Episode 138: How Standard Chartered is Unlocking the Power of Skills in the Workplace (An Interview With Tanuj Kapilashrami)
Since the pandemic, the Digital HR Leaders podcast has typically been recorded virtually. However, we are returning to the good old face-to-face interview in this episode.
Joining David today at our Insight222 London Office is the Group Head of HR and Chief Human Resources Officer at Standard Chartered Bank, Tanuj Kapilashrami. Tanuj has been doing some inspiring work in the people space. And as internal mobility and talent marketplaces are something that many organisations are looking at right now, this is a powerful conversation for those looking for examples of success to learn from.
In this episode, you will learn about the following:
The role of the CHRO and the skills HR professionals need to develop in order to drive change to a more agile culture successfully,
How Tanuj got buy-in for a skills-led approach to talent from the c-suite,
The benefits Standard Chartered Bank have seen through its skills-led approach,
What the next steps are for the bank to embrace a skills-led approach to talent fully, and much more
Enjoy!
Support from this podcast comes from Gloat. You can learn more by visiting: gloat.com
David Green: Today, it's a slightly different episode from normal as it was recorded in-person at our Insight222 studio in London. Since the pandemic, we haven't had many, if any, in-person podcast recordings, so it was great to be able to sit down and talk with Tanuj Kapilashrami, Group Head of HR and Chief Human Resources Officer at Standard Chartered Bank, about the bank's work around talent mobility.
Standard Chartered is doing some really inspiring work in the people space, and as internal mobility and talent marketplaces is something that a lot of organisations are looking at right now, this is a powerful conversation for those looking for examples of success to learn from. So, in today's episode, I'm excited to discuss not only how one of the biggest banks in the world is approaching the era of a skills-based organisation, but also how the company and its employees have responded to the shift towards skills.
My conversation with Tanuj will also cover the role of the Chief Human Resources Officer and the skills HR professionals need to develop in order to successfully drive change to a more agile culture; how Tanuj got buy-in from the C-suite; and what the next steps are for the bank to fully embrace a skills-led approach to talent; and much more. So, please join me for my conversation with Tanuj. Enjoy.
Welcome to the show. Last time you were on, it was 2019 and as I was saying, right at the early stages of the podcast actually; I think it was about the 15th episode, or something like that. For those listeners who may not have listened to that episode in 2019, I do recommend you do by the way, could you please give a brief introduction to you and your role at Standard Chartered Bank?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Thank you first for having me back, David. I did jump at the opportunity when I got the invite from you. I had a fantastic conversation in 2019 and depending on where we go, I'll make some references to some of the things we spoke about, and how many of them actually came true over the last few years. So, delighted to be back.
I am the Head of Human Resources, the CHRO at Standard Chartered Bank. It's a British-headquartered emerging markets bank, so we are in 50-plus markets in Asia, Africa, Middle East, serving customers in 150 markets. It's a whole range of banking services, from individual consumer banking to wholesale investment banking. It's a 160-year-old bank, deeply rooted in some of the communities where we operate, so very strong sense of purpose, which comes both by virtue of our heritage, but also the markets that we operate in. The markets that we operate in are really at the forefront of the political, economic and societal changes that are happening, and the role that we play in those changes is really fundamental to our purpose.
Before doing my current role, I have had almost 25 years now in HR, largely in financial services, working across the globe. So, I worked across markets in Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, India; I worked in the Middle East; and worked in the UK.
David Green: So, since we spoke in 2019, it was only three years ago, but a lot has happened in the world since then. Who would have thought we would have lived through a global pandemic, which quite literally changed the world of work? As someone who's been a Chief Human Resources Officer both pre- and post-pandemic, how would you say the pandemic has changed the role of the CHRO?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Look, the pandemic has been a real moment of reckoning for CHROs across the world, and the HR functions more broadly, but CHROs specifically, have had to steer the ship hand-in-hand with their CEOs, making sense of a world which has been in complete chaos and it's been unprecedented. I know the word "unprecedented" has been used a lot over the last few years, but it's been an unprecedented set of changes that have happened in the world.
I remember in 2019 when I spoke to you, I said that HR functions and CHROs in particular should not be in service of the top leaders in the company, in our case the top 1,000 leaders in the company, but actually in service of 86,000 colleagues who work in our firm, and that has really come true. And it's not just the role for the entire employee base, but also the role that CHROs have had to play in the communities within which their firms operate. So for me, it's been really, like I said, a moment of reckoning for the HR function.
