Over the last few months, after the publication of 'How to make partner and still have a life' I have been having many conversations with law and accountancy firms about 'growing their own' partners. This article, gives you 4 hard-hitting commercial reasons why it truly does pay to develop and invest in your own high flyers to help them progress their careers within your firm.

1. Lateral hires are expensive

Senior level lateral hires, either at director, partner or senior associate level, costs money. Even if you can avoid the 25-40% 1st year salary fees charged by recruiters, you still have to factor in the costs involved in on-boarding and getting your new member of staff to be productive and working at 100% capacity. In my days at Tesco we used to work on a cost per new hire of 100% of their first year salary. This is a pretty reasonable estimate, when you consider the time and resource it takes to:

• train and get them set up on your firm's systems;
• immerse them in the firm's culture and 'way of doing things';
• introduce them to accounts and clients they will be working on;
• get them fully networked across the firm;
• start billing and bringing in their own work;
• actually recruit them in, e.g. meetings, interviews etc;

4. Less risk of diluting what makes your firm great

When you grow your own partners you preserve your own firm's unique culture and values. The risk is when you bring in senior lateral hires, you dilute the firm's values and culture. Or worse still, the new recruit never quite fits in and leaves fairly early into their employment with you.

How does your firm invest in its own talent?