These are definitely unprecedented times in the City but HR continues to play a key role across the sector. Dona Battat, who runs Digby Morgan’s City team, reveals the reality from today’s front line.

Hiring is on the increase and recruitment restrictions are now starting to lift as confidence in the recovery grows and sentiment is increasingly positive following successive quarters of profit for a body of City institutions and sustained stock market growth.

Some of the US institutions are now very much in Investment Banking recovery mode and are now hiring again both in the business and across multiple HR disciplines. Where some institutions were doing the occasional direct hiring earlier in the year, many are now partnering more closely with a smaller number of preferred suppliers and looking for real added value relationships to bring people on board as effectively as possible. Although starting to drive recruitment again, a number of our City clients are, however, struggling to find the right talent: often getting significant response in quantity but not the quality they need to move their organisations forward.

At the mid to senior end of the market, recruitment continues to rise quarter on quarter as momentum steadily builds. HR opportunities across investment and commercial banking, asset and wealth management and insurance are translating to tangible offers. Where critical, the legal sector is hiring again and, finally, we are seeing the first few roles beginning to surface in the property sector. Many of the roles are supplementing HR teams where headcount has previously been cut back and teams were stretched – we are yet to see real growth in terms of new roles and growth in team size.

A number of top tier HR directors previously employed within large City institutions are now well established within City SMEs and are beginning to build their own HR teams attracting talent from across the sector to join them. Naturally they’re looking for the ‘best in class’ to help develop the people agenda they are responsible for in their new organisations. This is leading to a squeeze at the mid levels on the most truly talented – many of whom have been retained through their organisations’ talent management agenda.

In higher demand areas such as Reward and Employee Relations, there are now high expectations that don't match current market conditions. Many of those currently at offer stage want what most companies cannot really give - ie: sign on bonuses and guarantees. One concern is that there is now a growing misconception amongst candidates that offers will make up for the ground lost after static base salaries in recent years and, of course, in the majority of cases this remains impractical in the prevailing markets conditions.

In a market where clients are determined to retain top talent, HR directors recognise that robust learning and development and talent management frameworks are vital to reducing attrition and adding to the bottom line of their business. At last there seems to be the first signs of an increasing appetite for L&D professionals across the city and this is really encouraging given the fact that learning and recruitment were particularly badly hit mid credit crunch. A few HR leaders have even reached the point where they have created new senior L&D posts as they realise they are fundamental to driving forward the wider HR agenda.


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