What does it mean practically? One is the idea that employees are a critical stakeholder group, pretty much in the same way as we think about customers, investors, regulators. We had spoken about it a lot in the past, but it really became quite real. So, this idea that employee advocacy can be a real force for good, and the role of CHROs in balancing the needs of the business and the needs of employees became quite fundamental; this balance of power which we'll speak about quite a bit.
Practically what it has meant is the power of listening, actively listening to colleagues, and the power of co-creation. Some of the best ideas in the pandemic, in the way firms dealt with it, didn't come from boardrooms in London, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, they actually came from the frontline. And this idea of, "How do we co-create solutions with the workforce?" became really quite critical.
The other thing which we saw quite a bit is shift in the ways of working. To me, the shift that has happened in the way work gets done is not just where you work, but also how you work and what you work on. So fundamentally, this idea of flexibility became at the heart of the proposition, recognising more than ever before the role of technology in delivering human experiences, and again we spoke quite a bit about that in 2019. You can deliver really distinct human experiences leveraging technology and that really came to the forefront. I mean imagine overnight, we had 86% of our workforce working remotely, and that just would not have been possible without the kind of collaborative technologies we saw rolled out during the pandemic, ensuring nobody gets left behind, so getting inclusion at the heart of future of work.
The last thing for me is reimaging the S of ESG. So traditionally, if you think about S, it was almost always about risk management. And a lot of S of ESG became about pro-social behaviour; and the role of HR in driving much more pro-social behaviour, not just within the businesses that they operate, but within broader communities and society at large, became quite critical.
David Green: Where would you say the future of work is heading as we transition to the post-pandemic world, which hopefully we are in the post-pandemic world?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: I remember saying this "future of work"; we're now in the future of work, and for a set of HR practitioners like me, David, who've been talking about the future of work for almost a decade now, there's clearly a sense that we are in it now. And there are a couple of things I would say before we move to the topic around skills in particular, because I do believe that's going to be the big currency. I'm a firm believer that HR, that has traditionally been a custodian of jobs, is going to move to being a custodian of skills. For me, it's a real welcome change, but also it's a real opportunity for functions to reimagine the role of HR going forwards.
So, the first thing I would say is, "What does it mean practically?" I do believe the power balance has shifted; it is much more towards employees. We talk a lot about war for talent. Actually, the war for talent is actually a war for hot skills; the skills that are in demand and people who have the skills in demand are in a far more privileged position today to be able to, I mean I use "negotiate" in a very positive sense, to have much more of a bargaining power when they talk about the kind of work they want to do and how they want to do it.
It's become very clear to us, in all of the research that we have done, to win in the war for skills, money is important, but it's increasingly becoming a hygiene factor. People are thinking about their employment proposition far more holistically. And as they are thinking about the employment proposition far more holistically, companies have to think about, what are some of the big bets that they want to make as far as the future of work is concerned, in competing in this future of work.
For us, there have been a few things. It is a continuation of the work that we started pre-pandemic, but has definitely been accelerated by the pandemic. The first thing is, purpose is here to stay. I spoke about it in 2019, I'll speak about it again. People want to buy from purpose-driven businesses, people want to work for purpose-driven businesses. We have found, in the EVP research that we've done pre-pandemic, but the scores card amplified post-pandemic, is doing a job that delivers impact is as important, if not more, in certain pockets than the compensation levels for the job. So, this idea of purpose and people finding meaning in their work is going to be really a critical part of an overall employment proposition.
Flexibility is here to stay. Flexibility is not just where you work, but how you work and what you work on, definitely there to stay. The third big trend for us, people wanting to work for companies that are happy to take a stand on broader societal issues, so this idea that, "I want to work for a company and a CEO that links back to the purpose", but it's not just hidden behind; people want to work for companies that are now very woke in the role that they play in the world.
This thing about the move about when/how/where and this idea of flexibility has led to us thinking a lot about, how do we pivot to becoming a much more skill-based organisations and like I said, being a custodian of skills as compared to traditional jobs, and that's coming from all of the employee listening we want to do. People want companies to play a more proactive role in reskilling, upskilling them for the future, making them continue to be relevant for the future of work. People want career development and growth as key parts of the employment proposition.
