金融技術、人工智能、區塊鏈、移動銀行。這些術語已經成為金融行業各家公司的口頭禪。但隨著這些公司更為賣力地開發未來所需的創新,人們很容易失去對職場文化的重視,雖然不至于完全忽視。然而在金融服務和保險行業最佳職場榜單中排名前60的企業看來,雇員參與和信任與有關創新的討論同樣重要。今年的排名由《財富》雜志與Great Place to Work聯合發布,涵蓋了專注于“全員創新”(Innovation By All,也就是優秀企業領導所采取的一種方法,旨在讓每位團隊成員都有能力進行創新)的公司。 Synchrony Financial是通用電氣此前剝離的一個部門,于2014年上市,在今年的金融服務和保險行業最佳職場榜單中排名第27位,是創新領域的領軍企業。在2月底舉行的Great Place to Work For All峰會上,《財富》雜志的數字業務副主任克里斯滕·貝爾斯特羅姆采訪了Synchrony的首席人力資源官DJ·卡斯托,討論了公司如何鼓勵每一位雇員參與創新流程,以及為什么在與團隊討論人工智能問題時一定要做到透明。以下是采訪內容的節選。 克里斯滕·貝爾斯特羅姆:在從通用電氣剝離之后,你是否還保留了一些通用電氣的企業文化,或者你覺得某些文化并不有利于 Synchrony未來的發展? 卡斯托:通用電氣因為其領導力培養而聞名遐邇。他們擁有大量優秀的標桿級領導力培養項目,而且我們希望確保雇員感受到公司在領導力培養方面能夠給予他們同樣的關注度和投入。因此,我們保持了這種文化,而且采納了其初期領導力培養計劃,并進行了修改,以便讓其更好地適應公司的情況。 貝爾斯特羅姆:作為人力資源負責人,你都通過什么來幫助人們適應這種新文化? 卡斯托:公司一開始就建立了很好的文化,而且在這個過程中得到了不斷加強。我們希望加大這方面的力度,并保護讓公司發展至今的一切事物。我們希望弘揚公司的傳承,然后開始著手打造我們心目中的公司。我們將公司看作是一家有著85歲高齡的初創企業。我們最初是為通用電氣的設備融資,如今,我們與PayPal和亞馬遜建立了卓越的合作關系,而且是面向未來的合作。因此,我們必須時刻比以往任何時候都更加警醒。我們希望員工們能夠像以前一樣做一個出色的領導者;但我們也希望他們會思考如何變得更加靈活;我們也希望員工能夠確保自己成為一名有創意的批判性思考者。因為如果你不關注上述領域,而且我們的行動步調不一致,那么我們將輸掉這場競爭。我們必須向Synchrony注入這種決勝文化,它能夠讓我們在這個競爭白熱化的時代,實現真正的差異化,并獲得不同的新客戶,PayPal就是其中一個。 貝爾斯特羅姆:可以稍微介紹一下你是如何在Synchrony打造這種創新文化的嗎?我知道你有創新中心。它們是如何工作的? 卡斯托:我們有賦能工作站,也有創新工作站。公司在美國和亞洲有1.7萬多名員工。其中,約1.3萬名在我們的聯絡中心。這些人員負責接聽來自于客戶、持卡人的電話,而且他們經常會提出最好的點子。因此,我們正試圖打造一種正規的方式,并借此激勵員工在看到機制出現問題時,感覺并未全心全意為客戶提供最佳體驗時,感到錢包里的其他銀行卡在公司未能夠涉足的領域提供更好的服務時,告訴我們問題出在哪里。為此,我們專門抽出時間,讓同事們可以在工作之余參與這些創新工作站或賦能工作站,并切實開展合作,解決這項問題。我們還擁有一個系統,公司任何級別的雇員都可以通過這個系統貢獻他們在市場上、公司內部發現的新主意和理念。這樣我們便可以對其進行評估,幫助確定未來的策略重點,確保其能夠真正滿足客戶的需求。員工們每天都位于一線崗位,傾聽客戶的意見。 貝爾斯特羅姆:一些雇員會因為人工智能引發的失業感到焦慮。作為人力資源負責人,你會幫助這些雇員應對這些焦慮。公司是如何通過培訓以及新技能培養讓這些員工獲得從事新工作的能力呢? 卡斯托:這個問題問的很好。說實話,如果你在6個月前問我這個問題,我的答案可能會略有不同,因為我當時在傳遞這一信息時會采用更加保守的措辭,以盡可能地減少員工的恐慌。但事實上我發現,如果我們不加以解釋,那么雇員就會形成自己的猜想。因此我們必須對公司即將要從事的事情主動進行解釋而不是出現問題后再回應。公司的首席執行官瑪格麗特·凱尼召集了整個管理層開會,我們問自己:“公司有哪些義務?應該在這一領域擔負什么樣的責任?”我們的回答是:“作為一家公司,我們確實有這方面的道德責任,來確保幫助員工提升其技能,并打造和強化這方面的學習和發展機遇?!蔽蚁矚g這個詞……但技能提升到底意味著什么?我們對員工說,“超級代理要面世了”,但公司還沒有對其做出具體定義。我們大致的意思是,借助科技的發展,我們的員工在一段之間之后將有能力……而不是只從事搜集、客服和防詐騙工作。他們可能將有能力從事所有事情,而不是局限于某些領域,因為科技將幫助實現這一點。它將允許員工專注于更多的策略性工作,而戰術性元素則有望通過技術來解決,并通過人工智能加以利用。 卡斯托:我們在數周前召開了全球雇員大會,也對此進行了討論。我們說:“聽我說,公司沒有完美的答案,但我們承諾在這一過程中坦誠布公,而且做到透明公開。”我對公司所有1.7萬名員工說:“所有的公司都會因為人工智能和技術而發生變化或受到影響。一些工作崗位是否會因此而消失?毫無疑問。但與此同時,一些新的工作又會出現,然后其他工作會出現調整,而科技將幫助加快工作的進度?!币虼宋覀冊噲D做的就是盡早地向員工灌輸這一理念,并在員工的投資方面更具前瞻性。 卡斯托:我們剛剛推出了一項新動議。令我們感到自豪的是,7月1日開始,所有員工的起薪將達到15美元/小時。這對于公司來說是一筆巨大的投資。但隨著我們將薪資提升至15美元/小時,我們在收集業務、客服等這些崗位方面出現了一些隔閡,這些隔閡源于公司的歷史觀念。作為公司變化的一部分,我們消除了這些隔閡。因此,雇員們如今可以輕易地在上述不同的領域進行橫向升職。此舉能夠讓他們以更好的方式參與未來工作的競爭。我們還對雇員們說:“如果你們愿意參加培訓班,學習編程技巧或者一些新的技術技能,公司可以幫你們拿費用?!边@其實就是測試與學習,借助這種靈活的新方法,他們便可以與這些機構進行合作,參加這些培訓班,繼而接受與本公司工作無關的技能培訓。這樣,他們便可以有機會比我們更快地使用這些新技能。公司會為此買單,我們將對其進行投資,以便他們能夠參與未來工作的競爭。 貝爾斯特羅姆:當前人才市場的競爭異常激烈。你們都通過采取什么措施來競爭? 卡斯托:最終,公司依然有不少好工作,而且在技術領域也有不少好崗位。此外,聯絡中心的很多員工如今都在投資自己,攻讀工程學位。這些學位在整個公司都十分有用。因此,我仍然希望留住最好的人才,但這又回到了公司愿景這個問題。公司的愿景是幫助個人實現其宏偉目標。對于我們來說,如果員工有這個抱負,而且需要幫助,并在某個領域需要花錢,不管是醫療或教育,公司都會表示支持。我實際上覺得,此舉會讓那些希望留在公司的其他員工更加尊重公司。他們說,我們實際上秉持的就是公司價值觀和愿景。我覺得此舉能夠讓我們在未來留住最好的人才,而且有助于我們成為所處行業中一個有道德、負責任的領軍企業。(財富中文網) 譯者:馮豐 審校:夏林 |
FinTech. AI. Blockchain. Mobile banking. These terms have become part of the lexicon at every company in the finance industry. But as these companies focus more intently on innovating for the future, the attention to workplace culture can easily get de-prioritized if not neglected altogether. At the 60 Best Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance, employee engagement and trust are just as important as discussing innovation. This year’s ranking, just published by Fortune in partnership with Great Place to Work, includes companies that are focusing on Innovation By All, the approach that great business leaders take to empower every member of their team to innovate. Synchrony Financial, a former division of GE that was spun off and became a publicly-traded company in 2014 and appears at No. 27 on this year’s list of the Best Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance, is an innovation leader. At the Great Place to Work For All Summit in late February, Fortune’s deputy digital director