A major player in the international banking scene is Standard Chartered Bank, with a network of offices in over 70 countries including Nigeria. In this interview with Vanguard MoneyDigest, Linzi Blakey, Managing Director, Global Head Human Resources, Client Coverage, Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking (CCIB), shares insight on the various talent development initiatives of the bank designed to ensure employees have the requite professional skill and attitude while also ensuring diversity, fairness and commitment to innovation as dictated by the evolving needs of the bank’s various markets.

By Babajide Komolafe, Economy Editor

What is the Bank’s commitment to employees from a People Development perspective?

We obviously have a very strong people agenda around talent development. We aim to attract, hire, retain and develop the very best talent in the world.

Driving commerce and prosperity is at the heart of who we are and what we do especially in emerging markets within regions, including Africa, and Asia where we operate. The people and businesses we serve are the engines of trade and innovation, and central to the transition to a fair, sustainable future. With 85,000 employees and a presence in 59 markets, our network serves customers in close to 150 markets worldwide.
The Africa and Nigeria focused talent agenda is an integral part of this agenda, and being able to not only build talent locally but actually bring African talent globally is really important to us.

Now in terms of how we develop talent. We have numerous ways, but not least, we have a global online learning platform. So any employee anywhere in the world can access world class learning; and they can do it from the comfort of home, or from the office.

Over the last six to 12 months, our drive for employees has been around building future capability. So for example today, you might have a particular skill set, but actually, as we look to the future it is crucial to assess if those skills sets are future relevant particularly in corporate banking. We need to be asking the right questions that enable us prepare for the future. What might a future relationship banking professional require? Does the individual have an extensive understanding of topical issues such as the sustainable finance agenda? Is there an understanding how we can make a difference for our clients in the digital space? How vast is one’s, understanding just of cash and trade, the complexities of it in relation to the economy etc. For corporate organisations for example, it’s about having well rounded relationship managers who don’t just open the door and manage client relationship, you but can actually talk about some of our products as well. As a Bank we remain committed to ensuring all our employees, including those in Nigeria, get the right training and development and aligned to how they want to take their career forwards.

What has been just amazing and inspiring to me this week is to engage in person the talent we’ve got here in Nigeria. Well educated with a great understanding of global trends, smart, not afraid to ask difficult questions, have a deep understanding our clients, are really passionate about delivering great business resilience initiatives and are innovative in coming up with creative solutions that tackle some of the tough economic and macro issues they’re facing.

As part of developing talent, we are also creating more pathways to global experiences for colleagues who wish to experience other work cultures and add value from their experience and expertise. Of our over 800 employees in Nigeria, we have 63 who are working across different markets within our network, whether in the UK, New York, Singapore or the UAE etc, who are thriving in different roles, but first started their careers here in Nigeria.

In recent times we have seen an exodus of key talent within the Nigerian labor market to the diaspora. The popular word for this trend is JAPA, which means, ‘flee quickly’. Is this an area of concern for the CCIB business and how is the Bank tackling the brain drain within the industry?

It would be unrealistic to say it’s not an issue for us. It’s not something that we’re all concerned about. It’s something that we’re aware of and something that I think Nigeria is facing more generally. Right? I read an article this weekend, which indicated that about 60% of talent is leaving Nigeria, to Canada and the UK primarily. For us in the bank, what’s interesting is, when you look at the numbers and actually what’s happening here and globally, over 70 to 80 countries, people don’t have to leave the bank to get that opportunity to get to go.

Across several countries, if you work for a local organization that is national, if you are going to Canada or the UK for example, you may most likely have to leave your employer. I think our unique advantage; our value proposition is you don’t have to do that. You can actually stay within the bank and work in one of over 70 markets in the world aligning with relevant regulatory guidelines.

So you know, if you want to kind of be with it, if you want to stay within the field you’re in today, there’s a kind of the market but it’s not something we see a lot, of people who want to move, but we are able to move them within the bank. Now whether that continues or whether people decide, you know, because there are a lot of startups, the FinTech world is competitive for us. It’s fast, it’s evolving quickly, you know, we may see a shift in that, where people want to go into venture capital or they want to go into fintech. We are in a position where we are able to strategically support career development movements within the bank through remote working opportunities and cross border collaborations. The pandemic year introduced the world to new ways of working and it’s working really well for us.

So are you saying the treatment of employees in terms of rewards and remuneration is the same across your network irrespective of the country of location?