So, a lot of the shifts that one is seeing in the world of work actually play into the move that needs to happen towards skill in a very concerted way.
David Green: Someone we both know very well, Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau, they published a book earlier this year, Work Without Jobs, and Ravin kindly contributed to an article that we produced recently. And he was talking, "We've basically got to move away from 140 years", he said, "of learned behaviour, about basing the whole way we manage people in the organisation around jobs, to moving to skills". We shouldn't underplay how big a move this is, but it's fascinating to see a growing number of organisations looking to shift towards this skills-based approach.
Deloitte, again Susan Cantrell and Michael Griffiths, have been publishing a lot of good stuff around this. I know that Standard Chartered Bank is conducting a number of initiatives in this area; can you share more about the work that you're doing, for instance, around talent mobility, because that's definitely got the skills-based element to it, hasn't it?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Yeah. First, I will do a shameless plug for Ravin's book, Work Without Jobs. It's a fantastic read and I think, as you say, it brings down this narrative strongly and it was a real wakeup call for me. When I read that book, it really got me thinking, so hopefully Ravin is listening to this podcast, and we're both making a plug for his book, which is a great read.
I'll take a step back. We have made, over the last few years, some real inroads, and it all came from these insights that I shared on, what do people expect in the future of work. And I'll take a minute to talk about the journey before we get to the marketplace, because that's quite important. Our journey really started with jobs, and I think it was quite important because if you talk about skills and deconstructing jobs into skills, it is a very nebulous concept in large, legacy, traditional businesses. So, our journey started with the concept of jobs. But what we did was, we did a really, well I believe, a really interesting piece of work looking at our strategic workforce plan, three years, five years, seven years, and it's a piece of work which we have refreshed every year. And I remember taking it to the board and there were a couple of insights that came out in the plan.
What came out was that over the next three to five years, almost 14,000 jobs as we have today are not going to be needed. We call them sunset jobs. What it also said, we're going to need another 9,000 jobs which are jobs that just don't exist today, and we call them sunrise jobs. We then did, because working in a bank, numbers are always a very influential way of getting people, especially our CFO, to listen to you, we then did a piece of work where we said, if we had to hire for these sunrise jobs and move all the sunset colleagues out of the organisation, how much it was going to cost the firm, and it was a pretty staggering number.
So, this idea that to hire into the sunrise job externally was X times more expensive than deploying somebody internally, and if we are not going to deconstruct these jobs to start thinking about skills and reskilling and upskilling people into those skills, we are going to be cutting a very, very big cheque over the next three to five years, was a very, very important conversation to have.
We then spoke about, what is going to be our strategy over the next couple of years to move into much more of a skills-based organisation, and we then spoke about, how do we upskill and reskill into some of these future-focused jobs. Our research was very clear; it was very clear that some of the future skills are going to be a combination of technical skills and human skills, of course digital data, cyber, but also empathy, managing with ambiguity, thinking about leadership in very different ways. That led to us launching future skills academies.
We did future skills academies around technical human skills, leveraging an AI-based platform, so we moved away from a traditional learning management system to a much more intuitive, hyper-personalised platform, where people get directed to content based on their interests, which was quite a big shift, but also quite a palatable shift, because we were talking about skills which everyone could resonate with. We focused a lot on building a strong learning habit, because we said even before we get into some of these reskilling proofs of concept, we want to build a learning culture where everyone in the company is focused on future-focused skills.
I remember we launched our sustainable finance academy and we said, "The first 5,000 learners to learn about sustainability would have a tree planted in their name", and the number of emails I've had from colleagues saying, "I've got nothing to do with sustainable finance, but I went and did it, because I am really curious about how big the sustainability agenda is going to be to the future of banking, and it was great to get a tree planted". It sounds gimmicky, but building that culture of learning and building a culture in the firm where learning is celebrated and recognised, senior-most leaders talk about skills that they don't have but are going to be needed for the future and they are upskilling themselves, was a huge part of this journey.
We then ran very directed proofs of concept, where we looked at skills adjacencies between sunset jobs and sunrise jobs; so, what are the jobs that are going to go away; what are the skills that help them get reskilled into some of these sunrise jobs? We ran five proofs of concept, we showed some real redeployment opportunities and started making this skills narrative real. At the same time, we launched our AI-backed talent marketplace because, yes, you can get learning and development opportunities, you can find out the skills that are needed in some of the jobs for the future and how similar are they to the skills that you currently have, but we needed to augment that with practical, real-life experience, and we launched our version of an internal gig economy in our talent marketplace, where people who had pieces of work that needed to be done could put gigs.
