leaders because to manage remotely is very different to managing teams on a face to face basis.

I'm going to pass on to Craig as well and get him to give some input.

Now I actually look after. When you aren't in the office, Mike, I look after the team in the office. So I by choice go in, go in pretty much every day. Is that option to be. To be flexible. And every now and then, like you say, it makes sense. Certainly even today with this webinar, makes sense to be doing certain things from home where there's no background noise and distraction. And it's very situational to how I've. Or nonstrate you might be in the task you're doing. But I can certainly resonate to what you said in regards to that flexibility aspect of that remote work. And I know we're going to touch upon a lot of that today and talk about the benefits and the being in touch with it and as you mentioned. Okay. To the culture that comes along with it. So it's. There's quite a few misconceptions, I think with the hybrid remote working especially. So it'd be good to cover off some of those today and, you know, highlight the ones that are important and show the ones that aren't. So we can. Yeah, we'll cover all those off.

So rising opportunities, it's a buoyant market, but hybrid is the buzzword. You know, this is the quick key thing. Craig and I have talked about it with some UK clients a couple of times recently. I mean, I cover a lot more in the us Katie obviously runs Europe and Craig heads up uk. But hybrid, it's still a buzzword, but it's still a weird word. A number of clients, when I actually told them, said, well, what's your hybrid? Yeah, every Friday we don't come in the office. That's not hybrid. That's not coming into the office on a Friday, working from home on a Friday. I think there is. I've noticed with the US clients we deal with, they're still getting used to the idea of hybrid. They're still getting used to the way to work in that sense. You know, how many days is it. Is it Two days a week in the office, or is it four days a week in the office? Is that hard, Is that concrete or is that, you know, just written in pencil? And is it going to change again? We've started to see you've got companies like Google, this world, Amazon, some of the biggest employers who were still moving back and forth with what they. They're demanding. I had a client I was dealing with, I won't mention it, last year, and they said, oh, we're hybrid. We. We only work four days a week in the office. I'm like, right, okay. And then realized when I got talking to them a little bit more, they weren't even really hybrid, to be honest, because they were saying, we only will hire someone that's within 30 miles of the office. I said, so you're making them move to your state, which was relatively remote. It's not one of the key states, if you like, for, you know, say an Illinois or a Texas or where there's, you know, big collections of treasury people was a bit further out. And you're going to make them move that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said was already sending the wrong message. And we struggled to recruit for them. We did do some work with them, but, you know, it's still a struggle. Katie, across Europe, how are you finding hybrid working? How's it going out there?

They are a lot further forward than other regions, I think, not to step on Craig's, to have a hybrid working before the pandemic in the UK was some. Was not even a topic of discussion. It used to be a battle, whereas in across Europe, people were already doing sort of hybrid working to some degree, and they were a lot more open to people coming back on a flexible working basis. Pretty much. Across Europe now, there is a standard. There are pockets of clients that I work with that are asking for more presence in the office than sort of two or three days, but the norm tends to be two or three days. And now the companies have actually got written hybrid working policies in place. There are still some that have an unwritten rule, if you like, and in different departments there's a lot more flexibility. There seems to be consistency across Europe a lot more.