Yes. We run a global business, and we have policies such as our Fair Pay Charter, which applies across the world. We have policies for Future Ways of Working, and on flexible working, which I just alluded to. For us Flexi-working allows our colleagues to combine flexibility of location and flexibility of the pattern of our work in a way that suits us employees, our culture, our values, the roles and their personal lives while meeting business needs. Bringing it to the personal life situations that affect all employees, in spite of local industry standards that give women three months maternity, we give our women five months maternity leave and also give new fathers 10 days paternity leave. These are just a few things being done by the Bank to support staff across all locations; because we recognise the value it brings to their quality of life and in turn impacts productivity and engagement levels in the work place.

Diversity and Inclusion are at the heart of the bank’s employee development agenda and community investment commitments? Can you share a bit about the initiatives in place currently supporting inclusion in the workplace?

We’re building a successful Bank that drives commerce and prosperity through a culture of inclusion. We essentially tackle the issue of diversity in three ways. The first is to be a ‘Great Place to Work’ so as to attract talent from all walks of life and make our bank a fantastic place to work for all our employees). The second is to be a ‘Great Place to Bank’, for our clients to ensure that our products meet the needs of everyone who uses them, no matter how diverse). The third is ‘Support for our communities’, which is to ensure that our approach to diversity is mirrored by our suppliers and the communities we operate in, ensuring continued wealth creation with nobody left behind.

The Group is committed to gender representation. Bringing it home to Nigeria, in keeping with the policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that requires a minimum of 30 per cent of female representation on boards and 40 per cent at the top management level in the banking industry, we have good representation in the Bank’s leadership where five key departments including Information Technology, Transaction Banking, HR, Corporate Affairs, Brand and Marketing; and Company Secretariat/Legal are headed by women.

So we come back, and we have those reviews and negotiations. We ensure this is reflected as well in the leadership succession planning to ensure there are equal opportunities for all colleagues including women to aspire to the c-suite. We ensure staff have targeted support through our Employee Resource Groups (ERG) which covers colleagues living with Disabilities, Millennials in the Workplace and Network of Women to mention a few.

But what if you have more men qualified than women?

We are an equal opportunity Bank and not gender biased. Whilst we are actively driving a 50-50 inclusion and equality opportunity, we will not compromise on expertise, performance capabilities, track record performance, integrity and compliance to conduct. You don’t just put like another 10 women in leadership positions because you have been told to; but you’ve got to come with, equal and suitably qualified candidates and then begin from there. We drive for 50-50 because it starts there, and then you can affect a change. The other thing we do is that we have a huge focus on attracting and retaining at the more junior level. So we are progressively and consistently building our own pipeline of seasoned capable leaders including women coming through at junior levels, so you don’t, have a shortage of talent.

We drive a lot around what we call ERGs, that is, Employee Resource Groups (ERG), around female representation, support for men in the work place, disability and employability, and then more globally, around ethnicity as well across the bank.

Speaking to the Africa talent agenda, at the regional level, there is a focus on empowering and bringing through African talent. Africa and the Middle East are significant growth markets, as a result we believe our employee base should be able to represent and support our clients. And you only get that by focusing on them, and ensuring that we’ve got talent programs in place and mentoring programs in place, that actually support colleagues so that when those next jobs come up, people are ready to take them, not just by chance, but as the obvious best candidate. Actually, we’ve prepared and nurtured African Asian talent, female talent, to be ready to compete for any of those roles that come through. Even in Nigeria, you see that representation in our management team where you have key roles occupied by women who have track records of performance both in the industry, and within the bank. Furthermore, almost 50 per cent of our country management teams are females as mentioned earlier

How is the bank creating more opportunities towards driving sustainable leadership for its key talents?

For us, this is a marathon, not a sprint and we’re here for good. But that is exactly right. Our country CEO, Lamin Manjang has worked across five or six markets in his career that spans 20 years. And yet every job has been different, he’s never got bored.
For us, it’s about having some proactivity in what a career can look like. So you don’t sit and wait and then twiddle your thumbs and think, I don’t know what’s next, you take responsibility for driving your own career. And if you can do that, with some, guidance in place to show you the kind of path you can take, then I think that anyone will work here easily for the next 30 to 40 years, and have a very successful, very interesting career.
And I think there’s something about, how younger generations see career journey’s now. They see them as a portfolio careers. So back to your point about sustainable leadership, I think we can do everything we can to provide a ‘here for good’ job, where people grow, and are always moving, developing evolving, and exploring global opportunities if that’s a thing of interest. The world as we know has changed significantly and organisation are now more than ever doing everything possible to ensure this is reflected in their retention strategies.

It’s a great opportunity for organisations to embrace and as a bank that’s been in operation for over 150 years globally, and in Nigeria for over 20 years, we continue to build a strong alumni community that ensures our employees understand they are always welcome to either build their full careers with us or explore and return. We remain Here for people and certainly Here for good.