As a socially responsible business, a bank caters to the financial needs of a large number of customers from all walks of life. A major part of this onus falls on the shoulders of the employees who are spread across a state, country or continent. No wonder a celebrated financial journalist once said, “Good banking is produced not by good laws, but by good bankers.”
If a bank wants its staff to stay efficient and motivated, the HR team will have a lot more to do ‒ from the hiring phase to onboarding and engagement to exit. The right HRMS solution can help make this achievable. Once deployed, many of the tasks become automated and simplified.
Here’s how the banking sector can benefit from an HRMS, an in-demand technology that ’s here to stay.
Hiring the Right Talent
The banking sector is known for people who are expected to work in a fast-paced, risk-laden, customer-centric work environment. The HR personnel of banks should always be well-prepared to fill up the vacancies arising due to resignation, transfer or retirement of staff across branches and locations.
No doubt, the recruitment process is rigorous and time-consuming. But a good HRMS platform (with an application tracking system) should ease this task with workflow automation. Usually, these solutions enable the entire hiring and payroll process, from creating JDs and screening applications to candidate communication and appointment initiation. HR can also enjoy the liberty of spending more time gauging the real capability of candidates rather than wasting time on repetitive paperwork.
Retaining the Best People
When it comes to retaining talent, banks cannot afford to make compromises. This apart, they need to have the right mix of experience and talent. Most importantly, they have to minimise turnover and enhance the loyalty of their people. No doubt it is a massive barrier to reckon with.
Any move that goes awry can adversely impact the operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and reputation of the bank.
HR has to ensure accurate and timely salary payouts to avert dissatisfaction among the employees. They also require intuitive dashboards with insightful data for recognising high performance and productivity. It is equally important to have a system that creates career pathways and monitors the KPIs of every employee. All of this can’t happen without a comprehensive HRMS app or system.
Training for Development
Nowadays, it’s not surprising to see banking processes and policies changing often. Even the rate of technological adoption has accelerated, thanks to the need to be nimble and efficient. This calls for a comprehensive strategy for frequent skilling, upskilling and reskilling of the bank’s personnel.
Modern training management systems are designed to help banks create training programs for different departments. Cloud-based platforms facilitate easy access to webinars and video tutorials from anywhere on any device. Even the assessment & certification system process becomes quick and easy unlike its physical counterpart.
Engaging the Employees
Banking professionals have to reckon with the challenge of interacting with exacting customers, adhere to strict timelines and brace for a high level of financial risk. So, it’s not uncommon for employees to experience burnout and low morale sometimes. Also, it’s not always easy for the HR to feel the pulse of the employees everytime.
Since bank branches are distributed across locations, it’s impossible for HR to communicate with everybody, redress grievances and take disciplinary action in person. The built-in employee engagement module of a cloud HR software can make the task of communication a breeze. Many have a provision for running in-house surveys and polls besides providing regular feeds and message boards that can be accessed by all.
Minimising Manual Work
Every HR team performs a lot of routine tasks every day. It’s not possible for the head office HR to track the time and paper wastage across all their branches. Even the compliance reporting process involves paperwork. If at all some branches succeed in optimising their resources, it doesn’t help the organisation as a whole.
When HR and payroll functions are automated, it results in quicker processing of salaries and faster decision-making for many other administrative tasks. Plus, it leads to higher resource optimization and elimination of expensive human errors.
Enabling Employee Self-Service
Every employee requires access to organisational policies, forms, payroll information, statements, reports, claim status and more. But it’s not feasible for HR to address each query manually and quickly. This issue gets aggravated in larger banks with more branches and frequent employee movement.
The arrival of the employee self-service portal (ESS), with a supporting mobile app, has turned out to be a blessing for HRs. Many of the tasks, like updating personal details and generating payslips, are now done by the employees themselves. They just need to log in and execute the tasks at their convenience. This helps free up bandwidth for HR, enables employees to focus on their departmental tasks and creates greater transparency.
Centralising Data Storage
Banks have branches of all sizes and multiple departments as per the requirements of the location. So, both HR and employees require a multitude of information on a regular basis to do their work in a hassle-free manner. Paper-based documents are outdated, while spreadsheets are no more practical for larger and fast-expanding organisations.
A centralised document repository provides the answer to all the documentation woes of banks. When documents are digitised and stored in one place, it’s easy for people to access the same when required. HR can also define the access permissions based on different levels. This step calibrates the documentation process and also keeps information and assets secure.
Closing Thoughts
Every bank has its unique business challenges and employee demands. But most of the core banking functions remain the same. Every HR has to constantly explore newer ways to keep their employees happy and motivated. This expectation puts a lot of pressure on the whole department.
A good HRMS software company helps you enable an HR to optimize workflows and expedite tasks throughout an employee’s lifecycle. The self-service facility will offer greater control to the employees so that they feel more empowered. This change can create a domino effect and help the banking enterprise drive cost savings and increase profitability.
