Gone are the days when only the bank branch office staff had “customer focus and experience” as a core performance goal while the back-office clerks filled out paperwork in processing centers. Superior client experience as a key performance goal and customer engagement as a key performance indicator (KPI) today cut across all levels and teams within a banking organization. Consumer needs have evolved rapidly — initially advanced by the advent of the internet and subsequently by the digitalization of banking. The global pandemic accelerated the adoption of two key trends in banking: digital-first services backed by next-generation technologies enabling more efficient customer journeys and new working models enabling better employee journeys.
On the one hand, today’s banks have pivoted their tech strategy, increasingly focusing on automated processes, digital-first sales and services, digitally storing vast amounts of data, and even artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer service. And on the other, banks have shifted their people strategies, using a more creative lens to build their current and future workforce, providing opportunities for reskilling, upskilling, redeployment, creating new talent structures that are complemented by digital capabilities, and increased employee mobility opportunities. According to a recent report by global consultancy Deloitte, the real scope of the banking workforce evolution within the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a “rapid, deep connection between the physical and digital worlds that will embed the power of data, analytics, and mobility into almost every business function.”
Customers taking the lead
Changing customer priorities, preferences, and expectations are playing their part in driving digitalization. The convenience of digital banking, whether via apps, online, or at self-service machines, cannot be ignored; today’s customer wants access to banking services anytime, anywhere.
Consequently, the traditional branch banking network is now augmented by digital channels, ensuring customers’ needs are met through their preferred method. Customers also expect far greater speed and efficiency, driving banks to integrate technology such as AI to take over functions like basic call center responses.
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Improving internal efficiency and embedding resilience
Banks themselves are also driving change toward improved efficiency and deeply embedded resilience.
For instance, banks have made automation a priority across data collection, approval processes, and updates. Emerging technologies enable banks to utilize their time — and their employees — far more effectively. Banks are significantly redefining jobs, reskilling and upskilling their workforce, and redeploying staff as they explore new avenues for enhanced efficiencies through skill adjacencies. This has enabled them to enhance their workforce from the inside without the expense of hiring externally.
There has also been a shift in organizational structures from hierarchical to agile, led by the idea of bringing together teams and digital capabilities toward helping teams across the organization deliver extraordinary client experiences. For instance, at Mashreq, our digital studio brings together teams of digital experts, called “digital squads,” who help drive innovation across both consumer and corporate banking fronts.
By using technologies such as AI, employees are enabled to augment their capabilities, becoming far more efficient and becoming a workforce with essential human skills that are only more powerful and effective than before.
Mashreq recently partnered with Microsoft to help employees harness the true potential of AI through a series of strategic, in-depth lessons. Called “The AI Academy Program”, this series spans a three-week period and is tailored to support employees with sub-programs based on each one’s unique needs and roles, helping drive individual and organization-wide efficiency and growth. Early exploration into Generative AI (GenAI) suggests it has huge potential to improve performance and productivity.
Cultural transformation in the workplace
Digitalization has also had an impact on working models. Research suggests that 28 percent of employees worldwide across all industries worked remotely in 2023, a phenomenon I consider is as much about culture change as it is about enablement through technology. We no longer associate productivity with strict working hours; instead, we have transitioned from a tight, rigid working culture to one of agility and flexibility involving hybrid working models. Here, productivity and success is measured only by the achievement of goals and deliverables.
This culture change is, in part, driven by the arrival of Gen Z into our workforce, along with their unique mindset and perspective. Banks need to keep up with the generation’s expectations to ensure a resilient ecosystem of the future that will stem from being an employer of choice for this early-career banking and technology talent base. Gen Z are typically tech-savvy, socially and globally conscious, and are unlike any other generation. Most importantly, it is a generation that wants the best of both the digital and real world. Banks need to focus on developing a work culture rooted in agility, flexibility, global mobility, social, diversity and inclusion-consciousness. Multi-modality learning and development experience that combines in-person and digital learning and development platforms is yet another key Gen Z expectation.
A positive future
Clearly, the workforce in the banking industry is evolving at pace, and reassuringly, research suggests this evolution is surrounded by positivity. The PwC Global Workforce Hopes and Fears 2024 Survey indicates that some 77 percent of those questioned feel ready to adapt to new ways of working, with 72 percent excited about the opportunities to learn and grow.
The focus on digitalization needs to be complemented with human centricity: As much as we bank on technology for efficiency, our future resilience remains rooted in our people and talent. An integrated approach will enable banks not only to operate more efficiently but also to expand our capacity to innovate relentlessly with customer-centricity at the core, contributing to better banking tomorrow.
Ahmed Abdelaal is the group chief executive officer at Mashreq.
