

Here is the next installment of my tech talent newsletter. My goal is to give you relevant insights into talent, hiring, and corporate governance within the technology space. This newsletter will look at trends across the:
Board Level Trend: Cross-Industry Diversity of Thought
We’ve heard it before—bringing different perspectives and wider experiences to the board level improves your company’s performance. But in addition to companies making their boards more gender and racially diverse, companies are now more often adding board directors from outside their industry who can bring a fresh and different perspective.
Examples of Cross-industry Board Appointments
While the first outside board member is most often from the company’s industry, there is increasing cross-pollination between regulated industries, like financial services and tech, which makes sense; boards are looking at leaders who can provide a new way of thinking, but boards want those leaders to have experience operating in heavily regulated industry.
Examples of Fintech/Tech & Banking Cross-Industry Board Appointments
Executive Level Trend: Stopping the “Brain Drain”: The Rise of the Head of Digital Workplace & Tech Employee Experience Leaders:
After a long year and a half since the onset COVID, in a world that’s becoming more accepting of remote/hybrid work, there’s been a shift in focus on employee tenure and stopping the “brain drain”. Why? Because it’s typically harder to onboard employees due to less impromptu conversations and “water cooler” talk. Current employees also have a better sense of a firm’s culture, business objectives, and already have the internal relationships in place to move the needle.
Yet how do you ensure that these employees are not only happy but equally effective in a remote/hybrid work environment? By adding talent in newly created employee engagement/tech chief of staff roles, of course! This is different from finding a former HR leader or Chief Talent Officer to be your Head of Employee experience (like what PayPal did), I’m talking about companies finding a former tech leader to figure out how to make your employees happier and more efficient by leveraging tech.
Examples of moves
Even if your firm will be going back into the office full-time and remote onboarding isn’t an issue, reversing the “brain drain” and improving employee tenure is still a pressing issue. Did you realize the average employee tenure is only 1.1, years at Google, 1.8 years at Uber and only 2.1 years at Dropbox? Clearly there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to employee tenure.
Earlier-Stage Talent Trend (0-10 years of work experience): Universities team up with private companies for mutual benefit
The demand for the top tech talent is so fierce that companies are engaging this talent as early as possible. They do this not just by setting up innovation labs (many of which are near universities), but also by funding AI departments and labs at universities themselves, in order to gain access to research, experts, and young talent (such as IBM’s $20 million pledge to Notre Dame’s Tech Ethics lab).
Additionally, companies are adding top AI & Computer Science professors as Advisors. One of the main benefits of doing this? These advisors can serve as recruiting/brand ambassadors by connecting their employer to their top students. By working with university professors, companies are able to have an inside view of (and early access to) up and coming talent, while also promoting brand awareness. On the flipside, professors are able to increase their salary, and prime themselves for potential future board appointments at tech companies.
Examples
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About Us:
Ridgeway Partners is a 50-person, retained executive search firm with offices in Boston, New York and London. We specialize in technology, financial services and where they intersect.