Now, Ray, you and I have discussed about how it's. It's one of the first questions or what's the order of questions when a candidate is registering with you? Can you just talk us through those?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, outside of understanding what that good opportunity, that next career move looks like, it is very much. Is it within, you know, is it the next Practical move, both experience wise, monetarily wise, and also in terms of work life balance. And, you know, Katie touched upon it there. The very big point of it's an unofficial hybrid working situation which could change at any moment. Where that's coming from. Is it. Is it from the CFO down or is it. Is it. Is it more a case that, oh, if at your manager's discretion. We do hear that quite often we have to probe in and understand what that really means, because certainly if we are pitching a really good opportunity to someone, we need to really understand, is it flexible for now, are we talking about indefinite flexibility? So it's become one of. That's on our end, on the client side, the most prominent question that we ask because it's the first thing that any candidate will ask nowadays. So it's a thing. And I think we've certainly come a long way in the UK in regards to that. We do still. Every now and then I'll speak to a potential new client and they know. The moment they tell me, because I can hear the tone of voice, they go hybrid working and you hear them retract. They know the challenge they're going to face. When they're saying it's going to be five days a week, it is surprising. It does still come up every now and then, but far few between now is. It is far more two to three days in office and working to the team schedule. Everyone's at the same time where it makes sense. It is a big thing. And Mike, you'll. I'll let you take over in a minute, but when we've had quite a big crossover with the us, especially recently, you know, where you've had UK teams establishing themselves in London, for example, over in the us, where their team don't even sit in the uk, they'll be the first treasury professional as an example. In London, you know, they're showing that flexibility. You can come in a day or two to sit with the general finance team or the rest of the time to work for from home. So it doesn't always just mean because your team, sometimes your team isn't even in the office, but sometimes there is a business need and meeting banks people and, you know, people in and around the area where there's a need to be in. So I think with business requirement, I think it's the best way that it should be going forward, really.

And we'll talk about. Now we come on to the next slide, but I'm going to drop in there as well. There you go. So positive Impact hybrid working. You know, we'll come out with something. Katie did some really good work on this as well, which we're going to. We're gonna tease out, but I'll make a couple of practical points. So I was recruiting for one of our clients, Streamland Media over in la, eventually recruited for them in New York, placed a person there, but it was 100 remote role. And I said, look, you sure you don't want the person to be based? You know, because. So used to hybrid. Yeah. And remote, really. But actually what I found was. And the CFO there said, mike, we've just spent two years sitting at our kitchen tables working, talking to each other, you know, just like this, having, you know, a background. If we took away the background here, you'd see the back of a shed with Craig. You see one of his living rooms with Katie in one of her. In her home office and stuff. Nice, nice rooms. But the fact is, you realize we're giving as much value to you guys from here than having to schlep into the office, go there, sit there, quick, close the door, turn this off, and everything else. We're giving just as much value. I think also, I'm just in the final stages of taking on opportunity with a CFO for a role now. She is based in Texas. We are looking to recruit for them. And this is a big announcement for you guys out there on a remote basis for a treasurer position in the U.S. she said to me, yeah, that would be great if they would be able to see us. But we actually get together once a quarter and this comes about the positive impacts and things like that and effective leadership. I think it's actually probably one of the questions we haven't got up here, but actually, how do you manage it? And maybe you'll have this in some of the later slides and stuff. And Katie, you can come into that. Positive impacts, benefits. Now, I know Katie, you did. I would say some notes. I asked Katie for some notes. Instead, she gave me an essay. Casey, back to you. Benefits. Talk us through. What's it like?

I think there's benefits for. There's benefits and challenges for both the employee and the employer. I think one of the biggest things for employees is they have the flexibility. They're less stressed, to some extent, they're more productive. You cut out that time commuting, which can be anything up to an hour or two hours each way each day. And what you'll find is, and I know I do, is I tend to work longer hours than I'm contracted to because you don't necessarily roll out of bed to your laptops. It's much easier to manage your time when you've got less stress from the commute. I think one of the biggest things, and we will touch on it later when we go into our salary survey. Our salary survey goes much further than just looking at actual physical salaries and benefits. It goes into employee satisfaction. I think when you've got the hybrid option, you're empowering your employees to manage their workload and to manage their time and get the job done. It doesn't matter where they get the job done, provided the job is, is done and therefore you're giving them that trust, which really does reflect on personal growth in happiness and in essence, retention becomes a lot stronger. You've got reduced expenses, you have got more time to actually do your job.

