MENTORING IN BANKING: CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR COMPETENCE

On April 11, Barclays, one of the UK’s leading banks, announced the appointment of five new managing directors to implement a growth program for the banking group in Scotland, which includes, among other things, construction of a £300 million campus in Glasgow city centre. It is noteworthy that Jacinta Stewart, head of HR for Barclays International Chief Operating Office, was one of the experts recruited to the team assigned to support the project.

 

Engagement of an HR top-manager to support the expansion of the bank’s presence in the new market reflects one of the trends determining the modern banking sector development, namely the growing role of HR in the industry. In this regard, experts at Crowe, a US audit and consulting company, presented the latest edition of their annual Bank Compensation and Benefits Survey in late 2018. Based on data analysis of 420 banks, it highlights that the average salary of chief HR officers increased by more than 7% over the past year.

 

“The upward shift in top human resource functions indicates that banks are putting a high priority on finding and retaining the right talent in this competitive labor market,” noted the study’s authors.

 

As the competition in the industry intensifies, the importance of a well-structured policy of banks in human resource management is increasing, especially in the segment of technological support of bank-to-customer interaction. In this particular case, timely selection of strong specialists is the key to banks’ up-to-date development and multiplying the potential to create additional competitive advantages.

 

At the same time, HR departments of banks are facing not only the task of finding new employees in the labor market, but also of ensuring their prompt and effective integration into the staff. This, in particular, is relevant in the case of attracting young graduates who reveal a predictable lack of practical skills regardless of their potential. Mentoring programs serve here as instruments designed to promote the development of these skills and, therefore, bring the competences of graduates into line with the industry demands.

 

George Warfel, General Manager for FinTech & Payments Strategy at IBM partner Haddon Hill Group, Inc., who has more than 30 years of experience in the banking industry, believes that mentoring plays a more significant role in banking than anywhere else.

 

“Mentors and mentees form personal relationships that yield professional, positive results for the industry”, says Warfel. “New bank employees who get the guidance and coaching they need are much more likely to stay on than if cast adrift to make their own way. Solid mentoring represents one of the surest, most direct ways to retain and hence grow the type of people the financial services industry needs”.

 

Today, this approach is acknowledged as a benchmark by banks around the world, including in Russia. According to the report “Russia 2025: From Personnel to Talent”, prepared by the Boston Consulting Group in cooperation with Sberbank, 91% of Russian employers note the lack of practical skills among graduates.

 

A number of key players in the Russian banking sector see the solution to this problem specifically in mentoring programs implemented with active support from their own HR departments. Since 2012, the mentoring system in Sberbank has been operating on the basis of Sberbank’s specialized Corporate University, whose establishment, according to its principal Valery Katkalo, was driven by the desire to remedy possible educational gaps of young employees.

 

Credit Bank of Moscow, another major Russian banking player, has also been implementing its own mentoring program in the retail segment since 2012, facilitating the integration of new employees into the Bank’s staff. Further, CBOM’s Investment Business department launched the IB Universe internship program in 2018, offering students and graduates an opportunity to gain practical working experience in investment business (IB), while allowing heads of departments and mentors to “raise” new experts in the workplace as well as to develop their own leadership and management skills at the same time.

 

“The quality of university training does not always satisfy business, including in the banking sector: new graduates are often not ready to immediately tackle real tasks without the support of experienced mentors,” says Alena Efremova, HR Director at Credit Bank of Moscow. “Mentoring at CBOM is one of the most effective tools for the adaptation of new employees that contributes to building a team of highly qualified and loyal professionals motivated to achieve better results”.

 

Thus, mentoring in the banking industry is a long-term goal for banks that rely on creating the conditions to attract promising young employees, train them and tap their potential. Such an investment in the development of human resources not only promotes competitiveness of individual banks, but also encourages positive qualitative changes in the labor market to the ultimate benefit of the national economy.

 

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