GFSC introduces a nine-day fortnight for its employees

Dozens of workers at the financial services regulator are already taking part in the scheme, details of which have been set out in the GFSC’s latest annual report.

Commission secretary Dale Holmes said: ‘We experienced a challenging year in 2018 on the recruitment and retention front, which saw a number of well-regarded staff leave to take up roles in the industry.

‘While this inevitably results in some short-term issues for the commission, not least in securing good replacements in what seemed to us to be a tight employment market, nevertheless we see longer-term benefits for the industry and the Bailiwick when our staff move on.

‘They leave us as highly-motivated individuals who have been well trained, possess a good degree of experience relevant to the industry and hence are able to make important contributions in their future careers.’

He added that the commission employed 108 permanent staff as of the end of 2018, and was committed to delivering learning, training and development opportunities for the workforce.

‘We are also constantly looking for new ideas to assist in our recruitment and retention of staff at all levels,’ said Mr Holmes.

‘Our latest initiative has seen the introduction of a nine-day fortnight, which we hope will provide us with a competitive edge as, put simply, we are unable to compete with industry on our basic salary package offering.

‘The nine-day fortnight gives our staff the option of building up sufficient additional hours during those nine days to enable them to take off one Friday every two weeks as paid leave. At the time of preparing this report, 49 staff have opted into the scheme and a number of new joiners have already commented positively about this initiative during the recruitment process.’

Salaries, pension costs, staff recruitment and training cost £9.3m. in 2018 compared with £8.9m. the year before.

The GFSC’s graduate development programme was also highlighted in the report. Launched in 2014, 16 graduates have been employed on the scheme to date. Seven have been promoted to analyst and five promoted to senior analyst over that period, with more recent entrants continuing on the scheme for now.

The regulator also said that it continued to see challenges for the island’s financial services firms in ‘identifying the right skills and talented individuals for the roles they have available’. It could lead to increasing wage growth as companies sought to retain or acquire the key skills sets they needed, added the commission.