It's an interesting one. You say about reduced expenses. I looked a while ago because we all, in the uk, we had this massive price hike on energy and I spoke to Craig and the team about this and actually discovered that we couldn't. You know, there are lots of people, oh, I've contributed to my team's bills and everything else. I sat down with my accountant and I said, look, can I do that directly to their bills, you know, because they're having to work more from home, heat their houses and stuff. The answer is no, you can't, not legally. Even though HMRC and everyone else in the government at the time is like, yeah, don't. You know, and then the slowly return to work and all this stuff. It was a minefield, basically. I think for those guys that they were like, oh, God, what do we say? Because you can't contribute someone's energy, but they've got to still heat their homes and stuff. You know, we looked at different ways and that's what we did do. You know, I won't go into those details, but the fact is it is lower cost for some people. And then you've got these massive office buildings that sitting empty and there was, particularly in Europe. I know some of your clients had some really nice offices. Any other bits you think that are positive impacts? And then I'm going to do some negatives.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look on the employer side, what I said can obviously then relate to positive for employers. I think you get the productivity, especially within treasury as well. Companies are becoming a lot more tech savvy, you know, with the whole automation being another kind of buzzword as well. One of the other things is sort of the biggest, the pool of talents to be able to recruit from. So, you know, if somebody's got to only travel into the office twice a week, they're prepared to travel for longer for those two days. So actually then you're branching out further to where you're looking for individuals. One of the things that you and I might have got first hand experience is around actually you're accessing a wider and more diverse talent pool as well. If we look at females in treasury, looking at the hybrid working solution means that you can attract more females within the role. If you look at myself, I work around my daughter's school pickup and drop off, but I wouldn't necessarily be able to do that if there wasn't the hybrid element to it.

Craig, positive impact. So we do for hybrid.

Yeah, I think the biggest positive impact from, from us, and this is at every level of treasury is that extra kind of renewed level of like personal responsibility that comes along with that, I think, you know, and it still comes back to the productivity and when you're holding people more accountable for their time when you're not there in person. That all comes down to that, that planning of each person's day. I think to be able to trust your team, to be able to do that. It speaks volumes when like you say your lineman is happy for you to be able to work, you know, well the two to three days there. So I think it does tie very much into that, what Katie was saying around being productive and the extra responsibility it reflects well. Whereas if you're being told you need to come in every day, you're asking the question of why when a lot of the opportunities out there don't require it anymore. So I think it all kind of, it all kind of ties in, but it's a double edged sword at the end of the day because like I say, if you're not, if you're not making the most of the fact that you're not having the distractions and you know, I've got people kind of coming up and bombing you at your desk, then I think it is, you know, and like I said, it all comes down, you know, into planning that it is. And this is quite very relevant actually because we had a client very recently and you actually said, hey, we're looking for a Treasury analyst and they can be fully remote. That in itself does prove its own challenge because actually it's a very big pool because you've got a lot of people are interested and it's our job to then whittle out are people what reason Are people interested in how the Internet is it brings everybody out or everyone's the equation, which makes it a very different kind of complex situation. So there is a positive and negative to everything.

That's great. That's a great way to intro the negative aspects and stuff. And I'm going to. I'm going to come into here, there with the benefits come drawbacks, legal issues, you know, moving over to hybrid remote. You know, people need to think about. There were some good bits here where Katie's put about HR policies and, you know, how are you going to manage this? Because I think there's a lot, you know, things about goal setting and everything else. One of the other key things that I've noticed. Again, this comes back to the conversation I'm going to have with Steve and with Modesty Johnson, the treasurer at Streamland, when we do the session in New York later this year. What we're talking about is how do you treat everyone equally? How do you treat someone that you don't see at all? Again, let's do a different thing as well. Katie works 100% remotely. Unfortunately, I have to see her on Zoom sometimes. She can't have everything. But in addition to that, we have Carly. Now, Carly doesn't live as far away as Katie, but she chooses to work remotely because that's the way she prefers. I found that difficult to begin with. I don't anymore got over it because the fact is, you either embrace it or people like Carly won't work for me. I know that unless I am flexible with my working policies, then people won't work for me or people will leave. And that's what you treasurers need to think about as well. Unless you are flexible with it, they will vote with their feet or back in lockdown. You were getting adverts and I'm getting a lot at the moment. We're doing some work in New York for a senior treasury analyst role. If you're interested, send through your resume. But the weird thing is what we're finding is that because it's not 100 remote, if you make, you know, made it remote, you get 150. If you make it, oh, two to three days a week in the office, 15. It's like, what? Yeah. Really? Yeah, it suddenly drops down loads because, you know, people don't need to move at the moment. It's a very hot market out there and we know this and there are reasons you need to do it again. So it comes back to legality. How do you treat the people who are 100 remote like Katie and who are 100 at the moment, you know, most of the time, like Craig, you know, you have to think about these things. I had to as a recruitment leader and it's been bloody hard work. You know, on top of your day jobs. I don't expect to be easy. I'm not saying it is going to be.