People who had either those skills could apply for the gig, or we'd encourage people as they were going through their reskilling journey to sign up for the gigs as part of practical, real-life experience. You didn't have to take approval from your line manager to sign up to a gig; you could do up to eight hours a week for a couple of weeks for a few months on any of these exciting projects, which were cross-geographic, could be a completely different part of the world in a different line of business, and that then became the practice ground for us to create that environment for people to be able to experiment with skills for the future, but also be part of really meaningful pieces of work that were going on in the firm.
David Green: And, how's Standard Chartered benefited from this shift so far?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Well, I mean it's been phenomenal. I mean, I have to say when we spoke about it for the first time, piloting a talent marketplace and this idea of a gig economy in a company which is very formal and structured; so, David, if you're embarking on a project and you need a resource, you would typically have to make a job requisition, your leader would have to approve, they'll have to think about budget, it could be several months even before you start sourcing somebody for the role. That's the sort of hierarchical setup that we all operate in, that's the reality of the business I work in.
When we spoke about the talent marketplace for the first time, it was a really alien concept, because people said, "So, how does this work? I mean, if David posts a gig, Tanuj signs up for the gig, does Tanuj get paid more for it?" "No, she doesn't". "Does Tanuj get a promotion at the end of the year?" "No, she doesn't". "Does she get a bump-up on her bonus?" "No, she doesn't". "Why would Tanuj do it?" "Tanuj will do it because we have been consistently listening to our employees and the data is very clear".
The data is that people come and work for us because they want an exciting place to work, they want to do purposeful work, they want to do jobs that deliver impact, and they really want the company to be focused on their career development and growth. And we genuinely believe that those were bits of our proposition. We agreed on a pilot in our business in India. In the first six months, we had almost 7,000 people who signed up and we had hundreds of gigs, and some really interesting pieces of work.
Post 6 months of pilot, we decided to take it global, and we've had now 18 months of it being really global, where we have shown that we have unlocked US$2.5 million worth of productivity, we've had over 1,000 gigs delivered; but more than just the quantum, I think we've got 14,500 people who are actively registered on the marketplace globally now, and we are constantly looking for opportunities.
But what's really important for me is just the interesting, innovative pieces of work that have been done. So, colleagues in India came up with this idea of looking at banking solutions for our customers who are hearing impaired. That idea came up from a colleague in India. The entire project was resourced using the talent marketplace, and we are the first bank in India now that has a solution out in the public domain which is specifically targeted to customers who have got a disability and are hearing impaired.
So to me, it's the number of points it clicked, unlocked productivity in the company, linking to EVP where people want to focus on their career development and growth, being able to really pivot the organisation to skills, because it won't surprise you that the skills most in demand are the more future-focused skills. What do people need in projects? They need data scientists, they need communications experts, they need diversity inclusion experts, they need product designers, they need Scrum Masters, Agile coaches. So, the most pieces of work in demand are these future-focused jobs, which links in to the skills agenda, and actually it links to purpose agenda.
You could be a data scientist, working as part of a very monotonous piece of work; but you could, for eight hours a week, for several weeks, be part of a project which is making banking accessible to customers who are hearing impaired, and that is fulfilling your sense of personal purpose. So to me, it's about bringing so many dimensions together in a very seamless way.
David Green: Yeah, and I suppose also, from an employee perspective, it gives you that variety that you've talked about; it could be a data scientist in HR, but actually you're supporting a customer project that needs a data scientist for a period of time. That's great because it makes you a more rounded individual, helps your career grow, maybe eventually unlocks an opportunity for you on the customer side, or vice versa. And actually, from an agility perspective, it's really important because things are moving so fast.
As you said, sometimes these projects come up unexpectedly, you need to get them completed quickly. Usually, we would go out as an organisation and hire people, or bring contractors in. That takes time, as you said, because it all needs to be approved, it's more cost. And then here, you're removing the cost really, other than the cost of actually having the marketplace.
