Situation

A large global financial services company needed to undertake a major digital transformation program, which required new digital and tech skills. With the growth of online and digital channels, in-person transactions through bank branches and call centres have declined. The organisation needed to acquire hard-to-find tech and digital skills to grow and maintain digital banking tools while leveraging the existing company knowledge of employees in declining customer service roles by reskilling them into new high-growth roles.

Reskilling efforts focused on developing new hard skills, so finding the best candidates meant identifying those with the soft skills most aligned with the new job opportunities. Previous efforts by the financial services organisation to assess candidate suitability for reskilling were led internally and included multiple, time-consuming line manager interviews. Of even greater concern, around a quarter of those who began the reskilling
program dropped out.

Solution

As their long-term RPO partner, PeopleScout worked with the client and skills-platform provider Spotted Zebra to create a skills-based approach to reskilling, helping the organisation to assess customer service staff in bank branches and call centres to find ideal candidates for its tech skilling program.

We identified individuals who had a strong motivation to reskill, high levels of adaptability (a predictor of future potential) and a strong alignment with the behavioural skills required for success in the role. A skills profile was created for all the growth roles, and employees were assessed against them to identify which role was the best fit.

Results

• Through an initial pilot, the company redeployed over 150 people from declining roles who would have been made redundant to tech jobs, saving around £2 million in exit costs.
• The company is expanding the reskilling program to move over 5,000 employees into new roles with one year.
• By identifying those individuals who are a better behavioural fit for reskilling opportunities, the number of dropouts from the training program dropped dramatically, resulting in a savings of in training and development costs.
• The new approach is more effective, simplifying the process in a fair and consistent way. The company has saved a considerable amount of manager time and reduced the reskilling cost-per-person by 70%.
• Crucially, the reskilling program means the organisation’s digital transformation project is on track, with reskilled individuals moving into mission-critical digital roles that would otherwise go unfilled.