And I think that's the key because it goes back to the fact that you have to be a strong leader. You've got to have the balance of giving your employees the opportunity for hybrid, but also you still need to battle with keeping them engaged and motivated. I think some companies fall to fact that if people are remote working and they don't have the cost to travel and things like that, are they I. And I suppose it picks up on the question that we've been asked. Can you get away with paying them less money and less benefits because they are working at home and have that. What sometimes is perceived that luxury. And actually what I know in Europe we're finding is no, you can't. Salaries are on on the app, benefits are on the app. The market, as we keep on saying, is very hot at the moment. It's candidate driven. The demands from candidates are a lot higher and yes, they are demanding a hybrid working solution, but they're also demanding the same level of salary as though they would be in the office five days a week.

Craig, one of the things we talked about and you brought up about previously, Katie, was about career progression. So how does it stack up? You know, this is an issue for someone is 100 in the office. You get to see them, you get to assess them, you know. Oh, they're constant reminder there. Oh, yeah. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? If you don't see them 100 of the time, you know, if you're not seeing them, if you're seeing them one day a week, maybe one day every two weeks, how do you assess them? Craig, what are your thoughts? Because I know you and I have talked about this. Yeah.

And it comes up quite a bit. We talk about that kind of divided workforce, you know, in that team, not only when they're. They're disparate in terms of countries, when you've got entire teams where some people come in often and others not. I mean, there is definitely an aspect of it affecting or certainly potentially affecting career progression. You know, when you really break it down, the people who are seen all the time who are proactively coming up to their line manager and offering to take extra work on extra responsibility, you're a lot less likely. And they say, I don't want to make any assumptions here, but from the, a lot of the conversations that I have with people in the market and I'm asking, especially at the treasury analyst, intro analyst level where they're looking to step into a Treasury manager role and I'm going, well, how much extra responsibility are you taking on? How often are you having those conversations with your line manager? They're very happy to kind of do what they're doing within their current remit, whereas if they were there in person, naturally some extra responsibility might normally fall more into their lap where it's, you know, it goes both ways. You know, you haven't got a lot of line managers going, hey, would you help me additionally with this? Where it's easy, they just pop over and help it. Because also like you say, you go over to someone's desk, you see what they're doing and you. And you get involved in extra aspects. You don't. I don't think there's that element of it. And I think like you say that does kind of. That is a big, that is one of the bigger negative, I guess of it. We talk about that progression and the people there is a refer. Is there also seen as a bit of a favor. It'd be more favorable if someone's, if you've got some members of him coming into the office, certainly the more junior end of the market. I do think there is a much bigger benefit to people being in which is where I caveat what I said earlier, offering a Treasury analyst role five days a week at home, all the time you've got, you've got to be a very, very sharp kind of hands on. A very certain kind of person is going to be right for something like that because many people at that level won't have the right kind of mentality to be able to deal with that, that kind of work, life patterns. It is a big thing.

