Standard Chartered Bank Ltd.

Global talent management at Standard Chartered Bank

Standard Chartered bank, an international financial service company with over 1,700
branches and outlets in more than 70 countries, was merged by two banks: The
Standard Bank of British South Africa, established in 1863, and the Chartered Bank
of India, Australia and China, established in 1853, was set up in 1969. Its
headquarter is in London, UK. By 2011, it goals to be increasing leadership capacity.
As it is the international retail and corporate bank, there are employees over 75,000
people with of 125 nationalities around the world. In addition, 90 percent of the
bank’s profits come from emerging markets which located in Asia, Africa and the
Middle East. As the result, the bank is facing the challenges of international human
resources management in recruiting people from those countries which is hard to
find the talent one. Therefore, human resource has to find out the way to generate
its own talent factory to serve the future significant positions.

To be the successful talent factory, Standard Chartered starts with launching the
talent management processes which include acquiring, training and developing, and
retaining as the main strategic objectives in every market around the world with the
commitment of the CEOs. Derek Stockley (2005) defined talent management that it
is ‘a conscious, deliberate approach undertaken to attract, develop and retain people
with the aptitude and abilities to meet current and future organizational needs.’
Talent management would be a good approach to manage employee’s performance
for the situation of people skill shortages. Talent management is a basic key of
organizational accomplishment in a high competitive environment. It does not only
increase the productivity of workplace, but also meet present and future
organizational needs. In addition, it is consistently developing for the great business
value. That is the reason that many potential companies have determined to develop
their own people instead of hire new skilled one. To prepare for the skills inadequacy
in the near future with some reasons such as organization size expanding,
retirement or even economical change, companies should also focus on developing
and retaining talent.

Even though talent management is leaded by human resources, regularly the head
of the HR division, as a strategic partner, all levels of management have to work
together. When the managements are took part, the perception of talent
management has more high visibility. To be prosperous, companies need
methodical procedures by involving people with strong connections between
leadership and talent to form value of people to be the assets of the companies. In
addition, it is significant to educate chief executive on the connection between the
cycle of talent management and the turnover cost. They should know that
compensation is not always the answer to keep a valued people. The best way to
understand what employee needs is.

For the bank, this strategy does not only solve the problem of people skill shortage
in the emerging markets but the plan to the future change. Its processes are
including:

Acquisition: It’s the approach strategy to attract the qualified people into the part of
the organization. HR have to ensure to get the right person into the right job
because even though the recruitment costs expensively, employment the wrong one
could cost even more.

Training and development: It’s the way to improve employees’ performance and
communicate employees about their career path. Furthermore, their higher
knowledge and skills will benefit them for the higher valued position.

Retention: It’s not easy to recruit the right candidates but if you have ones, you know
that they are a priceless asset of your organization. Keeping the qualified people will
always be a significant mission. Otherwise, the top performers want the different
types of rewards. To maintain them, the management should know what really
drives them and give them the satisfied rewards.

Leadership development: It’s the important program to develop the high potential for
the organization’s future because managers basically operate and engage directly
with their employees. Consequently, talent managers enable to influence, lead and
convince people and organizations to achieve the goal of organization.

Performance management – To ensure that the goals of the organization are

continuously being met with a performance of employees; this process will give
employee the feedback of their performance. The important thing this appraisal has
to be clear and unbiased.

Workforce planning – It helps the organization evaluating the demand of future

workforce and calculating the numbers to serve that demand. For the business
success, organization today has to how to plan for the dynamic of workforce. 

When the situation of the talent shortage happens, recruiting the right people is the
first step to consider. It is the surveying process to look for the candidates both the
internal and external organization to attract the right one for the vacant positions.
Traditionally, the competency-based recruiting approach does not recognize the
technical skills of candidates, and also competencies of their behaviors. This
competency, which uses the set of evaluation tools, is often determined as ‘an
underlying, deep, and enduring personal characteristic of an individual that predicts
behavior in a wide variety of situations and results in effective or superior
performance.’ (Sullivan J, 2006). The detailed of the process defines as the follows:

Organizational culture

Necessary job responsibilities.

Technical competencies

Behavioral competencies.

Competencies indicators.

However, Instead of traditional HR competency models, Standard Chartered

focused on the strengths of its people to seek the right people for this situation
because they believe that the best performance of people is apparent with their
strengths and their strengths are matched with the requirements of proper
competency requirements.

For solving the issue of talent shortage in the emerging markets, Standard
Chartered focused on the internal recruitment to find the talent for the critical
positions. The global systems and tools are created to collect employee’s
performance. And one of these tools that the bank introduce it’s called country
conversations” which is the great way to manage talent in the emerging markets by
cutting across the process of building a talent pool which more complicate and take
time into core processes, minimum standards, and reliable data

Human Resource (2009) discussed that Standard Chartered launches it as an

appraisal process. Each year, employee has for conversations managers to do the
talent management process. Each conversation, managers have the pocketbook to
guide on how to do. There are four processes:

The appraisal of performance

The learning and developing to meet their objectives with the way to access it

Building careers that the employee has learned the main of their job

The engagement review that the patterned questions is asked by the managers with
the fixed headlines ‘such as “know me”, “care about me”, “focus me” and “build
strengths”‘(Human Resource, 2009) which targeted on building the organizational
competencies
In addition, a Human Capacity Scorecard was introduced to help managers
comprehend what they could support on their local talent needs and plan for their
future. Its database is covered with the information of detailed work force, the people
processed effectiveness and the performance impact for each business unit and
country. There are four categories ranging from high-potentials to underperformers.