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Absolutely. And like I said, in the journey, starting off with learning, reskilling, upskilling, starting with the construct of traditional jobs, but actually in a very organic way, you are bringing in the skills vocabulary into the vernacular of the company. And where we are now going is thinking about skills in all of our talent assessments, so we are moving away from past performance being a predictor of potential, to looking at learning agility and skills as a key predictor for future potential. And we are introducing, have introduced in pockets, the idea for a skills passport. So, as you acquire skills, it actually makes you more employable and it leads to that talent deployment point.
So, I absolutely agree. There are so many things, when you talk about the cultural benefits of something which could sound quite simple, like a marketplace; but the cultural impact of that goes much beyond the projects that have been delivered on the marketplace, or the productivity that has been unlocked.
David Green: I'd be interested to know, what's the feedback been from your workforce; how have they taken to the introduction of this new talent marketplace? Obviously, you talked about the pilot in India and how that created a product for helping customers that are hard of hearing. What is some of the other feedback you've had from your workforce around the talent marketplace?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: I mean, David, I will keep going back to 2019, because we spoke a lot in 2019 about employee experience, employee experience being what companies are going to have to compete for in the future. And actually, this entire conversation links to the idea of experience very strongly, because what do employees want? They want flexibility, they want agility, but they also want hyper-personalisation, they don't always want to be told what to do; and both with our new learning platform, we call it diSCover, and talent marketplace, this idea of being hyper-personalised, the idea that I have a choice.
You go back, legacy businesses, a lot of learning is mandatory, regulatory learning, it's the company decides what I need to do. Worse is companies having a conversation with me, which is a much more adult conversation. The companies are talking to me about the way the world of work is shifting, companies asking my views and what is the role I want to play in the future of banking, and then creating platforms for us to be able to engage with.
I mean, our career development and growth, traditionally in our business, was the second lowest rated item after comp for years and years. And in the last two years, if you look at our engagement surveys, we took continuous assessments. So, we obviously took the annual engagement survey, but we also took continuous cultural assessment throughout the year. The scores that have improved the most, they're still low on an absolute basis, which tells you the amount of work we need to do; but the scores that have improved the most is our colleague satisfaction with career development and growth inside the company.
The other thing we've been able to do is, if I look at the rate of internal deployment versus external hiring, we are at a firmwide level now of 45% of our jobs are placed internally and the number becomes higher as you go higher. At senior levels, we are almost 70:30 and we have seen almost a 15% increase in that number in the last two, two and a half years. So, as you've got to invest in your staff, we give you the tools, hyper-personalised, think about career development in its broadest of sense, talk about skills for the future, that's also showing in some of the numbers. And I can very quickly cross-translate that into the amount of cost it saves for the bank when I do my regular catch-ups with our CFO, so there is a massive commercial impact to businesses as well.
David Green: So, what skills and capabilities do you think HR professionals really need to develop themselves to successfully drive this change?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: On this, my view hasn't changed over the last few years. If anything, my resolve has strengthened even further. The first thing is data and science and analytics. I mean, you've got to start off with active employee listening and really being able to leverage data and insights to understand what the workforce is telling, but also to segment in a way that makes sense.
I'll give you a really interesting piece. I was with my team a couple of weeks ago in our back-office centre. So, we've got our processing teams that sit in India between Chennai and Bangalore, and I said to them, "Guess how many AskHR", these are basic routine queries that employees put into the system, "do we get every year?" It's 400,000 AskHR queries every year. And I said, "Now think of ourselves as product managers, where employment is our product. What would we do with these 400,000 queries? We would segment each to death to try and understand how it shapes our thinking around people strategy, HR product, how we're engaging with our colleagues".
So, there's value of data, insights coming from data, and how is data shaping the conversations that we are having with boards, with regulators, with business leaders, with people leaders and with the wider workforce is absolutely a critical strength. And again, David, we've done some work with you in upskilling our colleagues in HR around that, but I think that's great.
I spoke about HR being product managers. You need to have that human-centred design thinking in the way you develop programmes, in the way you roll out programmes. So again, both at a design stage, but how you get that into the business, having that design thinking, having employee experience at the heart of it, is absolutely the piece that is key. And a current thing is, a lot of people say to me, "It's technology versus people", and it is both. And actually, the power of experience is when you get the best of technology along with the best of people.
I still find a lot of people in HR being quite scared of technology. And just embracing technology, thinking about the possibility is -- you know, we've done so much thinking around ethics, around data, how do we ethically use data, what does privacy mean, and a lot of these topics have to become part of your day-to-day conversations within the function if we are to fully leverage the power of data and technology.
