Hiring trustworthy people who want to get on in life

But if you think he is the embodiment of an intractable, middle-aged man, you have been misled. In reality, the principal of West Riding Personal Financial Solutions is someone deeply concerned about his family, his staff and his clients, to the extent he worries he might come across as a “softy” in this article. 

Mr Liversidge has a strong sense of duty to protect and defend, and this extends to supporting his staff; in fact, he states: “In the army, soldiers eat first and good officers only eat once they see their men have been fed. Likewise, we eat last.”

I hire on merit alone

Although, for WRPFS, it is the women who get fed first: the vast majority of people employed at the company are female because, according to Mr Liversidge, they have all shown an “amazing work ethic” and, quite simply, been the best candidates.

Hiring on merit

Moreover, he has avoided falling into the private-school-hiring trap that has caused a lot of criticism to be levelled against financial services companies recently, by accepting applications from people across different social backgrounds.

“Since I founded West Riding in 2004, most of my hires have been women. It wasn’t planned that way, it just happened,” he says. 

“For a couple of years, I had a male PA who has gone on to be a very successful adviser in his own right. But I hire on merit alone. Most have come to us from outside financial services and all, like me, were state-educated.”

Mr Liversidge would not describe himself as a ‘white knight’ – someone who claims to be a champion of diversity and inclusion simply because it seems to be the popular thing to do nowadays. Instead, he considers himself a “fair man”, who just wants to offer flexibility because it is the “right thing to do”.

In fact, he says the importance WRPFS puts on flexibility gives the company an “edge when hiring”, and stems from his own experience watching his mother flourish as a result of a forward-thinking employer, at a time when working mothers were not welcome in many workplaces. 

He explains: “Most of her life my mother worked in tailoring, stopping only when I was born to become a stay-at-home mum for a few years. 

“Then when I was seven, the boss of a local tailoring firm drove to her house with one of his employees to ask her to work for him. They were shorthanded so he asked around and my mother’s name came up.

“She explained she couldn’t work normal factory hours owing to me being at school so they worked out a deal that suited them both. She worked until she retired, never missed a day and was always grateful for the flexibility she’d been shown.

“It was an early lesson for me that the employer-employee relationship is a two-way street, in a lot more ways than the obvious one whereby the employee exchanges time and work for pay.”

So WRPFS aims to be as informal as possible within the confines of what it takes to get the job done. “Anyone can ask us to make an adjustment to how we do things and if it’s reasonable then the chances are, we’ll do it. Why? Simply because we aim to get the best people possible,” Mr Liversidge says. 

“Pay is the most obvious benefit in any job and we’re very competitive in terms of salary, bonus and pension, but working for a small firm doesn’t suit everyone.

“To give us an edge, therefore, we build in the kind of working that makes employees’ lives more liveable. Modern life is stressful and people have to balance competing demands on their time and energy, so if we can alleviate that, we do,” he explains. 

Staff morale, whether career-based or culture-based, is also important to the company. Mr Liversidge has learned the importance of having a positive culture because of his own bad experiences in the past.

Before setting up his own company, he says he experienced bullying in the workplace, and on more than one occasion. Therefore, he simply does not tolerate bullying in his office.

“Life is miserable if you’re bullied and/or undermined at work. I was in that situation a few times before I founded West Riding. We absolutely don’t tolerate it here,” he states.

And when it comes to careers, he does not just want to hire, but to retain good staff. To do that, especially in this tough economic climate, means making people feel they have a clear career path.

Making people feel secure

Job security is something important for him, which means WRPFS always has people going through exams and training at any point in time. Mr Liversidge adds: “We figure that, to be happy, people have to feel secure and we do everything we can so their jobs are as secure as we can make them.

“We allow all staff time to study in the office. We invest in all our staff and the aim is that all our advisers become chartered. Nikita Kyle joined us from a logistics firm and smashed every exam first time to qualify in three years from a standing start. 

“Our operations director, Toni Turton, started with us as my PA eight years ago from a debt-collecting firm and now runs pretty much all the admin here.

“We’re really proud of our staff’s achievements. Nobody knows what will happen in the future so my aim is that if I drop dead, our staff still have employment if they want it, and can carry on running the business without me. 

“Either that or they’re well-equipped to work anyplace else. I don’t want their standard of living to die with me.”

Simoney Kyriakou is editor of Financial Adviser