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How To Attract And Retain Top Talent For Your Family Office

If you run a family office, you know how important it is to have a team of qualified and loyal professionals who can manage your wealth and affairs. But finding and keeping such talent is not easy in today’s competitive market. You need to offer more than just a salary and a bonus. You need to offer a compelling value proposition that aligns with your family’s vision, values, and goals.

In this article, we’ll touch on insights and best practices from Katten’s Family Office Compensation and Talent panels, which featured experts from Mack International and Botoff Consulting. We’ll also cover four key topics that every family office should consider when designing and implementing their compensation and talent strategy:

  • How to compete for talent and impact on compensation
  • How to recruit and retain talent and market demands
  • How to use long-term incentive plans and trends
  • How to align compensation with culture and performance

How To Compete For Talent And Impact On Compensation

Family offices are facing increased competition for executive, accounting, and investment team talent from other family offices, private equity firms, hedge funds, and other financial institutions. To remain market competitive, family offices need to adjust their compensation levels for both incumbents and candidates.

According to a 2023 Botoff Consulting survey, 33 percent of family offices reported higher performance bonuses and 46 percent of family offices reported higher salary increases than prior year compensation actions. These increases were not driven by inflationary concerns, but by the strong talent market.

Takeaway: Family offices need to benchmark their compensation against the market and offer competitive pay packages that reflect the skills and experience of their talent.

How To Recruit And Retain Talent and Market Demands

More than half of the family offices surveyed by Botoff Consulting reported recruiting challenges in the past 12 months. The strong market for family office professionals requires family offices to proactively define their compensation strategy to improve recruiting outcomes and to recognize and reward the value of employee retention.

One way to do this is to use formalized annual incentive plans for executives, which are used by 80% of family offices surveyed. These plans provide more clarity of compensation opportunities in a competitive market, as well as align incentives with performance objectives and metrics.

Takeaway: Family offices need to use formalized annual incentive plans that are transparent, objective, and aligned with the family’s goals.

How To Use Long-Term Incentive Plans And Trends

Another way to attract and retain talent is to use long-term incentive (LTI) plans, which are used by 59 percent of family offices surveyed by Botoff Consulting. LTI plans provide a longer-term perspective and reward loyalty, commitment, and value creation.

LTI plans can take various forms, such as phantom equity, deferred cash, or co-investment opportunities. The choice of LTI plan depends on the family’s preferences, objectives, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, tax implications, and legal considerations.

Takeaway: Family offices need to use LTI plans that are tailored to their specific circumstances and that provide meaningful rewards for long-term performance.

How To Align Compensation With Culture And Performance

Compensation is not only a financial tool, but also a cultural tool. Compensation can communicate the family’s vision, values, goals, expectations, and feedback. Compensation can also influence the behavior, motivation, engagement, satisfaction, and retention of talent.

To align compensation with culture and performance, family offices need to have a clear compensation philosophy that articulates the purpose, principles, components, governance, and communication of their compensation program. They also need to have a robust performance management system that sets clear goals, measures results, provides feedback, recognizes achievements, and identifies areas for improvement.

Takeaway: Family offices need to have a holistic approach to compensation that integrates culture and performance.

Hiring and retaining top talent is one of the most critical challenges for family offices. To succeed in this endeavor, family offices need to have a strategic compensation program that is competitive, transparent, objective, aligned, tailored, and holistic. Such a program can help family offices attract and retain the best professionals who can manage their wealth and affairs effectively. If you’re interested in learning more about choosing the right staff for your family office, get in touch with our placement team today!

At Old State Staffing, we simplify hiring private staff for families throughout Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and beyond. Ready to hire? Call us or submit a new hire request. Need guidance? Book an introductory meeting with one of our staffing experts!

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The world is spinning faster every day.

Employment has changed drastically the past few years—how we work, the type of work we do, and even where we work. Yet, while the world adapts, solutions for hiring private staff seem to be stuck in the past.

 

At Old State Staffing, we believe the status quo is not enough, and that those who decide now is the time to settle will be left behind. In the face of great change, tinkering around the edges simply won’t do. Since Day 1, our approach has been built on four key principles:

1. Developing A Quality Product

We’ve built Old State Staffing from the ground up, implementing the same cutting-edge recruiting tools used by the nation’s largest family offices. Historically inaccessible to smaller clients, these tools improve the tracking and management of talent, utilize machine learning for smarter searches, and intuitively compare compensation and qualification benchmarks both regionally and nationally. This allows us to find and match families with the best candidates quicker and more efficiently than ever before.

2. Building A Great Team

We knew from the start that our team would be our greatest differentiator. That’s because our agency is composed entirely of family office professionals who know what exceptional candidates look like; because we’ve applied to, managed, and hired for each of those positions ourselves.

3. Creating Meaningful Relationships

Building and maintaining relationships is important today, more than ever before. We place immense value on our relationships, not just with our clients, but our candidates, and the community at large. We spent our “pandemic years” building partnerships with local universities, to open the doors of private staffing to recent college graduates in the most educated metropolitan area in the world.

4. Refusing To Settle

Change is inevitable, yet private staffing has historically lagged in both hiring and employment standards. We’ve always been disruptors, first to adopt AI and machine learning—ensuring smarter, faster, more accurate matches for our clients.


We know that choosing an agency is a personal decision, and we’re honored for the time you have spent considering us as a partner in your search. If you haven’t spoken to us yet, let me be the first to say that we can’t wait to introduce you to our contacts, to guide you through the hiring process, and to introduce you to the perfect candidate. We know the stakes are high, but so are the rewards. With Old State Staffing you’ll be empowered to make informed, meaningful hiring decisions, so you can continue to thrive in a world that’s spinning faster every day.

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Adam Cook
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