Blended teams. And I'll get your input from both you guys and some of the things, if I shout some of these out, blended teams, you have to set clear expectations. You know, we are a blended team. You know, that's one of the key things I as a manager have had to work harder to set clear expectations, to set goals. Why? Because I'm lazy. If I didn't have to do, if I could just turn up, chat to you guys out there, have a nice time, you get a job on Boom Boom Boom, that'd be great. If I then looked around the room would be empty, everyone would just left the business. I have to sit with my team and set the expectations, set the goals and also be open to the feedback as well. I think that's harder as well because you're like, am I a good manager? I know that I often speak to people on the podcast where a lot of treasury professionals before pandemic, so before mix working, before whatever, remote working and all that stuff, I was talking to treasurers about how amazing they were as treasury leaders. Brilliant. They love their treasury, they're really good at it. I said, great, now you're managing how many people? 20, 25, 50, 80. Mike, I think I've got a final 80. And I said, I think it was only one of the people who was managing 60 plus people. I said, so how much management training of actually coaching people. We're working with someone actually to offer this as a course. We're not doing it. I told the act, I said at the time, you should offer this as a course. Oh, no, no. We're doing all of the stuff. More about the practical treasury stuff. Stuff which I applaud. Brilliant. But actually, what about supporting treasury professionals in their careers? Because now they're managing these blended teams. Oh, no, that's out of our remit, which is fine. So we're actually going to put that on for people and we're offering it to people as well. That'll be coming up soon. But the key thing is, because we recognize ourselves, and I only manage a team of six or seven or whatever. They're, you know, their treasurers out there have had zero and I've had management training and I still struggle, but the fact is, you guys need it as well. Communication, that was one of the key things, making sure there was, you know, lots of ways of working. So even if we were all sitting in the team, I know we do group sessions where we do it over zoom, but, like crazing 10ft from me, Holly's three feet from me, you know, and Katie's 200 miles away, because otherwise we're not all on the same pages. Craig, what areas would you say? The things that, you know, managing those teams that, you know, some of the guys watching today, because I don't want to run out of time, I want to get to the next bit, but. So a couple of quick ones from you guys.

Yeah, well, I said it. The most obvious to me is setting really clear expectations with people, so then understanding what they're delivering to make sure everyone's kind of planned, same as we do. Understanding what the expectations are each day, each week. And like you say, and then it's, it's, you know, it's playing something from there and having those regular kind of touch point meetings. That way you're avoiding the, the favorable sit situation. Especially if you've got a line manager who's going in most days of the week and other members of the team who aren't. But it's got a blend. It's so case by case. It is really case by case. And a lot of the time, we spend a lot of time giving advice on that element in particular, you know, in terms of what the market is saying and what that blend is going to look like for each of our clients. So I would say, yeah, clear expectations would be my big one.

Katie.

I think it's treating everybody the same. It doesn't matter where they're working. As a manager you have to treat everybody as if they're in the room with you. I think think a lot of my European clients, especially when they do the two days in the office, for example, one of those days is dedicated to team meetings so that everybody can come together and they then book in their one to ones with, with each of those individuals. So it is around communication, expectations and treating people exactly the same.

Well, I was talking recently to one of the partners at Deloitte and it was one of the point I was going to finish before we move on. This is a really into one I was highlighting as well, individualizing your employees. Really interesting chat. Actually I had it with Carl at Deloitte. Thank you. Carl. I need to know throughout Pandemic, how have you, and this comes onto the final point here. How have you effectively let be part of an effective and high performing world of in your team and everything else. One of the things he put in place throughout Covid was The need a 9 o' clock meeting and a 2 o' clock meeting, virtual meeting every single day. And he said it didn't mind but everyone, they could be in their pajamas at least they put a shirt on or a proper top on and they shaved. You know, you had to have your camera on. I said, was it just so you can see their bedhead? He went, yeah, total. But joking aside, it was so that they all got in the same direction. And one of the things he found about this, and this was actually what he found about, was finding out about everyone's unique goals, hobbies, aspirations, their work is what they've done at the weekend a lot of the time throughout Covid. What did you do? Nothing. Yeah. Just looked at another cookery program and things like that. Yeah. But it didn't matter. You got to know the people as individuals because that's what you need to do and that was one of the key things. Now, number of days you currently working in the office, 30% of people are in one to two days and it's starting to then veer more to two to three days. So you've got a third of people roughly are in two to three days. Craig. I know with our figures similar with the UK as well. Didn't you find those. Those numbers?

