Leaders at BMO Financial Group believe there is a strong relationship between
the strength and diversity of the company's talent pool and organizational
performance. They have taken an equally strong stance on talent management to
boost employee engagement for 37,500-plus employees internationally as well as
customer satisfaction and the organization's bottom line. Based in Toronto,
Ontario, Mona Malone, vice president of human resources, is responsible for
BMO's personal and commercial bank, which has 17,000 employees. She took time to
share with Talent Management how BMO has become a leading example for the bank's
customers as well as its employees.
TM: How would you characterize BMO's approach to talent management?
Malone: Our approach to talent management is threefold. We put a lot of emphasis
on selection, development and assessment of people based on their potential and
point-in-time performance. We focus on selecting individuals who are the right
fit for our culture so they're aligned with the organization's customer
service-based, collaboration-based values. We also have a tremendous focus and
spend resources on developing people. Our commitment is to help every employee
achieve their highest performance. We have formalized development programs
whether you're a customer service rep, a bank branch manager or a first-time
leader to ensure you understand the expectations for that role, and you've had
an opportunity for training and development to achieve your highest potential.
On the assessment side we do two levels, based on potential and performance.
Twice a year you're formally evaluated on how you're doing against hard business
results and how you're doing in your leadership practices. We also conduct
talent roundtables where we talk about all levels of leadership from the CEO
down. We look at a leader's potential to grow into more senior roles: their
ability to deal with change, their adaptability, their customer service, their
business acumen.
TM: How is BMO's performance linked to strategic business objectives?
Malone: For the personal and commercial banking group, our business goals are
very much around revenue growth and customer experience. Our vision is to be the
bank that defines great customer experience, which is pretty bold because when
people think about a great customer experience, banking is not usually what they
think of. Customers are frustrated by experiences they get with banks. How that
translates in terms of performance management success is around two metrics held
in equal weighting: revenue growth and what we call a net promoter score - a
metric we use to determine the loyalty of our customer base.
It's very important that you're growing the business in a way that is a very
positive customer experience. How we articulate our business, strategy and the
alignment people see in how they're measured and rewarded has helped us in terms
of business success over the last three years. In our case, if you have a very
customer- and growth-oriented agenda, the way you evaluate individual
performance should align to that.
TM: What challenges impact talent management in your organization?
Malone: The unfortunate situation I would describe is when you're talking about
an individual for a promotion opportunity, if the discussion starts with "If
only a couple of years ago we'd thought of giving them this experience," or "If
only they had different experiences in different geographies before we put them
into this situation." If you wish you'd done things earlier and that people
would have had more opportunities to compete for different opportunities, that's
a challenge. When we're doing succession planning, we use "if only" as a gauge
that we need to focus earlier on career moves for people.
The other challenge is continuing to push tough talent calls. If the individual
isn't a great fit for their role - make a decisive call about moving them up,
out, into another job or exiting them - but do not let a bad fit go on for too
long.
The third challenge would be really feeling confident in the assessment you're
making of a leader's capabilities.
TM: Tell us about your succession planning strategies.
Malone: It starts with defining what it means to be a leader in our company. We
articulate it in nine leadership capabilities. We're clear on what the values of
the company are, what the capabilities are to be successful in a leadership role
- that's step one. The second big investment, and this isn't new for us, is
around leadership development.
We invest over $65 million dollars a year in employee development. We've
developed three core leadership programs. Leadership Essentials is for the
first-time manager of people. We don't assume you'll just learn that on the job.
When we put you in a role as a people manager, there are high expectations. The
actions you take impact a lot of people around you.
The other key development focus area is when you become a manager of managers or
a senior manager. We call that our senior leader development program. Our last
one is called Advanced Leadership Program, and that is for executives from new
vice presidents up to our CEO's direct reports. Our CEO teaches in that program.
This program is focused on those who take a broader, strategic leadership role.
Every one of our management committee has been through this program, as have 90
percent or more of our officers. Leadership is something you're constantly
honing and refining; it doesn't mean just because you're senior that you have to
stop enhancing your leadership skills. We place a huge importance on developing
leadership capability no matter where you are in your career.
The third area is around assessment, and this gets into succession. The first
element is how we assess leaders. As a result of those assessments we think
through succession in terms of your career plan in the organization and what
roles would be good fits. We call it being on the succession slate. We assess
that through our talent roundtable process. It's an absolutely huge investment,
not just in terms of dollars but in time: our CEO's time in terms of being in
every one of those advanced leadership programs, our senior officer's time
attending leadership programs and senior folks' time at these roundtables
talking about talent. We deeply believe that the strength of the talent pool
drives organizational success and performance, and the way you strengthen a
talent pool is by focusing on selection, development and assessment.
TM: What metrics have you gathered to prove ROI?
Malone: You can track shifts in people's leadership capability scores over time;
the ultimate measure is looking at business performance over time. But you have
to fundamentally believe that a focus on talent is connected with business
results. You can spend a lot of time measuring the component bits and still not
have a lot of impact. In this organization we have very strong leadership
competence focusing on the development and assessment of people. It drives
business performance, and not just from a metric perspective but from a values
perspective.
How do you determine that you are actually strengthening your talent base
through all of these practices? The ultimate measure is that your business
performance has improved, and when we look at ours over the last three years, it
has been incredibly strong. We have moved from single-digit net income growth
numbers to double digits. We have moved from being a laggard in terms of
customer experience to second in the market and closing that gap on the number
one competitor. We have significantly moved the dials in terms of the business
metrics you would look at, and we're looking at more leading indicators such as,
have we shifted the 360 scores of leaders, are we strengthening leadership
capabilities, are we able to promote people more internally versus externally.
TM: What processes or programs have you established to recruit and retain top
talent?
Malone: It's interesting because the Canadian economy has not been hit as hard
as the U.S. economy, so I still see retaining top talent as a significant issue,
especially when you think about a global marketplace for talent. How do we focus
on retaining our best? One, they should really have a clear sense of how the
organization perceives their potential. They should have a clear view to career
opportunities available. They should have mentoring and connection points with
many senior individuals in the organization.
When you're attracting talent, there are all the usual things - how you
compensate people and the exciting assignments that are created - but the
biggest attraction right now is we have a pretty compelling story. We've moved
from being a middle-of the-pack bank to being one of the fastest growing North
American financial institutions. The performance results we've had are really
impressive, but it's more than the financial aspect. We're carving out a vision
in a category that hasn't historically been known for customer experience and
have some really great proof points that we're achieving that vision. We attract
people that like ambitious change and being almost an underdog that is achieving
great results.
TM: What's next for your organization in terms of talent management?
Malone: There are two areas that we continue to focus on around talent
development. We don't see ourselves at end of job, so continuing to focus on
talent development in both the formal and informal ways and thinking about what
kind of development - whether it's coaching, feedback, job assignments that
individuals need to move to the next level of capability - is an area of
importance to us. Connected to that would be continuing to strengthen succession
planning for key roles and ensuring that we have the absolute best and the most
diverse talent considered.
-For more Articles and Information: http://www.developmentnetwork.co.nr/
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