The financial sector is one of the most regulated industries in the world because it leverages customer deposits and debt capital widely in the business. As a result, the banks are process-driven and some of the first to deploy the latest technology. Global banks have access to their global balance sheets and also best practices developed around the world. Standard Chartered Sri Lanka is a global bank that has been operating in Sri Lanka for over a century. It has been recognised not only for its outstanding contribution to the network but also for how it’s a leader in aligning its teams to that vision and building leaders.
Here its Head of Human Resources, Ransi Dharmasiriwardhana discusses how the bank achieves this alignment and develops talent.
What makes Standard Chartered Bank one of the Top 10 Best Workplaces in Banking, Financial Services and Insurance in Sri Lanka 2021?
The unique culture underpinned by our valued behaviours – Do the Right Thing, Never Settle and Better Together – and placing employee wellbeing at the heart of every decision and action has made Standard Chartered Sri Lanka an employer of choice, and a leading workplace in the Banking and Financial Services industry. Despite the many socio-economic challenges presented by the pandemic, we have remained true to our brand promise ‘here for good’ by continuously investing resources and efforts in our biggest asset – our people, and supporting the welfare and sustainability of our clients, partners and society at large. Standard Chartered is truly a humane bank and our nurturing culture sets us apart from the rest.
We are humbled by the many awards and accolades bagged during 2021 in recognition of our strong employee value proposition and unique culture. Standard Chartered Sri Lanka was certified as a Great Place to Work® for the third consecutive year, and we are the third market in our global Standard Chartered network to receive this certification alongside the USA and India offices. We were named one of the ‘40 Best Workplaces in Sri Lanka for 2021’ by Great Place to Work®, and Sri Lanka was the first in the Standard Chartered global network to achieve this accolade. We also made it to the ‘10 Best Workplaces for Women in Sri Lanka’ for the second consecutive year in recognition of our work in promoting gender equality and inclusivity at work.
Furthermore, marking a first for Sri Lanka, we were certified at the second-highest level of the three-tiered Economic Dividends for Gender Equality (EDGE) Certification – “Move: Showcasing Progress” last year. The certification recognised the Bank’s People and Diversity & Inclusion Strategy to be a strong and effective institutional framework of policies and practices that showcased progress in equal representation, pay equity and equitable career flows.
We are proud of every member of our Standard Chartered family for the great resilience and commitment displayed amidst unprecedented challenges enabling SC Sri Lanka to deliver superior financial and non-financial outcomes in 2021. We remained engaged, focused and service-oriented, effectively embracing the new ways of working. Together, we have turned the challenges thrown at us into opportunities to be more efficient, focused and employee-centric.
How important is employee experience at Standard Chartered?
We take employee experience very seriously and have robust processes to gauge and analyze employee experience from onboarding to exit. We believe that listening to employees is the best way to identify issues that need addressing. In addition to our annual employee engagement survey ‘My Voice’, we listen to our employees continuously through ongoing, short culture surveys through which we check real-time employee experience across the organization. We have invested in platforms and AI to gain insights into data in order to continuously improve employee experiences. We’ve also signed up for recognized surveys to benchmark the experiences of our employees with other corporates in the market. Results of such surveys have been invaluable and enabled us to bag awards as a ‘Great Place to Work’.
Can you take us through some of your initiatives that make Standard Chartered a Great Place to Work?
Rewards and Benefits: With the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, the wellbeing of our employees became our primary focus. Employee needs for benefits, rewards and recognition changed, and it was time to introduce new offerings or tailor-make existing offerings to cater to these needs.
In a challenging business environment, we ensured that our employees’ fixed compensation was secured, even facilitating increases during the annual pay review. We also delivered variable compensation to secure our performance-oriented culture. Our frontline scorecard KPIs were regularly reviewed and modified to account for externalities such as lockdowns. We also paid a special allowance to those reporting to work during nationwide lockdowns and revised travel allowances even though many were working from home.
As a Bank, we looked at all avenues to support our employees to face the pandemic with confidence and minimal stress. We’re proud to say that we could deliver a comprehensive range of benefits and services to our employees in the last two years, keeping our promise of being there for them. Our staff medical insurance coverage, which is one of the best in the market, was enhanced to facilitate COVID-19 related expenses, and limits were adjusted to support fixed-term contract employees. We prebooked rooms in intermediary care centres during the peak of the pandemic in 2021 and supported our employees and their families with oxygen concentrators, online medical advisory facilities and home isolation support with meal vouchers and dry rations. We also enhanced the death in service insurance benefit from 2 to 4 times the annual salary in 2021 and included COVID-19 deaths.
