The talent war is hotting up – literally
Amid news of Citi Group’s Málaga work hub, other finance firms could also be betting big on the beach. Will it be enough?
Why You Should Care
Citi Group has opened a hub in Málaga in a bid to lure analysts to sign on their dotted line. But is it a gimmick or a strategy?
Will other firms follow suit? Read our analysis today.
Since the dawn of time…well, at least since Google Trends started reporting, the war for talent has been a significant issue for HR teams in organizations the world over. Businesses have always resorted to novel ways to secure the best talent in the business, and this fight for the signatures of elite performers has only intensified in our post-pandemic world.
Step forward Citi Group whose latest move is to open a worker hub in that famous nerve center of financial operations… Málaga.
Citi Group’s Málaga work hub
Hear us out though. The trends of our post-COVID-19 working existence are distinct but overlapping: Work from anywhere, remote work, hybrid work, flexible working…all these initiatives are broadly similar but not the same. Why should ‘work from anywhere’ be dominated by smaller, more agile businesses and freelancers?
Citi could well be onto something here, and it seems like the idea was popular from the start: The company selected 27 analysts from more than 3,000 applicants for the two-year programme, which started this week. While the salary is thought to be around half the going rate for an analyst working in London or New York, the scheme promises work-free weekends (this shouldn’t be a perk, by the way), and eight-hour working days.
It seems money isn’t everything, even in the world of finance.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Manolo Falcó, co-head of banking, capital markets and advisory said, “We suffer from a lot of churn like the rest of the industry…we are eager to understand if we can stop that by offering a better work-life balance.”
This appears to be quite a progression from 18 months ago when the finance giant was scrambling to get people back to the work by offering rapid COVID-19 tests, but arguably this was before hybrid work had become embedded and the Great Resignation had truly hit.
However, barely a week later the company introduced Zoom-free Fridays in what at the time seemed like a further rejection of the benefits of remote work. In truth, remote and hybrid work make most people more productive, and the Zoom-free Fridays initiative would have been welcomed by any workforce, regardless of how much time they (don’t) spend in the office. We just need a screen break now and again.
The future of talent acquisition?
We know what the most popular recruitment perks are – you could say all that’s changed is the order of importance (thanks again, COVID-19). The major difference is that now employees are more likely to be able to successfully bargain for them.
Lifestyle (flexibility, remote work, WFH allowance), wellbeing (healthy culture, good benefits, financial stability), these are what matter to people, and if you can get all that in a pair of flipflops, then why not do it?
This won’t be the last we hear of multinationals across a variety of industries trying to recruit the best talent through non-standard means, and frankly that’s a good thing.
We are at the start of a new working paradigm, one that foregrounds workers’ needs more than ever before. It’s a sad truth that some organizations are now cutting back having over-recruited but it still feels like the game has changed forever.
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Editorial content manager
Jon has 20 years' experience in digital journalism and more than a decade in L&D and HR publishing.
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