Page 112 - Successful Onboarding

Teaching Culture So That Our New Hires “Get It” • 101

finding marginal gains from existing businesses, GE would need to discover
new customer needs and enter emerging industries. You can imagine the
degree to which a behemoth like GE, formerly so focused on operational
excellence, needed to transform its culture to meet this new leadership
mandate. Given the length of time this transformation would take, GE
clearly had an opportunity to capitalize on turnover in its workforce to bring
in personnel who would prove even more amenable to embrace the new
culture than existing employees, who were conditioned to the old culture.

How Robert W. Baird Does It

The Milwaukee-based financial services firm of Robert W. Baird & Co.,
Inc. has made great strides in leveraging the onboarding of new associates
to drive change. In the case of its Private Wealth Management business
division, Baird has used new hires as a key lever in driving a cultural as
well as business model change.
Baird’s Private Wealth Management (PWM) business division serves the
financial needs of individuals, families, executives and businesses through
70 branch offices across the United States. Until 2002, Baird served their
high net worth clients much like other investment firms, with individual
Financial Advisors bringing forth investment solutions to meet their client
needs. In 2002, Baird shifted toward a team-based approach, whereby Finan-
cial Advisors with complementary strengths work together to best address
the myriad financial issues of higher net worth families and individuals.
In recent years, many financial services firms have begun to support the
formation and development of financial advisor teams, but few firms provide
the solid foundation and framework for teaming like Baird does. While a
team approach is strongly encouraged by Baird’s Executive Management
Team, veteran Financial Advisors are not required to join or form teams.
However, the organization does require new, non-veteran Financial Advisors
to join or form a team before their hire process can be completed. This is a
very unique approach in the industry, but one that boasts big payoffs as
Baird’s non-veteran Financial Advisors success rate after five years is 65%
versus industry standards of 15%.
The process for onboarding new, non-veteran Financial Advisors (titled
Financial Advisor Associates or FAA until graduation) is a long and rigor-
1
ous process. Each FAA is required to complete 5 / 2 months of training,