Yeah, we did, yeah. And the vast majority like 2 to 3 days in office is. It's a good like 70% of the market in the UK. 2 to 3 days hybrid working is very dominant.

Yeah.

Katie, what have you been finding? I know you had some of those slides.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly the same. The norm seems to be two or three days in the office and the rest working from home. As Craig mentioned earlier, it still is out there, but it's definitely an exception which is when people want four or five days in the office and we are very transparent that, that, that is more of a complex search for people that are willing to do that.

One of the things I was going to bring up and again, credit where credit is due. So Craig helped me do the salary survey end of last year and we'd been. Now we're up in the stratosphere. I mean, it's amazing. I was struggling to get 400 people. Craig has helped me get it and the rest of the team as well contributed to get it up to now 1200 people. You want to benchmark your salary. We run it every quarter and you go to treasurysalary.com and this is about salaries. But also Craig then asked me, he said, well, this is all very well, but can we ask about working from home? I was like, well, yeah, it's our survey, we do what we like with it. So then we asked three questions. It's how many days are you currently working from home? So when we re kick this off back middle of last year, mostly it was veered towards. We've seen. We can now start to see some of the trend analysis, which is incredible. Mostly most of the people were at home, you know, 100 of the time or one day a week in the office sometimes, occasionally. It was sort of starting to create number of Daisy currently in the office, zero days, 26%. I think back last year that was more of a nature of 80%. And obviously now we're starting to See it flow. But I think, you know, it's a bit like one of those relaxing wave machines, as it sort of flows up this way and then flows back and then finds this happy medium, them. If you're going to say it's five days a week in the office, good luck. Craig, you and I had an experience with a client and we can relate it that I think they said they were more traditional, weren't they? And they were. Five days a week in the office. Do you recall this one?

I do, yeah. And it was a very collaborative environment. You can hear all of the. Yeah, all of the things. But it comes down to fantastic. Well, how would you pitch that to the market and getting and understanding that response. The most ironic part about this is, you know, we talk about the hot spots. So whether it be, yeah, your London, your Manchester, Birmingham and the uk, as an example, your mate, you know, your big three there, there's one who have the most flexibility. It's the ones where you're talking about more, not the treasury hubs of the uk, Oxford, your Cambridge, your south coast, going towards that way more towards like. Like you, like your Bristol, they're the ones with less flexibility. They're the ones who probably could do having more. So it is interesting, it is quite how it turns around.

Sorry, we split out into three regions. So we got North America. No, we've got four. So we've got North America. Rest of the world, we've got Europe and the uk, the way we split up the salary survey. But then again, Craig came up with these three questions and it was how many days a week are you currently in the office? How many days a week does your company want you to work in the office? But how many days a week, and this is the kicker, do you want to work in the office in the future? And there is a discrepancy there now. It's not been huge at the moment. I'm starting to see that balance tip a little bit more. There are more companies and clients wanting people to be in the office and you can assess this from our results. You take part in it, take part for two minutes. Treasurysalary.com give us your info and stuff like that and then you get to see how many days people want to work in the office. Start to answer some of these questions with Hybe, are we seeing less of a regional variation in salary now? Because she's about to work through a benchmarking salary? It says, keen to understand difference in hybrid versus mainly office. Now, the we talked and touched on It a little bit there. The first thing I would say is we used to divide our. You the UK portion of our salary survey. And yes, if you're North American, lots of North Americans. We will be dividing as we grow our sample size in North America. We're going to be splitting out between the east coast, the west coast, the Midwest. But our sample sizes are still growing. If I did it and spit it out now, some of them would be significant. Great. But then treasury analysts on the west coast, you know, we have very few because it's obviously very expensive as well. But also we have very few at the moment that is growing rapidly. And as those sample sizes get better, we will divide it out and it'll be even more value to you. But you can still get it. And also you can get individual advice. Some of the other day. Well, I need some individual advice about me in Chicago, I was like, like, what do you want to know? Oh, okay. You know this. Yes. These are four jobs we've recruited in the past year there. At your level, this is what you should be paid. Oh, and this is what you're on there. Yes, it's pretty good within the UK survey. And Craig, you and I know about this as well. We've amalgamated a lot of it. So can you just. You touched on Bristol, but you touched on. We used to have within City, West End, didn't we, as well? Goodness, that was a while ago. And then within M25 and then outside M25 and then south of England, west of England, north of England, and that's, you know, and did it across, you know, the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales, all that stuff. It's all, it's all sort of assimilated, isn't it? Craig, you're seeing that the levels are just evening out a little bit with some regional variations according to cost of living.