David Green: But I guess, as you said, it's technology and people, which I think is a really important point; and if you can provide personalised, better experiences to employees through using technology and data, then the whole conversation around privacy becomes a lot easier, even if we take that legal is always a little bit behind where technology is, so you're always playing catchup a little bit from a legal perspective, particularly if you work in a regulated industry like financial services.
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Yes, but as you say, it's a fair exchange of value. Ultimately, it's about having a very honest conversation. We got a lot of insights post the pandemic, leveraging Microsoft Workplace Analytics on how our colleagues are working, how are they collaborating, how much time are our leaders spending between coaching versus being in unproductive team meetings, etc. But as we were collecting the data, we wrote to all our colleagues very openly and we said, "Look, this is what we want to use the data for. It is to make the day-to-day working for all of our colleagues much better. But you have the option to sign out if you don't want your data to be shared".
We had a very low, single-digit percentage of our colleagues that signed out. And to me, that all comes back to fair exchange of value. If you are having a very honest and transparent conversation about how the data's going to be used, which of course ensures standards around privacy and control, then actually it is an adult conversation. But what you do with the data and how you use that to deploy human-centred solutions is what differentiates good companies from great companies in my view, and I think that is where HR has a massive opportunity and role to play.
David Green: I know there will be a lot of HR, well I hope there'll be a lot of HR professionals listening to this episode of the podcast! I mean, generally speaking, most of the people that listen are like you, working in HR in organisations around the world, and there's particularly a huge interest in this skills-led approach that we talked about earlier. But of course, without buy-in from the board and senior executives, it's not going to happen, or it's certainly going to be very, very difficult. How did you, as a CHRO, go about getting buy-in from leadership for this skills-based approach to stand a chance, because as we talked about, it's not easy and it does take effort?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: No, it's not easy, and it is about reviving and re-plumping a business that's been run in a particular way for decades, like I said in our case, for 160 years; it's not easy, and that's not a sense I want to give to people who are listening to this podcast. There are a couple of things that we have deployed, leveraging our experience.
The first thing is, start talking in a language that they understand. The first time when we initiated the conversation, we did start off with jobs and a strategic workforce plan which was based on our traditional jobs. So, it's important to start off in a language that people understand before you start talking about concepts which might feel a bit more nebulous to you. So, start with something that people are comfortable with, well versed with.
I'm a firm believer that you've got to build a business case and articulate the economic impact of this change, and I will say this. It never needs to be 100% accurate, right, but the moment you start thinking about the commercial opportunity in all of this, which is what we did, trying to quantify the commercial opportunity in moving to thinking about future skills in a structured way, I think that to me was incredibly important to do that.
Senior sponsorship is key. The first five proofs of concept we did, which were reskilling proofs of concept, we had five very visible senior business leaders sponsoring each one of them and getting passionate about it and talking about it and really being vested in the success of those experiments. And that to me was quite key.
Experimentation, right. Do I believe that we can have 100% of our organisation move away from the traditional construct of jobs into skills over the three years? No. Do I want it to be 100%? Perhaps not. I mean, there are certain jobs that lend themselves much more to moving to a skills-based architecture, and choose the first few areas to experiment quite wisely. I mean, I'm stating the obvious, but it's largely technology, product development where these things happen, and are easier to roll out. So, choose the areas that you want to experiment quite carefully.
The last, and for me the most important thing is, co-create with your colleagues. I'd say employee advocacy can be a real force for good and a lot of the change in companies is not always going to come top down, it's going to come bottom up. We had to do that experiment in India, leveraging a talent marketplace, to convince some of our senior-most leaders that when you democratise talent, demand and supply of talent, using technology, it unleashes productivity, makes people happier, but that came from the power of bottom up, as opposed to necessarily top down. So, this idea of how do you co-create with your colleagues and engage with them will always, for me, be at the heart of rolling out differentiated people and culture strategies.
