Bank branches redesigned

Branches of banks all around the world are getting a revamp based on the technology upgrades. The primary motive is to save costs while continuing to provide their customers with additional value-added features. After 40 years of branch building, Celent forecasts that the US will witness reduction of 30-40% in the number of branches over the next decade.

Though the new generation likes online features, there are security concerns among many customers as well. The elder generation has a massive bridge towards moving to online features (Banks have been trying to address this aspect proactively)

Let us look at how Banks are evolving their branches:

• Bank of America spent 2012 remodeling and modernizing 2,000 of its American branches – new features include virtual ATMs, online click to call & online budgeting tools, rooms with video-conferencing capabilities, and more specialist staff members.
• BNP Paribas has launched a new online bank ‘Hello Bank’ with heavy integration with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The online bank has a team working six days a week to answer queries via chat, email, tweet and voice phone.
• Wells Fargo launched mini-branches earlier this year.
• Ukraine’s PrivatBank has tied up with the new trend of Google Glasses
• Metro Bank to launch drive-through branch – are Banks the new McDonalds?
• Denmark’s JyskeBank branches have been developed to offer a destination for both customers and the community. ‘Sensory marketing’ allows the comforting aroma of coffee to pervade the atmosphere of branches, where the whole community – not just bank customers – are welcome to use the cafe and leisure facilities
• In 2010 DBS launched ‘I Designed A Bank’ that invited young people to design their ideal branch. Based on the winning entries, the bank then opened couple of branches to cater to the Next Generation. This year, Barclays has launched a crowdsourcing micro-site called Your Bank, inviting customers to share ideas about how it can improve its service.
• PNC Bank has opened its first pop-up branch in Atlanta, having consultants who will help customers with more complex transactions and show off mobile and online services.
• Wells Fargo plans to open a series of technology-packed mini-branches in neighborhoods that cannot support full-sized outlets.

Incentivizing Innovation in your Organization

To encourage the employees to continue innovative thinking and active participation, the organization should reward all contributions by employees based on the range of success and effectiveness of the ideas. Compensation should be reworked to include a percentage towards work outside those tasks described in the standard Job Description.

Employees should be incentivized to utilize them more often. Employees should be made to realize that they should change their mindset to the new culture or be left out. Each one should be given a target of a certain number of ideas in a year (if not half-yearly). This will keep everyone on their toes and look out for options to help the organization.

The appraisal process/system of organization should be tweaked to include the additional participation / projects that will be undertaken by the employees. The daily tasks will be the basis for their fixed part of the salary while the extra ones will determine the variable salary that will be paid out by the organization.

Stock options would be another route to consider rewarding the high-performing employees.

Related articles

• Chris Curtin: Bringing Innovation to Bear in Employee Engagement (huffingtonpost.com)
• Instituting a Mutually Beneficial Employee Suggestion Program (brighthub.com)

Instilling an Innovation Culture

To instill an Innovation Culture in the organization, the first step is to introduce an Open Culture. If an organization has a Flat structure, then that itself is a good first step. A flat structure enables Innovation in a great manner by giving employees more opportunities to make a difference. Extensive hierarchies in an organization size of 700 impacts the growth negatively. Not just the structures, the creation of project teams also influence the success of the projects. In fact, some organizations encourage project team members to choose their Managers, rather than the other way around. Communication between the employees and Managers should be direct and without any barriers. Like W.L.Gore who insisted on direct, one-on-one communication, anyone in the company should speak to anyone else.

Culture plays an important role in transforming the organization from their current thinking of “Doing what the job description states”. Setting expectations on employees like what WL Gore did (As a Gore “associate,” you’re supposed to morph your role over time to match your skills. You’re not expected to fit into some preconceived box or standardized organizational niche), will be one of the steps that Organization can take. Town-hall meetings are necessary to drive home the new message to employees.

Are the employees currently happy to do the tasks as defined by their Managers. If they are not, then there is a worry. Is it a matter of capability or attitude of the employees? A bit of both, one might say, without having too much insight to the character of employees. The employees should first move to a phase where along with their thinking, they will have to identify what they are good at.

How does one do it? There are various psychometric tests that can identify strengths and weaknesses of individuals clearly. It has been noticed that employees find it difficult to list out their strong areas – this is where the organization can help them in bringing in external consultants who can not only conduct these tests but also interpret the
results for better results.

Once they have identified the key areas, they can move to the phase of “Doing what you can do well”. Employees should be encouraged to think outside their standard job descriptions regularly – incentives should be put in place that will reward them accordingly.

Related articles

• Elements of Corporate Governance (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Summary and Review of Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar (bookstove.com)
• Profiles to Partners, Powered by The Mayer Group, Launches Innovative Online Candidate eValuation System (prweb.com)
• MOSAIC Learning – Adding Skepticism to Maximize Learning (eon.businesswire.com)

Employee Retention

We have seen that Organizations dont do a good job in retaining their employees – they tend to select the wrong folks to get the perks/bonus as well as the ones to get a cut in their pay. This will lead to a lot of mistrust and attrition.

Organizations need to be more smarter