Yes, we have. But it also has made it a lot more competitive that where you're seeing there. It's really, you know, blurred over the gap. When we look at the areas above London, like your Oxford and your Cambridge and even the places in between under London, between that and the south coast where, you know, hey, come here once, come here a couple days, a fortnight, and we'll pay you a London wage. For us, it's a very simple pitch, but at the same time, it's. They're very attractive propositions. There's very great companies in those regions where because of the hybrid working and because they can, they're willing to pay a match the same as the London wage. Now it's also. But although it's saying that Mike, it has also affected some companies very massively in terms of talent that they can. Because they haven't got that budget, they can't justify spending. I know 55k basis, I know it'd be more in the States, but you know, 50k 5k based on an analyst coming into their business when the budget doesn't, isn't that they haven't got that, the top 10, that top 15, 10 of the, of the talent in that market ready for that role they're not going to be able to attract anymore. So it's a double edged sword. It's great for some and for others it's not so much.

Katie, within Europe and some of the regional variations, you know we've got Germany, we do a lot of work there at the moment, we're doing a lot of stuff in Belgium and some of yours within those countries themselves, maybe on an individual basis and then across Europe. So two different questions. So within some of the country pockets, what are you seeing in terms of days working? Hybrids? You know, you said that they're a bit more advanced than always have been.

Yeah, I mean I think they're pretty much sorted with their hybrids policies. A lot of the companies have got them all written. I think Europe as a whole is going through a big thing with salaries increasing versus experience levels. So especially at the treasury analyst markets, a lot of the recruitment in the last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of this year has been treasury analysts in, in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg. And I am continually having conversations and using our salary survey with our clients to sort of say, well actually what used to be a case of Getting somebody with five at 70,000 is no longer what you can get now you're looking at three years maximum for 70,000. You're looking at somebody with one year's experience at 55,000. Things are changing. Luxembourg is a great example of the fact that there's discussions and pockets where bigger companies that can afford to do it are pushing up the number of days holiday and I've got one particular client I'm working with and they've had to review that and try and come on board because that again, that whole work life balance, even though they're offering hybrid, even though they're offering three days, people still want those additional benefits that they're seeing other companies offering. So I think companies in general across Europe have to be on the pulse with hybrid and they have to now be on the pulse with salaries and benefits. Otherwise they are Just not going to get the talent coming into their businesses.

And just on that you put here in the bullet point salaries and focus on benefits. Should employers contribute to utilities when hybrid working? They're not allowed to most of the time. However, what we have seen is that clients are giving one off incentives, some of the allowance. Craig, what are you saying that you know, just to sort of wrap up.

Today'S session about hybrid, given the, the subject of this webinar about, you know, retaining your treasury team, it's the like you say, it's to be in touch with this information, you know, with the market to understand what people are doing, what kind of opportunities are out there. But I do think like you say in terms of having like I know it's, you know, in the chat mentioned obviously, you know, down in Bristol, I think it is, it is a case of there is a lot of things out there with people pulling things, people, you know, all kinds of direction people. There are always, always going to be people there and the companies who will offer you more money but they might won't necessarily offer you the kind of place to work. A lot of people say we're at because they get on incredibly well their line managers, they really like the company culture. They're the things that you know, you can trust in and if you've got the trust in someone to be like, hey, you're well planned, you understand what we're trying to deliver, what we're trying to achieve, you understand the plan. I've got to be so worried about what's going to happen, is something going to come over? Because someone will always come up to a member of your team and there'll be more money on the line but if the rest of it is in check, the benefits are good and that you're trusted to do your job, there's opportunity for progression and you're, you know, working someone's mentoring you well, well, yeah, you won't. I don't think you take a risk on it for a bit more money. Not a good mentor. I think that's, that's the biggest takeaway.

