Leasing industry is
‘sleep-walking into a personnel shortage’, warns Lindsay Town, Kent
Asset Finance.
Go deeper with GlobalData
With G20
leaders in deadlock in Cannes, the economic environment and its
effect on leasing was an ever-present and frequently expressed
concern among delegates.
For one speaker, however, the
pressing anxiety affecting leasing is much more industry
specific.
Lindsay Town, managing director of
Kent Asset Finance and the event’s final speaker, took to the stage
to deliver a sobering wake-up call to an industry he believes is
sleepwalking into a personnel shortage.
“When I was hiring I used to value
experience,” Town told the auditorium. “My policy was to recruit
‘grey hairs’ and ‘no hairs’. What I didn’t expect was to look at an
industry some years later and only see grey hairs and no hairs.
How well do you really know your competitors?
Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.
Thank you!
Your download email will arrive shortly
Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample
We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form
By GlobalData“Unless as an industry we revaluate
the training we offer and the approach to developing people, not
only will we not have the right skills to tackle the changes we
will see as an industry, but if we cannot attract new fresh talent,
then we become moribund and our blood becomes stale and any entity
with stale blood dies off.”
‘An imminent
crisis’
Town said
that, as funds have become squeezed, training budgets have been
cut, and as a result the leasing and asset finance industry has
largely failed to recruit new, young talent to its ranks. Town said
he believes it is a crisis affecting the whole industry, although
he acknowledged some companies had created successful recruitment
programmes.
Town said the industry needs to
make itself appeal to a new generation of workers, who have
different ideas about career planning from the generation of
lessors in the room in Munich, but instead it has been recruiting
with a short-term agenda.
“Career planning is radically
different today but have we shifted our recruitment techniques to
match?” he asked. “We are recruiting to fill an immediate need and
not recruiting to fill the future or to challenge us in the market
we are heading towards.
“We need to offer skills which add
value to people’s careers for life. We need to offer training that
is portable.”
Speaking to Leasing Life
after the event, Town suggested the professions, such as
accountancy and law, have got their recruitment policy right and as
such have a huge pool of young talent trying to get into the
industry.
“These professions’ entire ethos is
about getting top-quality talent at the beginning of their careers,
investing considerable resources in training them and accepting the
fact they are equipping them to move on to other employers and
other careers,” he said.
Town believes the asset finance
industry needs to offer training which provides skills that are
transferable to other industries in order to attract a generation
who value experience they can convert to other industries.
Inevitably, said Town, among those
who seek training in the leasing sector many will leave but some
will challenge the industry and help the industry meet its
challenges and they will become its future leaders.
After his speech, during the
on-stage discussion, Town held that, while trade bodies such
Leaseurope and their constituent members have a part to play in
offering the training which can bring in new talent, the trade
bodies are only as strong as their industry allows them to be.
The tone of Town’s address was sobering and spoken with a
pragmatism which comes with his experience but also with the
enthusiasm he believes companies and trade bodies need to inject
into the next brood of leasing professionals. Reaction, given both
to Leasing Life and Town himself, was unanimously in
agreement.
See also:
Conference opens with big
questions
Using leasing to ‘look
better’
Small companies present
opportunities
