Why Scotland's banks struggle to recruit for permanent change management roles

Change management is a hot area of recruitment in financial services, but people with expertise in this area tend to favour the more lucrative contract route.

However, there's so much recruitment going on that many banks are facing cost restraints and being pressured to hire on a permanent basis. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, they're failing to do so.

In the post-crisis world, regulatory pressures are driving business transformation initiatives within various areas of banks in the UK - finance, treasury, technology, operations and risk are all being shaken up.

Recent research by recruiters Ambition pointed to how half of the banks it surveyed had at least 50% of change staff as contractors. A roundtable session arranged by them, in conjunction with AB Associates, which featured representatives from Barclays, HSBC, RBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander and UBS, revealed that in some cases the split is 60-40 weighted towards contract.

In Scotland, banks are feeling the pinch and are trying to recruit experienced change managers on a permanent basis. However, contract roles pay between 450-500 a day (or 108-120k a year) while permanent positions are offering salaries of 50-60k.

"A number of banks have a lot of permanent change positions, but they're remaining unfilled," says Mike Stirton, associate director, financial services at Change Recruitment in Edinburgh. "Experienced contractors know their worth, and are unwilling to accept what is essentially a 50% reduction in pay in a full-time role. They also want the challenge of new projects, which is easier to get on a contract basis."

Of course, not all contractors are created equal. One of the major concerns among the banks at Ambition's roundtable was that a proportion of contractors are light on experience and required a lot of training, rather than hitting the ground running. This was something you'd offer permanent staff, they argued, not some one on a premium day rate.

Stirton insists that the majority of people still working on contract change roles in Scotland are worth the money, and that most of the weaker candidates who rode on the wave of increased change recruitment, have moved on to permanent business-as-usual roles within the banks.

"There's still a decent proportion of people who present themselves as change managers, but have neither the skills or experience to cut it in a contractor role," says Mike Leeman, manager - finance recruitment at Bright Purple in Scotland. "This creates ongoing churn in the market."