David Green: Very important. So, you've really accomplished a lot in this change, very impressive, in moving towards the skills-based organisation. You're recognised as one of the leading companies in driving this change and I think it's great that as an organisation, you're sharing some of that work with the wider community because I think that helps inspire others to maybe do what they know they need to do. I'm curious; what's the next step or steps in this transition?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: The two things that I'm very, very passionate about are, the first is, how do we get some of the reskilling done in very, very diverse talent pools. So, one of the things that we are looking at in our wealth management business for example, where a lot of the reskilling has focused on people who've got wealth background, and wealth management is an engine of massive growth for us, we are now taking this idea of, you can deconstruct that into jobs to tap into a much broader talent base, and that to me is hugely exciting because it's a big engine of growth. What we are saying is, let's just throw away the conventional wisdom on where we hire people as wealth managers, let's go back to -- and, we're going to launch a really big academy which is all focused on skills; we don't talk about the jobs, but actually creates the sustainable pipeline of talent by leveraging a much wider pool of people who are coming in from all walks of like. And I think that, for me, is where we want to go, just expand the pool of talent that we consider for some of our big, revenue-generating roles, to stop thinking about those jobs and deconstruct them into the skills, and we're doing that with wholesale banking, especially around areas of sustainability. That's going to be whether skills are needed to be a banker focused on sustainability and how do we make that accessible to a much wider pool. So, just expanding the talent pool.
The second one, which is the bigger societal piece for me, is that the gap between education and employability is becoming wider and wider. You see the latest Edelman Trust, it says that workforce globally is looking for their companies to take the lead in the skills agenda and the reskilling for the future of work. And they're confident that companies playing that role is significant more than policymakers, educational institutions and governments in most big markets in the world. And to me, what role Standard Chartered can play in bridging that gap, in partnership with educational institutions, is something that is my personal purpose.
When you look at sustainable finance, you look at digital data, you look at the fact that when we did our strategic workforce plan, we realised that without taking some corrective action, the percentage of women in our overall workforce would go down by 3.5% over five years, simply because there are not enough women in sunrise jobs. There are not enough data scientists, technologists, cyber security specialists or sustainable finance specialists who are women. And to me, the big aspiration is, how do we take the work that we are doing, and in partnership with educational institutions, we make the impact of this work in broader societies and communities within which we operate, especially in markets like in Africa and in Asia.
David Green: So, this is the last question, Tanuj, this is the one we're asking everyone on this series of the podcast. How should a company get started? I mean, you've given a few clues, so you might just want to really summarise here; how should a company get started to successfully shift from a focus on jobs to instead a primary focus on skills?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: I mean, the first thing I will say is, get skills into the vernacular of the company, don't shy away from talking about it. I feel, because people don't know how to bell the cat, people are a little bit nervous about even bringing that into the vernacular of the company. So, I think it's quite important to build it in the vernacular of the company.
As I said previously, build a business case around jobs. I think the commercial case around the move from jobs to skills is really quite important. To get senior leaders to scale the challenge for them, experimentation, co-creation with colleagues, starting small but then scaling for impact, are all of the things that are going to be quite important. I think democratising access to opportunities, be it leveraging some version of a marketplace that we have done, or looking at learning differently, is going to be quite important, because you can't replace the structured jobs approach that we have had, and the way design has been done in companies, overnight to move to skills. But what you can do is democratise access and opportunities. And by doing that, you do have a lot of the energy that gets built within the organisation.
David Green: Well, that's a perfect place to end our conversation today, Tanuj. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast for the second time. Can you let listeners know how they can connect with you on social media, find out more about your work at Standard Chartered, because I know that you shared some of what you're doing on LinkedIn and other forums as well?
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Thanks, David, thanks again for having me. I am on LinkedIn, Tanuj Kapilashrami, and I do try and be active there and share some of the work, and our experience, both good and bad, using my LinkedIn handle. I'll also encourage people to go to sc.com. We've got some great employee stories out there. A lot of it is about listening to the experience of our colleagues in their own voices, and there are some great talent marketplace stories in there as well, so go and spend some time on sc.com as well.
David Green: Perfect. Well, thanks, Tanuj, and thanks so much for doing this in-person as well.
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Thanks, David.
David Green: It's always nice to go back to pre-pandemic days, when we used to do all our podcast episodes in person, so thank you very much.
Tanuj Kapilashrami: Thanks a lot.
David Green: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I hope you enjoyed it. And thank you again to Tanuj Kapilashrami for another great conversation. If you did enjoy listening, please do rate the show with five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share it with your friends and colleagues via social media. We rely on your feedback and support to keep being able to make the podcast.