5 Financial Services Companies With the Best Internal Mobility Strategies

If someone asked the folks at Paddle to point out one industry that has effectively embraced internal mobility, we would praise the financial sector in particular.

Especially the big banks.

For a variety of strategic and logistical reasons, banks are heavily investing in internal mobility as a talent strategy. We’ve been preaching for a while that internal hires are much better than their external counterparts, and it looks like that message is resonating in the financial sector.

“With increasing pressures on cost, banks are scrutinizing hires more closely, adding extra layers of interviews and then numerous levels of sign-off for hires which cause processes to be drawn out” - Chad Lawson, Associate Director at recruiting firm Robert Walters in finance on why banks are cautious to hire external candidates

Today, we’re going to take a look at five large global banks and financial services companies that have successfully embraced internal mobility as a core function within their broader talent strategy.

UBS

Upon discovering that their employees didn’t think that there was an opportunity to grow in their roles, the HR leadership at UBS discussed this with their CEO and came up with a clear mandate to fix this. One of the ways they went about engaging employees was partnering with Singularity University to create innovative courses and easy-to-use tools for employees to learn new skills.

They also made learning easy to access through tools on their “UBS University” website. By increasing the web traffic to this site and therefore, awareness about new skills and learning modalities, employee morale surrounding career progression has vastly improved.

In fact, employees who say, “Learning opportunities at UBS help me to perform better in my job” had increased from 55% to 68% in just two years.

“There is no doubt about the importance of ongoing, targeted, high-quality learning.” - Stefan Seiler, Group Head, Human Resources, UBS

TD

Rated one of the top 25 workplaces in Canada based on employer reviews, TD Bank’s “Careers” page is littered with stories highlighting their commitment to the employee experience. 

We’ve often talked about how employees need the support of their managers to grow in their role, and TD’s Personal Performance and Development Process helps employees identify their career aspirations while offering the support of their People Manager to access new opportunities. Employees are offered assistance with tuition, eLearning, workshops and more. 

Credit Suisse

Name as one of Vault’s best banks to work for when it comes to internal mobility, Credit Suisse has even committed to using internal headhunters as a talent acquisition method. 

These internal recruiters are just as effective as their external counterparts. Because of the efforts of these headhunters, employees never miss an internal opening. In 2014 the program reduced attrition by 1% and moved 300 employees (many of whom might otherwise have left) into new positions.

From an operational perspective, the results are staggering. In the Harvard Business Review, Credit Suisse estimated that it saved $75 million to $100 million in rehiring and training costs.

Fidelity

Fidelity was rated as one of the best U.S. banking and financial workplaces in 2018,; we at Paddle think some of that has to do with Fidelity’s commitment to internal mobility. Even since 2004, Fidelity has shown a commitment to using internal intranet sites to promote career movement. These days, the bank is also known for its commitment to developing talent through mentorship programs. 

Barclays

“One reason people were leaving us was a perceived lack of career opportunities. Yet there are a lot of opportunities available, so the real problem was that people just didn’t know where to start.” ― Sarah-Jane Walker, Head of Customer Experience for Global Resourcing and Graduates

In 2016, Barclays’ internal mobility rate (the percentage of hires that came from within) jumped from 28% to 50%. This began with a candid conversation between HR and Barclay’s executive team, where they asked themselves…

….was the bank really doing everything it could to keep its most valuable team members around?

By listening to the parting words of their departing staff via exit surveys, Barclays discovered a widespread problem faced by many large companies: a problem Paddle HR’s tools are designed to fix.

One of the common internal mobility challenges faced by large companies is that they are creating opportunities for employees to grow...but employees simply don’t know about them.

Barclays was able to correct this perceived lack of career growth by embracing online tools to make internal opportunities more accessible to its employees. As a result, they’ve created some of the more interesting career path stories we’ve heard of:

So, what are these companies doing right? 

Looking at the financial sector, it’s not hard to see that many banks are stuck with their respective legacy systems and approaches to talent management. We’ve highlighted five banks that are killing it with internal mobility but make no mistake, more and more banks are moving towards more innovative, forward-thinking talent strategies.

In a 2018 report by EY titled, “The future of talent in banking: workforce evolution in the digital era”, many banks have pointed to internal mobility as a solution to their talent shortages problems. To help people progress from one role to another, one bank noted that they would retrain up to 70% of their workforce. Financial leadership is waking up to the fact that their organizations can only be as nimble and flexible as their people: as study participant put it, “the business cycle moves faster than the people development cycle.” 

In other words, the market isn’t going to wait around for banks to look for the right people. For banks, it’s more expensive, time-consuming and unrealistic to hire externally.  Changes in technology are forcing the big banks to rethink their talent strategy, and it’s clear that internal mobility and employee re-skilling are core components of any solution.

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