Katie, what are you going to say? I'm just going to read these other couple of ones before.

What are employees demanding in this environment? It goes back to this, that you know, they want two or three days in the office, the rest working from home. They want, they still want the salary that is competitive. There's all the additional kind of non contractual benefits but that, that, that are all kind of still key. I think the thing with candidates now is they're very clear on what they want and what they will negotiate too. So it's. I think it's more of a candidate led market at the moment rather than an employer led market, a client led market. I think clients are the ones that are going to have to step up, basically.

Yeah. What I would just comment about it is, you know, the junior level. Why do you want to be 100% remote? That's one of the things you know. Is it because you just want a role where you just come in, do your job and that's it. You switch off your PC at the end of the day, which sometimes the road here can sometimes be difficult. If your commute is from, well, from your bed to your shower to kitchen to your desk and back again, switching off can be an issue there. But also, how do you then learn as a union treasury person? A lot of one to one learning is done with your colleagues and actually that was one of the issues throughout Covid, when I was talking to people said, how is it, you know, oh yeah, we've got a new treasury analyst has come on board. How's that? Oh, the coaching of them is a nightmare. Why? Because I'm not sitting next to them. You know, there's a lot of hands on learning and coaching and stuff. So wrap up word, we'll kick off with. Yeah, we'll do Katie first, then Craig and then I'll do some closing bits.

For me, Hybrid's here to stay. I think it's great it got its challenges. I think it's just having the awareness of what those challenges are and making, making sure that you invest the time in, in your staff, whether it's virtual or in the office, and just be aware of the bottlenecks, which are things like salaries and benefits and making sure that you are the leading edge employer, really.

Right.

Yeah. I would say if the current model is two to three days, you know, you're in a safe space. I mean, that is the safe hybrid working. If you hear the company's looking at moving that to four or five days a week in office, make sure not just across treasury, but they've done a quite a thorough risk assessment. Because that isn't just going to affect treasury, that will affect every single part of the business. I can guarantee that even from my back, back when I used to do the, you know, technical IT stuff that is going to go across, across the board. The only companies really we work with are doing more often in office are the ones where the vast majority of the workforce are, are having to Be present. So, like logistics or transport, where there's a big part of the office, because then it's more of a team. The whole thing is kind of coming together, everyone's playing their part. But if you work for, like a software company or insurance or there's not something. There's a massive need necessary to be on site, it's that they need. They need to have done that risk assessment before they go and change away from two to three. That is the safe spot. That'd be my takeaway.

Yeah. And this is from all the podcasts I've done, the chat we've had today, the recruitment we're doing for lots of people. People. If you don't embrace hybrid, if you don't embrace remote working and the blended ways of working. Elliott had to come back that you said it could be 100% remote. Yes, some roles might lend themselves to that, but some don't. And as Craig's just touched upon that if you don't embrace these blended ways of working, then be prepared to lose out in what is literally a war for talent, because the next employer will, will, and the employer after them in the queue will. And if you don't, you're going to lose out. And that's your loss. Because it's hard enough to get people we know. That's why we exist. Someone said to me back last year, they said, well, you know, well, I can just do this myself. I said, well, if you could, I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be there. We are there in the event of need. When you actually need staff, you come to us. When you need treasury advice, you come to us. That's what exactly why we need need. If you didn't need us, we wouldn't have jobs anyway. Great. Thank you very much, everyone, and thanks, everyone. Reach out to us and hope you enjoyed it today. I certainly did. And now I'm gonna lie down in a quiet, dark room.

Take care.

Bye.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or any. Another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait.

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