CIPFA provides advice to local authorities on how they can seek to recruit skilled senior finance professionals, from outside the local government sector.
Introduction
There are benefits of recruiting senior finance professionals from outside the local government sector, and CIPFA seeks to inspire local authorities to consider this approach.
Recruiting senior finance professionals from outside the local government sector is one element of a broader, holistic approach to addressing local authorities’ recruitment challenges.
Other elements include recruiting staff to more junior levels and supporting them in their career progression, nurturing existing finance talent and engaging in proactive succession planning.
The financial recruitment market is challenging
The recruitment market in local government for skilled finance professionals is tight. This is evident at all levels, though its impact is being felt most severely for more senior roles.
Local authorities are experiencing increasingly difficult challenges in attracting suitably experienced candidates for finance roles. In some cases, they are unable to recruit—or must operate several recruitment rounds—before they are able to appoint a suitable candidate.
In the meantime, local authorities are operating without the financial capacity and expertise that they need, or are relying on interim staff to fill key positions.
There are advantages to recruiting from outside the local government sector
Looking to the wider public sector, the not-for-profit sector and the commercial sector, opens up the local government recruitment pool to encompass a significantly greater number of potential candidates for roles at all levels.
It allows local authorities to access talented and ambitious individuals with a broader range of skills, experience and expertise. It also helps them to recruit candidates with new perspectives, which can help local authorities to drive innovation and bring about positive change.
Seeking to attract finance professionals from a broader range of backgrounds can help local authorities to remain competitive in the recruitment marketplace and to operate efficient and effective recruitment processes.
It can also help them to increase the diversity of their workforce.
Widening the recruitment pool is not without its difficulties
The most significant challenge to widening the recruitment pool beyond candidates from within local government, especially at more senior levels, is the perception within local authorities that local government finance is sufficiently specialist, and that only someone with a local authority finance background can be expected to understand it.
Local authorities can, however, struggle to make potential candidates from outside local government aware of their finance vacancies and to inspire them to apply for available roles. Local authorities also need to ensure that their recruitment processes are inclusive, in that they do not implicitly favour candidates with local government experience.
Local authorities can also struggle to compete with other sectors, especially the commercial sector, in terms of the salaries that they are able to offer to skilled finance professionals.
Local authorities are well-placed to overcome these challenges
Recruiting skilled finance professionals from outside local government will always be more challenging than taking on someone from a similar role in another local authority.
However, the current state of the financial recruitment market means that the latter is simply not always an option. Local authorities must broaden their horizons and they will find that the challenges of doing so are not as great as they might first appear.
While there are, of course, some finance roles that require specific expertise, the experience of local authorities that have recruited from outside the local government sector—including to senior roles—shows that experienced finance professionals are able to quicky get to grips with the principles and practice of local government finance, especially if provided with appropriate support.
This support could take the form of, for example, a focused development plan that is tailored to the specific needs of the individual, perhaps drawing on the skills and expertise highlighted in the CIPFA Competency Model. A package of support could also feature a suitable handover period from the outgoing postholder or mentoring from other senior finance professionals.
There are a range of approaches that local authorities can take to streamline their recruitment processes, to ensure its inclusivity and to make a broader range of potential candidates aware of available roles.
Furthermore, while salary levels are one factor that candidates take into consideration when assessing potential new roles, they are not the only factor. Indeed, candidates are increasingly placing greater value on the meaningfulness of a potential new role, the extent to which it aligns with their own personal values and the nature of the working environment.
These are areas in which local authorities excel. They deliver essential public services to local people and businesses. They seek to serve others rather than to generate returns for shareholders. Further, they espouse diversity and inclusion, flexible approaches to working, and they treat their employees with dignity and respect.
Local authorities can be an employer of choice not just for local government finance professionals, but also for senior finance professionals across the board.
More on financial recruitment
Find out more about our Financial Recruitment Project and read our 5 case studies.
