Smart moves

Speaking exclusively with HRM, Sharon Smart, COO and HR Shared Services Director at Wachovia, explains the banking giants approach to recruitment and staff education.

As a leading player in its industry Wachovia – a diversified financial services firm, offering retail banking and brokerage across 49 states, and 40 international locations – is one of the largest companies of its type in the US, with over 110,000 employees. Its HR department alone employs around 1,500 staff. HRM had the pleasure of speaking with Sharon Smart, the HR department’s COO, about recruitment and its approach to education in the enterprise.

HRM. With so many staff, can you start by telling us how you approach the challenge of keeping 110 thousand employees happy and productive?
SS. It’s made easy for us in HR given our corporate culture. Embedded in our values of winning, teamwork, partnership and collaboration is a very strong commitment to employee engagement. We believe that employees who are satisfied and engaged at work will do a far better job of growing revenue, and we believe we will retain engaged employees.

I know that employee engagement is a buzzword that everyone aspires towards, but people care at a very heartfelt level towards employees in this company – beyond just what they do at work, but knowing a little bit about them as a unique human being on this earth.

HRM. Sounds great, but how do you put this into practice with so many individuals to get to know?
SS. We design HR programs that support the organization and the workforce. And our leaders are taught, mentored and coached around the means to engage the workforce, whether that’s through formal training programs or personal coaching.

We measure employee engagement through a survey done across the entire company on an annual basis. Typically we choose three to five enterprise wide strategies at the corporate or divisional level once the results are analysed.

As an example, the last time we did the survey one area we focused on was around communication. The common theme throughout the survey was that employees did not always understanding why certain decisions were made. So there has been a push to make sure we’re communicating with context and candour, recognising that our workforce is very astute, professional and smart. They are much more likely to support a strategy or an action, if they understand not only the ‘what’, but the ‘why’.

HRM. Talking specifically about recruitment. You run an internal organization called First Place for your recruitment, could you describe a bit about this.
SS. First place was originally born back in 1994 when we were a much smaller organization. We looked at what we could do to create a ‘bench’ that we can use in terms of talent when one organization is downsizing and one is growing. We were also watching and paying close attention to how much we were spending externally on the temporary contract workforce. Out of that operating dilemma First Place was born. It was such a huge success that we expanded the concept to also populate it with external talent that was eager to join the organization.

We have approximately 7000 peak contract employees in the organization in a typical year. It is actually a bigger organization than many of the external temporary organizations that we rely on in markets where First Place isn’t operating. The great thing about it is that many times the temporary employee works for a period of time and ultimately ends up getting hired in a permanent position. So it benefits the manager because they can ‘try and see’ if the temporary is a good fit, and the temporary can do the same.

It also gives us a unique competitive advantage with regards the multi-generational issues evident in our work force, and the eminent retirement eligibility of much of the workforce. Employees want a lot more flexibility. With respect to the retirement eligible work force, some are saying to us that we would like to be part of a flexible workplace, meaning called back in for particular assignments. Perhaps called in for something that is part of an annual cycle of work that you may normally need contract labor for.

The thing we’re really excited about is taking First Place to the next level, such that we’re beginning work to leverage that operation, not for those new to joining the organization, but as a wind down process or a variable working relationship for our retirement eligible population. The great thing for us is we have this infrastructure in place, we’ve got recruiters all over the organization, we’ve got the business process and systems to support it, so we’re feeling really great about the potential our First Place has to be a next place for our older workforce.

HRM. Diversity is important to Wachovia – your CEO leads a group wide diversity council – how does this affect your operations and approach to recruitment?
SS. Our CEO Ken Thompson chairs our diversity council, and this goes right back to the point about employee engagement. We believe that diversity in our company is a business imperative. Our customer base is diverse, and therefore our employee base should reflect the diversity of our customer base. Ken holds the senior leadership of the organization accountable for diversity in many ways, but one that has been particularly valuable is that he holds an annual diversity review with each of his operating committee members.

From a recruiting standpoint we have done a lot of work to really help the lines of business with their diversity recruitment efforts, specifically we have made some very targeted outbound efforts to participate in some of the most well known diversity national organizations. Not just from a hiring and recruitment standpoint, but from sponsorship, having some of our senior leaders speaking at those events, sponsoring some entertainment venues, and so on. Our name is beginning to become much more visible and known with these organizations, and it’s been terribly helpful.

