Leading organizations will build hybrid work environments based on human-centric design. Compared to office-centric design, Gartner research shows that human-centric work design decreases employee fatigue by 44%, increases their intent to stay by 45% and improves performance by 28%. Human-centric design revolves around three principles: flexible work experiences, intentional collaboration, and empathy-based management. These concepts enable employees to maximize productivity in the hybrid workplace, while avoiding downsides, such as virtual overload and an always-on culture.

Financial services leaders can improve remote sales performance by improving the quality of internal collaboration, focusing on the effective use of data tools, and coaching staff on client-facing technology. Gartner research shows that these factors can make a relationship manager (RM) up to 1.7x more likely to be a top performer for adding new clients. Leaders should look to ensure that sellers' calendars aren't crowded by internal or administrative meetings, that they can draw actionable insights from data when working prospects, and that sellers are effective at using technology that allows clients to directly engage with your organization.

The best organizations will move beyond frontline models with a short-term focus on selling or transactional activities. To drive a more engaged, productive frontline, leaders must provide clear career pathways for their staff in which bankers are rewarded for skills development. This process should be integrated into a customer-experience-focused culture in the branch, where leaders should use new metrics for customer engagement. Prime among these metrics is the ability to deliver what Gartner has dubbed financial empowerment support (FES): the most productive frontline of the bankers will successfully educate, enable and reassure customers based on their needs.

To achieve success in automation initiatives, financial services leaders must involve their employees. Gartner research shows 54% of financial services firms that exceeded performance involved employees in the planning of automation projects. This is no surprise. Automation efforts carry big implications for the workplace: our research shows that 46% of employees view automation as a threat to their jobs. Engaging employees in the automation process can assuage their fears, which may otherwise result in loss of productivity during cycles of automation implementation.

Hiring a more diverse workforce is only the first step in improving organizational diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Teams that achieve improvements in both diversity and inclusion (D&I) outperform teams that see only changes in diversity by 40%. Building inclusivity starts at the top: organizational leaders should commit to learning about inclusive behaviors and provide team managers with examples of inclusive behaviors. Leaders should also empower employees by soliciting their input during periods of D&I-related change, and ensure that recruiting teams have embedded D&I goals within the talent acquisition process.