A unique employee experience
ING Director Maarten van Beek: "We want to give our employees the same experience we provide to our customers"
Digitisation is progressing at a rapid pace in the banking industry. ING finds itself in the middle of all these developments as part of the leading group. This is evident not only from the innovative way in which ING serves its customers, but also the way it serves its employees. Maarten van Beek, HR director of ING Nederland, talks about the importance that the bank attaches to the "employee experience".
"Nowadays customers expect to be able to do their banking anytime, anywhere. We try to give them the ultimate customer experience with ideas such as our ING app. But in order to really reach them, you have to make sure that what you are doing on the outside mirrors what is happening inside your organisation. Concerned and knowledgeable employees will ultimately make for happy customers", says Van Beek.
An HR app for employees
ING therefore wants to stand out in the area of employee experience. Today's technological advances are helping the bank to achieve this. For example, ING is already using Workday, a digital environment including an app. In there employees can find and sort out HR-related matters. "This includes a list of internal vacancies, a facility for claiming expenses and a way of finding appraisals and available holiday allowance. In this way, employees have everything within easy reach and there is no paper involved."
Keeping knowledge up-to-date
ING is also working hard on its own digital learning environment that is constantly available on laptop, tablet or mobile phone. In the environment employees can find exactly what they need to read and do in order to keep their knowledge up-to-date. Van Beek: "I can quite easily imagine someone sitting on the train in the morning and opening this app on their tablet or telephone and a report then appearing automatically, tailored specifically to them. A report containing, for example, summaries of interesting articles and relevant TED Talks. In fact, this app works like Netflix: we offer where your learning needs are in the way that best fits your learning style.”
A specialist in their own field
"But it's not only digitisation that creates the employee experience. Employee experience is determined by all interactions between ING and employee. Our agile way of working and all the attention we devote to performance management are also part of it. We try to foster the things people are best at. Of course, it is convenient nowadays that people are flexible in the way they are deployed, but beside that everyone still wants to excel at something. You have to help people to find out what they are good at and can continue to develop, so that everyone can be a specialist in their own field."
Focus on continuous feedback
Part of ING’s performance management consists of providing continuous feedback. Van Beek: "Strangely enough, this type of feedback has not been used for a long time in the business community. Imagine a football coach only sitting down with all his players twice a year instead of before and after each match. That wouldn't work. Football coaches provide feedback on the spot, to the team and to the individual players. That's what works best."
Helping somebody to become better
"Fortunately, we embraced continuous feedback in our organisation some time ago and everybody is becoming increasingly familiar with it. It means, for example, that after a meeting everyone gets to hear how he or she performed in it straight away. It's not about criticising people. First and foremost, you want to help someone to become better. You can do so by ensuring that that person can change patterns in good time."
"Giving feedback works more than both ways. We do not regard it as a hierarchical system that only operates from the top down. Employees must be able to assess their supervisors just as much. In this way, we all eventually become better at what we do."
Agile working is not a fad
"Over the next few years we will be further expanding agile working, in which people work in short, cyclical patterns in 'cross-functional' teams. This is because I do not believe that agile working is a fad that will eventually disappear completely. If you really want to create a good employee experience, you have to think beyond individual departments. This is where the cross-functional element of agile working helps: the fact that, for example, HR and IT sit around a table together, each with their own expertise. Only then can you track the entire employee journey properly, just as we do with customer journeys."
"I also believe that agile working is a very intuitive way of working. For example, you notice that older employees do not have much difficulty in acquiring the agile way of working. This transition comes fairly easily to most employees."
Distinctive and top-quality
"We will not be sitting still over the coming years. We will always continue to develop our way of working, so that we continue to attract talented people and continue to bring out the talent in people. With this combination of technology and our way of working, we provide the distinctive expertise and the top-quality banking products that eventually deliver the ultimate customer experience.
Customers and other stakeholders continue to demand more from companies. Today's market is continually exerting pressure on organisations to create a work culture that encourages high levels of performance. PwC uses the Workday technology to address the HR issues that are vital to businesses.
"Companies are looking for ways of meeting the complex expectations of stakeholders and society", says PwC's Tommes Krullaars. "To achieve this, they need a new generation of enterprising employees who can use technology to innovate. Nowadays, CEOs have talent on their agenda at the same level as financial results."
Innovative technology can help companies to make their employees more agile and seek out specific talents. But "in order to be successful, a company needs a plan that goes beyond simply implementing a system", Krullaars continues. "It requires a strategy for talent and finance, geared to its business and sector. Innovative technology can help if it emphasises the value of human capital and at the same time provides effective management of financial performance. Together with Workday, we supply the strategy, the technology and the implementation that will facilitate the transition of an organisation."
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