In the process of performance appraisal, database of employees’ and organization’s

performance is very great source. The bank said that this global standards and tools
would help line managers to achieve HR practices which are focused on hard data
(Human Resource, 2009). As the multinational enterprise and the personality types
of the people that tend to be rational and data-based person more than the touchy-
feely people, it would be fit to standardize the appraisal processes clearly for more
understanding and easy usage. Managers are able to look at the profiles of their
team not matter where they are placed. The conversation between managers and
their team follow the booklet that may reduce the bias. The obvious four categories
would make more comprehend between managers and employees. In addition, the
annually conversation might make a good relationship and collaboration between
managers and their team that rarely interact each other.

Human Resource (2009) revealed that ‘The aim is to increase engagement, enable
staff to develop and use their strengths, ensure the bank keeps its best talent,
encourage energy, innovation and fun, satisfy customers and deliver better business
and financial results. Managers are advised that their HR regional manager can help
them access further sources of support if needed, including training and extra
information.’ Nevertheless, for the effective results, these standards and tools must
be reliable and the bank has to make sure that employees understand the use of
those tools clearly.

According to the bank focuses on the performance of the internal people who can
quicken their self-development and fit with their leadership roles in the changed
environment because leadership development is needed for sustainability, growth of
the business and a satisfied employee. Because of the rapid growth of multinational
companies, building their internal talent pipelines is essential. In-house training and
development is the most important of successful organization (Gareth Waiters cited
by E.learning age, 2009). Therefore, leadership development is a good method of
the bank by focusing on their employees that benefit both direct and indirect to
organization which provide opportunities for existing employees and retaining
valuable employees. There are some other benefits from the leadership
development program to the appropriate performers:

Encourage employee morale: It is the most apparent benefit with the most difficult
measurement. Poor managers can make their team distressed, and the troubled
team would not do their jobs well. Effective managers are important to lead their
team and prevent the impact on the work environment.
Less employee turnover: Leadership development program is also a retention
program that attracts talent employees motivated by showing them the respect and
career path and developing them the higher needed skills. Employee turnover
impacts directly to the costs of recruitment and training new employees. It’s better to
give the talent employees rewards to keep them.

More productivity: Talent managers are able to lead their team with the minimize
barrier. Any error might be reduced while the productivity tends to increase because
of the effective elements of the program that help managers to be the talent and
accomplish the organization’s goal.

Better vision: When managers are well-bonded with their team, they can see any
problem affecting them better. The problems tend to solve easier and keeps the
group vision away from the blindside of the problems. If the managers walk with their
team, the tangible goal set tends to be built for the team achievement.

Best supporter: effective managers are best supporters that make their team
comfortable enough to share new ideas, and letting them to create and discuss any
ideas in positive. Being good helpers of their team creating new ideas can help
organization moving forward dynamically

To get the managers with their best skills which is the way of leadership
development, Standard Chartered introduces a structured interview process which
would help them to create profiles to improve their self-awareness, coaching and
self-help tools. The structured interview process has shown a high reliability and
validity. Some strong points of this interview are employees are asked the same
questions and rated in the same scale of evaluation. With the same standard of
interview process, it’s easier for managers to evaluate their team’s performance
without any arguments of their team about the bias answers and unfair process.

Standard Chartered Bank in Bangladesh: The

Chartered Bank started operating in Bangladesh in 1948, opening a
branch in Chittagong.  The branch was opened mainly to facilitate the
post-war reestablishment and expansion of South and Southeast Asia. 
The Chartered Bank opened another branch in Dhaka in 1966, where it
is still headquartered. After the merger of the Chartered Bank with the
Standard Bank in 1969, the Standard Chartered Bank took up a program
of expansion.  It increasingly invested in people; technology and
premises as its business grew in relation to the country’s economy.  In
1993, there was an organizational re-structuring, which led to a
substantial expansion of the Bank’s business.  Today the bank has in
total four branches in Dhaka apart from the Chittagong branch, including
an offshore branch at the Savar Export Processing Zone.

Conclusion
Standard Chartered is like the other multinational enterprises that facing the
situation of skill people shortage in the emerging markets. Instead of hiring external
candidates which cost expensively and risk losing the internal talents who work hard
for the organization but nobody sees them as valuable assets. Talent Management
is an effective strategy that is introduced as core strategic objectives to serve the
critical positions of the organization. HR practices in performance management are
used to advice managers how they support their talents and plan for the future
needs of talents, and develop themselves becoming the talent as well. The global
standards and tools are launched to solve the distance trouble between managers
and their local talents; it is the Country Conversations, the appraisal process that
use the booklet as the source of action so that there are no problems what kind of
manager’s personalities is. The bias would be reduced obviously. This approach
strategy shows that HR’s role is not the main leader but advisor for the managers to
manage their talents. And with the Human Capacity Scorecard that is developed
becoming the extensive database keeping employees and businesses’ performance.
It is an essential measurement to classify employees’ performance with other factors
effecting toward their performance. This scorecard can be used in various purposes
such as acquisition, development and retention. Standard Chartered Bank decides
to focus on the people strengths instead of the old HR model for serving the urgently
case of the lack of talent in the emerging markets. However, in the long run, the HR
competency model would be more effective and standard. Moreover, it is necessary
for the sustainably business success. Another interesting tool that is used in this
case is a structured interview process which helps managers themselves in their
leadership development and also their team performance improvement. Standard
Chartered emphasizes the internal pipeline of people which would benefit to
employees who try to be the talents and the organization which get the talent with
loyalty. Performance management is not about the appraising and rating
performance but it involves training and development, rewarding and planning for
the future organizational capacity. In the business market, there is no the best
strategy for all of the organizations all the time. The business environment could
always change. The best way is to choose the strategies that would be optimal for
the organization at that time like Standard Chartered that choose the strategies for
today situation to solve the talent shortage, and the goals to be the talent factory and
become increasing leadership capacity by 2011.