We’ve also have placed on each of our recruiting teams a diversity strategist. The diversity strategist is intended to support the recruitment consultants and sourcing specialists on those teams, with very targeted efforts to help the hiring for that line of business. This is modelled after the way we attract customers. We know that attracting customers is sometimes a multi-year proposition, frequently calling, checking in on them. We’re using the same kind of strategy with these executive diversity strategists; their sole job is to network in their industry with the diverse talent, so that when the right opportunity presents itself, we already have a long-standing relationship with that individual, and it’s much easier to convince them to consider a position at Wachovia.

HRM. Once you’ve got the talent in, you see yourself as a leader in offering education and learning opportunities to staff, can you outline some of the benefits that this brings.
SS. At Wachovia our vision for learning, as defined by our CLO, is very simple; it’s to make learning easy and effective. To do this the team is focused on infrastructure that enables our workforce to have access to training 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Much of our learning occurs at the desktop level, accessed through an employee portal. We have thousands and thousands of courses housed on the learning connection with specific content based on the job you’re in, and there’s also more generic content, for example leadership, project management or customer service training opportunities.

We continue to raise the bar in alternative delivery, because it is a lot more efficient, and what we’re experiencing is very effective contrasted to classroom delivery.

HRM Do staff just get to choose from these course, or is each member of staff given a program?
SS. Both. There are particular jobs in which employees are required to participate in particular training. So for example a teller would have a curriculum put in front of them when they joined the company. There are other courses that are mandatory across the company, that show up in your learning plan, and are tracked until you finish them. Things like privacy, business ethics and compliance, show up on your desktop, and it’s very clear if you do not complete that training, it is not a good thing.

Our performance system actually has a development plan component to it, which will link to our learning management system. So if for example a leader and an employee were having a conversation around developing their presentation skills, you can go out to the learning management system and bring over the relevant courses into your learning plan as well as your development plan on the performance management system.

HRM. How about more traditional learning opportunities?
SS. We also support tuition reimbursement and educational assistance for employees pursuing a degree. We have alliances with several universities, and as long as it’s a degree-granting program, employees are eligible for reimbursement up to some corporate maximums. This doesn’t have to be linked to the job.

We also have a pretty successful corporate library that is really beginning to have an impact in supporting the organization. We have around 2600 titles - those are CDs books, videos – that an employee can access through the learning management system. It’s then shipped to them with a very simple process for returning on completion.

HRM. And what about executive education, do you have in house training, or do you send them out to university programs?
SS. We have both. Following the path of tuition reimbursement, within that people can pursue an MBA. But if we pursue a different path, we also have an entire team within the HR organization called leadership practices. That organization is focused on leadership development and strategies to grow and retain leaders within our company. It sponsors the development of leadership development curriculum that is either housed on the learning management system or delivered through experiential or classroom training.

We also have an alliance with a university here in North Carolina, and sponsor an executive leadership program. We usually run about two a year, and high potential leaders are recommended for consideration for this program, and they’re selected through the top management in our company and CEO. The program tends to run in nine months in duration. It is a program that is done in modules whereby our CEO or one of his direct reports will play the role of an ally with a professor from the particular university, focused on the topic or module that the class is particularly focused on.

So for example, our CFO would be the executive sponsor for the class on financials – reading a balance sheet, understanding profitability or losses. Or our head of risk would be the executive sponsor of the modules around risk management and compliance. It’s been a very effective model where we are blending the academics of the particular executive leadership program component, along with the practicality of the leader of the company. It is a logical fit to co-teach and co-present that. And the other nice thing is that it creates a lot of connection for these promising leaders to spend time with the senior management of the company.

HRM. There must be a lot of competition to get on the program?
SS. Absolutely, that’s one of the biggest challenges. We try to keep the classes small enough that it doesn’t become an overwhelming experience, and it fosters some rich dialogue and discussion. It is a highly competitive program to be selected to participate in. Our greatest opportunity is that the list of people that would like to, or want to be part of the program is probably longer than those who get selected for it.

HRM. Finally what do you see as the key challenges going forward in the next two to three years for Wachovia?
SS. As I mentioned earlier we’re placing a lot of emphasis on the multi-generational workforce. When we started the work we were more targeted on the retirement eligible population, which in our company is a pretty significant number. But we’ve begun to see a lot of commonality across multi-generations. So things like flexibility in the workforce for all generations is a big challenge we’re facing.

We’re also always concentrating on engagement strategies that make our workforce want to be a part of this organization, willing to give up their discretionary time if needed, and ultimately serve the customers that Wachovia is in business to serve.