The bank is investing another $5million to boost productivity and ongoing digitalisation efforts in Singapore
Standard Chartered will inject a further $5 million investment to boost talent development in Singapore and reskilling efforts to support ongoing plans to grow the business and accelerate digitalisation. The bank has bolstered their transformation efforts for at least two years.
This is also line with their commitment to building the resilience of the business and their people amidst a constantly disrupted work environment.
The investment will address L&D needs of employees at various stages of their career.
Future leaders
In 2020, the bank will provide close to 350 traineeship and career opportunities, giving jobseekers an early head start.
At the same time, Standard Chartered will continue to participate in industry initiatives such as the SGUnited Traineeships Program, SkillsFuture Work-Study Program and the Finance Associate Management Scheme (also known as the International Graduates Program).
Young bankers will benefit from an immersive program, technical skills development, the exposure to senior leaders and the opportunity for international assignments, leveraging the bank’s international network of 59 countries.
READ MORE: How to develop tomorrow's leaders
Mid-careers and silver workers
In addition, the bank will intensify its SkillsFuture@SC program, launched in 2016, to help employees prepare for the future by upskilling them over three years – from 2020 to 2022.
Since the program started, 20% of employees who participated have upgraded their professional skills and have been successfully redeployed to roles such as digital banking, risk, compliance and relationship management.
Training is customised based on the employees’ interests, stage of their career and in line with industry transformation needs. Employees can tap on various industry re-skilling and re-deployment programs to upgrade their skill sets or take on a different role.
For instance, Standard Chartered was one of the first financial institutions to embark on the
Professional Conversion Program (PCP). In addition to hiring mid-careers, the bank had also tapped on the program to reskill more than 80 employees into new or enhanced job roles within the organisation.
Moving forward, the bank will continue adopting the PCP to reskill more than 200 employees into new or enhanced job roles as they contribute to the growth of the bank.
The bank also welcomes the older workforce who is willing to re-gear themselves to adapt to a new environment and learn new disciplines.
To facilitate a continuous learning culture, in addition to virtual classroom trainings and e-learnings, they have also recently enhanced their interactive ‘diSCover’ learning platform for employees to access bite-sized modules from a myriad of topics, from blockchain to data, artificial intelligence (AI), leadership and personal development.
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In an exclusive roundtable, Laura Cole, Head of HR Transformation at Standard Chartered talked about the importance of having an ongoing dialogue with employees to understand exactly what they want.
“We are very lucky to have a dedicated employee experience team internally,” she said. “They are not from HR – they are UX designers, they are product specialists, and they have ventured out and spoken to employees through interviews and focus groups.
“They receive loads of insights. In HR we would call them policies or processes, but to an employee it’s an experience.
“When we were looking at implementing new technology we went out and talked to people to understand how they wanted performance conversations to go.”
Cole said that in this instance the key question was: ‘What is important to you when you are thinking about managing your career?’
“All of those conversations and insights we then used to shape the design,” she said.
According to Cole, HR has a key role to play in prioritizing what really matters to employees.
Singapore remains one of the group’s most successful franchises and is a key beneficiary of the group’s US$1.6 billion three-year investment, with a focus on digital.
Singapore is home to the majority of the bank’s global business leadership, as well as technology, operations, and innovation hubs. Strategy, thought leadership and ideas are incubated here for global implementation.
