Banking on talent –Building a workforce for future success

Raiffeisenbank is a leading international bank and one of the largest banking groups in CEE, offering a wide range of products and providing financial services in all customer segments.

The bank has become renowned for granting employees many opportunities to develop their careers internally, distinguishing it above its competitors, and establishing the bank as a great employer, with little employee attrition.

However, recently in the Czech Republic the bank has been facing multiple challenges. It has just acquired another company and is currently trying to assimilate the two companies and sets of employees. The Czech Republic also has very low unemployment at the moment, creating fierce competition for talent, as well as lowering employee satisfaction with internal career opportunities. This has placed far greater pressure on retention and internal career progression.

Why Cornerstone?

Previously, Raiffeisenbank’s HR processes were not properly interconnected, rather clunky and failing to maximize the potential of the internal portal.

With the increased importance of retention and talent pipelines, Raiffeisenbank wished to overhaul its system to seamlessly incorporate performance, development, and talent planning, hoping to better aid internal employee development and uphold the company’s reputation for great internal mobility and career opportunities.

It was also vital that the new system was user-friendly and intuitive for both administrators and all endusers and able to fully deliver on their employee value proposition.

Using Cornerstone enabled Raffeisenbank to design an internal career site and rebuild its external career site, from re-designing job ads to streamlining the application process. Cornerstone Succession allowed Raiffeisenbank to also restructure its talent management process, enabling the alignment of performance management with specific job roles for general goals guidance, as well as, the running of detailed evaluation and collaboration activities across the whole organisation. The Cornerstone portal also facilitated the design of brand new development curricula and the creation of an interactive list of development activities.

Outcomes

Ensured talent readiness: With Cornerstone, Raiffeisenbank has redefined the employee value proposition and created a new competency model outlining the behaviors and goal templates for each job role. For easy navigation of the company’s working structure, Raiffeisenbank has created six key identifiable job roles and through outlining specific roles, has helped enhance and improve the manager development program.

Boosted internal leadership pipeline: Raiffeisenbank has created a more transparent and reliable internal ‘job market’, with every department discussing employee’s potential, affording better viewability of suitable successors for managerial roles and resulting in better candidates moving through the pipeline. The creation of an internal career site has also facilitated greater internal mobility and allows employees to submit career preferences. Talent review and succession planning for 2017 is now at 99.4% completion. This has also encouraged a greater number of internal applications and Raiffeisenbank now hires 8 out of 10 managers internally, compared to just 5 out of 10 previously. Overall in 2017 there has been 26% internal promotions among all hires and 1 in 4 who start a new position each month is already working in the bank.

Increased employee engagement: Performance is now aligned with job roles, offering goals guidance and redesigning competencies. Through using Cornerstone Performance, Raiffeisenbank can also now offer employees instant feedback, as well as conducting a yearly performance evaluation. The system ‘monitors’ rather than ‘controls’ performance making it less stressful and more engaging for employees. Raiffeisenbank has witnessed a 99.1% completion rate of performance reviews. Regular feedback also helps managers to keep employees on track with their personal objectives.

Cut costs and saved time: Now that Raiffeisenbank has a much faster and smoother objectives and feedback process it is saving time and effort with more effective performance management. The increase in internal hires has also saved Raiffeisenbank significant costs in recruitment and onboarding fees.