Data Snack: Banks may have a ways to go to get more tech talent
- Banks have been putting a whole lot of effort into getting tech talent onboard.
- But the salary hikes aren’t doing the trick, it seems, with only 15% of banks’ workforce comprising IT roles.
The road to digital transformation is not paved in brick and mortar. Banks are aware of this. But while they may be putting more efforts into hiring tech talent, their workforce seems to reflect a less-than-digital mode of thinking.
In a recent report diving into banks’ hiring and onboarding efforts, Josh Bersin Company, a consultancy focused on firms’ HR efforts, found that almost half the roles banks currently employ for are people-facing roles, including customer service, sales and advisory.
This is especially interesting considering the amount of effort banks have been putting into hiring tech talent, including offering competitive salaries and perks.
On top of that, banks have been cutting down on branch operations: 2021 was a record year for branch closures, and 2022 has taken on the same pattern. Curinos, a management consulting company, predicts that banks will continue to shut down their branches at an annual rate of 2% to 3%.
With that in mind, banks’ current top job clusters seem to suggest that they may not be where they want to be in terms of onboarding more tech talent. In fact, despite the salary hikes and perks, banks have experienced a 23.4% turnover rate this year – a significant rise compared to last year’s 16.2%.
One reason outlined by Josh Bersin is that, simply put, the tech doesn’t interest the talent. Fintechs have the advantage of being more cutting edge and offering tech professionals a more interesting stack to work with. Many banks, on the other hand, are still struggling with legacy systems.
So you could say that in order to get more tech talent, banks need to up their tech game. But to up their tech game, they need more tech talent – leaving banks ending 2022 in a state of catch-22.