For all the factors responsible for Wipfli Financial Advisors’ success in navigating the workforce challenges of the last few years, CEO Jeff Pierce singles out one philosophy for playing a major part.
Broadly, Pierce credits the “consistent employee experience” that he has overseen since he took the reins in 2019 of the Milwaukee-based firm, which began as a 1999 joint venture with Top 25 Firm Wipfli (which still has a majority ownership).
WFA’s ongoing strategy to provide all employees at all levels with an excellent and stable work environment — in one of the most challenging times to make that guarantee — has likewise produced consistency in its retention efforts, with 5% voluntary turnover in 2020 and 2021 and 3% as of the midpoint of this year. In other impressive numbers, the firm also surpassed $5 billion in assets under management this year, an 18% increase over 2021 that placed it high on Accounting Today’s 2022 Wealth Magnets list.
“Our culture, our mentality, is check your rank at the door,” Pierce explained, “which gives employees a voice and a platform, and gets them curious to ask questions and have ideas, and provides a platform for advisors and support staff.”
WFA provides a few avenues for its roughly 100 employees to share these ideas, from bimonthly town halls virtually broadcast across its 17 physical offices, to quarterly state-of-the-company meetings, and four operating committees designed, in part, to field this feedback.
On a more personal level, staff members are also assigned performance coaches to guide professional development in meetings at least once a month and peer advisors who serve as mentors and a “safe space” for support and questions. “Once here, with your career path, you don’t have to be a jack of all trades, or a generalist, and you don’t have to be pigeonholed into a career,” Pierce explained. “We support you where you can be the most successful.”
These relationships help fuel the firm’s stellar employee engagement scores, according to Pierce, which are “much higher than the industry average,” reaching the high 80s every year.
“It’s part of our mentality of checking your rank at the door,” Pierce reiterated. “We encourage our entire leadership group, and principals, if someone is curious and wants to learn, we find the time to support them in that.”
WFA’s leadership team of five includes three women, in the roles of chief operating officer, chief investment officer and chief financial officer. The firm, which currently has a roughly 50/50 gender split, supported their internal development into these leadership roles, according to Pierce, and their visibility helps attract and retain even more female leaders.
“The key is for people that look at the firm to see, ‘I fit in here. When I look at this firm, there are other people that look like me, from a gender or experience perspective,’” he said. Along the same lines, WFA is committed to greater ethnic diversity, starting with recruiting at a wider range of universities, Pierce reports, in an industry where he sees the firm’s peers also struggling to improve their staff diversity.
Points of reconnection
One part of the talent pipeline where the firm can make an early impact is in its internship program, according to Pierce.
“Any given year, there are 10 to 12 interns in the summer,” he explained. “We have a very high rate of full-time job offers coming out of that. If it’s a good fit for the candidate, we extend the role and have a 90% acceptance rate.”
Since the start of the pandemic, in fact, the firm has brought on roughly 40 new hires, which made WFA’s recent first firmwide in-person event since its outbreak a crucial time for nearly half of the staff to connect in an office for the first time. Over three days, WFA held an annual skill summit for all staff members, who currently come into their respective offices a minimum of twice per week, though Pierce reports that many prefer to be in more often. The firm has formally gauged employee interest in returning to the office full-time with firmwide surveys that reveal, to Pierce’s excitement, that the majority prefer this in-person collaboration.
That preference not only helps maintain a consistent firm culture and employee experience, but dovetails into a recent challenge WFA issued based on the networking book “Never Eat Alone,” which recommends setting a goal of scheduling 100 lunches with clients or prospects. “We’re not asking for all 100 by the end of the year,” Pierce clarified. “But to start with 10 — who the right people are to have lunch, or coffee, or a drink after work with, who you might know, or who you could be introduced to. We are making a point to reconnect with people face to face, and it’s a big initiative we’ve been pushing forward for the last month and a half.”
This is part of Wipfli Financial’s goal to grow into new markets, as well as reach out to the large client base it shares in its cross-selling efforts with Wipfli.
“A big thing with our growth strategy, with the markets as volatile as they are, and the challenge of markets not at 12% to 14% growth, is projecting where to be, and one of the big things we are doing is reevaluating how to best get back in touch with centers of influence, and with our peers in the accounting firm, with these clients and prospects,” Pierce explained.
Over the past 12 months, the firm launched four organically grown offices and acquired a new office in Atlanta. This year, it also introduced a new Amazon Alexa “skill,” which are like apps for the cloud-based voice service, to provide clients with advisor perspectives on a range of personal finance issues including women and the great wealth transfer, navigating the home buying process, tax season, and more. “It offers various advisor perspectives on anything from the basic to the intermediate,” Pierce explained. “It’s in short, easy-to-consume, and easy-to-digest soundbites.”
WFA has also continued its investment in its people over the last several months. In addition to bringing on a new learning and development specialist, a new head of advisor success, Craig Bartlett, was installed last October to oversee the firm’s client-facing team, along with an associate advisory manager reporting to him.
“For those more new to the career, those first three years, we have centralized oversight and accountability for a consistent employee experience,” Pierce said. “And the learning and development specialist we hired earlier this year is focused on industry skills to be successful in this industry, making sure people have updated resources available to them to be better in their career.”