Kristen Bellstrom sat down with DJ Casto, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Synchrony, to talk about how the company is encouraging every employee to participate in the innovation process, and how transparency is the best policy when discussing AI with its team members. Below are edited excerpts from that conversation. Kristen Bellstrom: After splitting from GE, is there something that you kept from the GE culture, or something that you decided didn’t fit with what you saw as the future of Synchrony? DJ Casto: GE was very well-known for its leadership development. They had a ton of great iconic leadership programs, and we wanted to ensure our employees felt that we were going to give the same level of commitment and investment in leadership development. So, we kept it, and we took their early leadership programs, and modified them to become more specific to us. Bellstrom: As the HR leader, what did you do to help people sort of transition to this new culture? Casto: Well, we had a great culture to start with, and we kept reinforcing that along the way. We want to double down and protect the things that got us here. We want to celebrate our heritage. But then also lean in to this company we want to be. We called ourselves an 85-year-old startup. We started with financing GE appliances, and now today, we’ve got these amazing partnerships with PayPal and Amazon, that are really future-forward. And so, we must continue to be more agile than we’ve ever been before. We want you to be the great leaders that you’ve always been, but we also want you to think about agility. We want you to ensure that you’re being a critical thinker and creative. Because if you’re not focused in those areas, and we’re not all moving forward in that same direction, the competition is going to beat us. We have to instill this winning culture at Synchrony that’s going to allow us, in an uber-competitive time, to really differentiate, and win new and different clients, PayPal being one of those. Bellstrom: I’d love to hear a little bit about how you’ve tried to build this culture of innovation at Synchrony. I know that you have innovation centers. How do they work? Casto: We have empowerment stations, and we have innovation stations. We’re 17,000-plus employees in the U.S. as well as Asia. Of those, around 13,000 people are in our contact centers. These are the individuals that are answering the calls from our customers, our cardholders, and they oftentimes have the best ideas. And so, what we tried to do is create a formal way that encourages our employees that when they see something is broken, when they feel like they aren’t anchored in providing the best customer experience, if they feel like one of the other cards that are in their wallet are providing a better service, in an area that we aren’t offering today, tell us about it. And so, we dedicate time when our associates can come out of their jobs, into these innovation stations or empowerment stations, and really work together on solving problems. We also have a system where employees at any level in the company can cascade these new ideas and concepts that they’ve seen out in the market, or internally, within Synchrony, so that we can look to them and help prioritize our strategy for the future, to ensure it’s really meeting our customers’ needs. They are on the front lines every day, listening to our customers Bellstrom: As a head of HR, you help employees with the anxiety around that idea of job losses because of technology, and how you guys are working to train and re-skill people so that they might move into different jobs. Casto: It’s a great question. I’ll be honest with you. If you would have asked that question to me probably six months ago, I might have a little bit of a different answer, because I was trying to be a little more conservative in the messaging, to try to minimize the fear for our employees. But what I realized is, in the lack of our narrative, a narrative was forming by our employees. And