Technology has transformed the face of the banking industry. It is now an enabler of modernization, innovation, and the digital economy through real time actionable analytics and insights driving informed decisions, creating competitive advantage, and enhancing the customer experience. Banks are now a one stop shop for all financial products and services round the clock. Technology enabled products and channels have opened up new market opportunities and delivery channels leading to increased productivity, efficiency, flexibility, and scalability of banking transactions making even the smallest of transactions virtually viable.

Evolution of the banking industry: Retail banking to mobile banking

Traditionally, banking was confined to the functions of accepting deposits, providing loans, carrying out financial transactions, and offering wealth management with a suitable set of workforce trained to carry out these day to day functions efficiently and securely. The tediousness involved in using these services through physical bank offices paved the way for the evolution of internet banking, e-banking and fintech startups equipped with modern workspaces and best of the breed workforces.

In the recent years, fintechs have evolved into well-established financial institutions and are proving to be a huge competition to the traditional banks. To remain competitive and relevant for customers, banks have to embrace the culture and service model of the fintechs either through partnerships, acquisitions, or by building in-house startups to transform themselves into future ready financial services organizations. They need to revolutionize the way they offer products and services to the end customers through branchless banking, hire new talent for building next gen banking solutions, and explore new channels of service delivery and modern workspaces.

Significance of talent management in the banking industry

In the ever-evolving financial services sector, acquiring, training, retaining and developing workforces can be one of the major factors in deciding the success of any organization. The talent management practices in this sector are experiencing a transformational shift due to rise of millennial workforces. Employers are now trying to better comprehend the motivations, needs, and expectations of the millennials and aligning their policies and practices to create working environments which can nurture multi-generational workforces alike.

To keep up with the trends shaping the future of the financial services sector, organizations are required to onboard new talent trained in next gen technologies such as digital currency, biometric security, mobile applications, user experience, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and analytics in order to implement sophisticated financial services like branchless banking, mobile app based services, remote KYC authorization with biometrics, integration with ecommerce platforms, next gen customer acquisition, loyalty management solutions etc.  While these skills are essential, they are not easily available in the market due to huge demand across industry verticals like consumer, automotive, manufacturing etc. which are developing next gen offerings like autonomous vehicles, virtual retail stores, on demand manufacturing etc. With organizations across industries looking for similar skills, it is imperative to attract and retain the best talent. Organizations need to have the HR and workspace policies that support the hiring of the talent irrespective of their location and provide them with necessary tools and applications to make them productive without compromising on the aspects of intellectual property and data security. It calls for a flexible and hybrid workplace which is resilient and secure, and enables employees to work from ‘anywhere, anytime, and on any device.’

Need for workplace transformation

Due to the ever evolving ways of working, organizations have reconfigured themselves in a mode that strikes a vital balance between physical as well as virtual workforces enabling greater connection and collaboration. Organizations are now leveraging technology for enhancing human connection and building social capital while the culture of distributed working continues to evolve. Bankers and advisors are leveraging digital capabilities and channels for building customer relationships, financial advisory, and executing sale of financial products and services. Technology is creating workplaces and workspaces that aren’t only equipping teams with better tools and accelerators of service delivery but also empowering them.

Technology has enabled both remote as well as flexible ways of working. Remote ways of working refer to the location where work takes place - office or home. On the other hand, flexible ways of working refer to the working schedule - when and how often the work is taking place, the extent to which work responsibilities are held individually or shared, the working hours/shifts, and the type of employment model. Remote working is the enabler of flexible ways of working and eventually leads to long term savings on operating expenditure by the organization, increase in job attractiveness, efficiency and productivity as well as overall employee wellbeing. Organizations need to adopt good virtual practices to encourage engagement within and among their teams, ensure adoption of digital ways of working, fostering informal interactions within the teams to maintain a sense of belongingness and connection while ensuring security and resiliency of the infrastructure and applications connecting them.

Transforming employee experience and empowering workforces

Millennial employees are becoming main consumers of the workplace environment given the increase in demand for next gen skills. Based on the gamut of available employment options, they are driven to search for suitable roles and organizations which can enable better performance and career growth. The workforce today demands flexible work location, hours, and the choice of devices they would like to use to get the work done. In some cases, flexibility in work location and hours takes precedence over the pay and other aspects of the job. This trend is driving HR and IT leaders of the enterprises to reinvent the workplace services with flexibility and employee experience at the core.  At the same time, it is critical to maintain the security and compliance requirements that need to be considered as an integral part of the solution rather than as an afterthought to avoid user experience issues.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) as a technology helps organizations to enable seamless working experience across devices with different form factors, operating systems, enterprise managed, and unmanaged devices with enhanced security and controls.  With the use of virtual desktop infrastructure services, organizations can create irresistible working experience for their employees during the employee’s journey through:

• Ease of onboarding - Financial organizations can use virtual desktops to not only create a compelling first impression in the minds of new hires with a digital onboarding procedure but also eliminate the hassle of logistics related to sending and receiving of laptops and desktops. Additionally, this also empowers the new hires to use the device of their choice
• Work anywhere, anytime - With the usage of a desktop virtualization solution, organizations can provide employees with easy access to necessary tools and products for executing day to day responsibilities
• Seamless communication and collaboration - VDI powered workspaces enable joint ideation, exchange of ideas and execution among the virtual teams across geographies
• Robust security and compliance - VDI services ensure that users can access the applications remotely while data resides securely within the enterprise security perimeter

Handling these aspects with the use of VDI services will not only help financial organizations in attracting and retaining the best talent in the market but also will eventually lead to development of better products and services to ensure customer delight.

The way forward

The future of the banks lies in their ability to innovatively reimagine their user experience journeys, enhance and personalize the employee experience, the way they utilize tools and technologies for ideation, innovation, collaboration and finding new ways of solving customer challenges and enhancing customer experience.

To know more, please write to ask.cis@wipro.com

Seshu GVK

General Manager, Cloud & Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited.

Seshu has two decades of IT industry experience across multiple domains—Telecom, Energy, High-tech, Healthcare, Consumer, Banking & Financial Services—covering product development, enterprise application development, infrastructure management. Currently, he heads the Wipro virtuadesk™ practice globally at Wipro.

Deepti Mishra

Product Marketing Consultant, IP & Business Solutions, Wipro Limited.

Deepti is a consultant with over 3 years of experience in Product Marketing and Pre- Sales. She currently focuses on all the aspects of inbound and outbound marketing for the IPs and business solutions of Wipro in collaboration with the business teams. She has experience in developing marketing strategies, creating collaterals and driving campaigns, events, and thought leadership.