We continued our complimentary medical health checkup offering to employees whilst maintaining health and safety, and our Employee Assistance Program ‘Here for You’ came in handy during this time when employees needed counselling and guidance to overcome personal or emotional setbacks. Understanding that the change and challenges were not easy to cope with, we delivered several initiatives around mental and physical wellbeing. One of the biggest benefits we offered our employees was the ability for them to work remotely, yet more efficiently and effectively. We were committed to promoting new ways of working by redesigning our operations to facilitate a working culture that enables people to be the best versions of themselves. We created state-of-the-art workplaces and invested heavily in technology and tools to enable them to perform their duties from anywhere that suits their needs better.
Career development and progression: We believe that career prospects and progression are key to attracting and retaining talent. We take a structured approach in identifying talent at various levels in the hierarchy and invest in talent accelerator programmes at both global and local level to equip and prepare our talent to reach their fullest potential. We also believe in the positive impact of mentoring and coaching employees in career development and have taken bold steps by increasing the cohort of trained coaches/mentors and the number of programs offered. We operationalized a record number of internal secondments since 2019, as we repurposed talent within the Bank from roles that were stagnated due to external circumstances to areas needing more hands-on deck. This was mutually beneficial to employees and business. We also continuously promote our talent to other markets in our network, reinforcing our commitment to nurture our internal talent. Our ‘internals first’ policy in resourcing ensures that we hire externally only when the required skills set is not found within.
Leadership: Our leadership team is our most reliable channel to making people feel safe, motivated, and empowered to be their best at work. Apart from delivering great business outcomes, they shoulder the responsibility of guiding and moulding talent entrusted to them by the Bank. Their role has accelerated in the last two years with the current uncertainty and challenges. In 2020, we held the first leadership assessment centre to benchmark the competencies of our leaders to stay agile and relevant to the future of banking. Over 120 people leaders were briefed and guided on the next steps needed to bridge the gaps.
Equal opportunities: Standard Chartered is committed to providing equal opportunities and fair treatment in employment. Treating colleagues fairly and with respect is embedded into our Code of Conduct, discrimination on grounds of gender, race, nationality, parental status, sexual orientation, disability, age, religion, or HIV/AIDS status is not tolerated. Our resourcing, training, development and rewards are purely merit-based. We believe in the beauty of diversity and promote diversity and inclusion (D&I) through our strong, passionate and committed D&I Council that holds our SC family together despite differences. Our commitment to gender equality and equal treatment for all has brought us much recognition, and we’re proud to say that we achieved 50:50 gender distribution in 2021. This was not an overnight achievement, but a result of carefully planned interventions that we signed up for over the past several years.
Rewards and recognition: We believe in celebrating our people and their achievements. The need for rewards and recognition increased in the post-pandemic context, as people were working under very different and challenging circumstances. Not only achievements, commitment, and efforts needed to be applauded and recognized. In 2021, the first-ever Standard Chartered Drive-Through Awards Ceremony was organized where winners could drop into the physical site in their vehicles to accept their awards, adapting to the new ways of working. Our employees were able to enjoy the hybrid event in the comfort of their homes without losing the ceremonial splendour of an awards ceremony.
Becoming part of something great: As an organisation, we believe that now is the time to accelerate change, innovate and transform. We push ourselves to come out of our comfort zones individually and collectively by challenging our habitual ways of working. We believe that we should have the humility and courage to unlearn and re-learn what the future demands of us, and the only way to do this is by igniting the ambition of our people. Through our Group-wide refreshed strategy themed ‘Chapter 3’, we committed to do our part for our planet by taking a stand on climate change, equitable access to financial support for women and small businesses, and a new model of globalization based on transparency, fairness and trust. We are a purpose-led organization wanting to make a positive difference in the markets we call home.
How would you describe the culture at your organization, and how do you build and sustain a strong culture?
The culture of Standard Chartered Sri Lanka is performance-oriented, employee-centric, and values-driven providing a feeling of being part of the SC family. Our valued behaviours serve as strong foundations and our frameworks and processes are structured to provide the perfect settings for aspiring talent to reach heights. Cultures take years to establish but a few months to destroy. We have made focused efforts over the years, even during the pandemic, to hear what our people want through brown bag lunches, leadership meet-ups, and surveys allowing us to build a culture on what makes our people happy. The unique culture we have today is a result of the hard work of past and present leadership teams, Human Resources teams and our D&I Council. We are extremely protective of our culture and very serious about the culture-fit when it comes to resourcing and progressing employees into leadership roles.
Why should prospective employees consider building a career with Standard Chartered?
Standard Chartered provides a conducive environment for staff to be aspirational and aim high. Our culture does not promote mediocracy and if they are ready to dream big, this is the place for them. They will be exposed to world-class standards and procedures and put through a steep learning curve, moulding them to be experts in their domains. Their growth and development goals will be supported, and they will be guided to secure, bigger and more complex roles within our global network. They will have knowledge and resources at their fingertips to help them upskill and reskill on a continuous basis, working with colleagues from different walks of life, mingling and collaborating in a multi-national set up. They will enjoy fringe benefits and rewards and be part of an inclusive and caring culture. They will be proud to work for an organization that has a purpose beyond profit and gives back to the community at every possible opportunity.