so, we needed to become more proactive than reactive on what some of our commitments were going to be. Our CEO Margaret Keane got the entire leadership team together, and we said, “What is our obligation? What is our responsibility in this space?” And what we said is, “We do have a moral responsibility, as a company, to ensure that we are creating and … ” I love this word … “intensifying the learning and development opportunities we’re providing for our employees for up-skilling efforts.” But what does that really mean? We talk to our associates and say, “Super agents are coming,” but we haven’t defined what a super agent is. And what we’re basically saying is that through the unlock of technology, our associates will be able to … instead of being in collections and customer service and fraud, down the road, they probably will be able to do all of it, versus being siloed in certain areas, because technology’s going to allow that to happen. It’s going to allow them to focus on that more strategic work, and the tactical elements hopefully are sun-setted through technology and leveraged through AI. Casto: We recently had a global town hall with all of our employees a couple weeks ago, and we brought up this discussion. We said, “Listen. We don’t have, again, all the answers, but our commitment is to be honest and transparent as we’re on this journey.” And what I said to all 17,000 of our employees, “All of our jobs will change and be impacted by AI and technology. Will some jobs sunset? Absolutely. But also, some new jobs will come online, and then other jobs will just modify, as the technology helps to advance the work.” And so what we’re trying to do is engage our workforce early on, to be more proactive in investing in themselves. Casto: We also just launched a new initiative. We’re very proud that on July 1st, we’re going to $15 an hour as an entry rate for all of our employees across the board. It’s a big investment from the company. But as we made that investment to take them to $15 an hour, we also had some silos that were being built based off of our historical comp philosophies, between collections and customer service and some of these roles. We eliminated that, as a part of some of our changes. And so now, employees can easily do lateral promotions into these different areas. That allows them to compete for future jobs in a better way. We also went to our employees and said, “If you are willing to sign up for boot camps to help you get coding skills, and learn some of these new technology skills, we will fund it for you.” It’s test and learn, and that new agile methodology, where they will start to partner with these organizations to do these boot camps, and potentially get trained for jobs outside of the organization. And so, they could have an opportunity to leverage those new skills even faster than us. And we’re going to pay for it, and we’re going to help invest in them to compete for these jobs of the future. Bellstrom: We’re in an incredibly competitive talent market right now. What are you doing to compete? Casto: At the end of the day, I still have a ton of great jobs. And I will have a ton of great roles in technology, and I’ve got individuals in my contact centers that are investing in themselves right now and getting engineering degrees. I can leverage those degrees across my entire company. So, I still want to keep the best talent, but you go back to “What is our vision?” Our vision is to help individuals achieve their ambitions. And for us, if our employees have this ambition where they want to help, and invest in themselves in certain areas, be it healthcare or education, we’re okay with that. And I actually think it’s going to allow those other employees that want to stay with us, respect us even more. They say that we’re actually living our values, living our vision. I think that’ll allow us to retain the best talent in the future, and it helps us just to be a moral, responsible leader, in the communities in which we do business. |