Barclays enlists the enthusiasm of employees to create a headline-making digital initiative
The problem
The aftermath of the banking crisis has, understandably enough, been a difficult time for bank staff, and for employer brands in the sector. According to Lynne Atkin – HR director for personal and corporate banking and global head of employee relations – Barclays had always been an “experimental” bank, but the good ideas had come to a halt.
“We had the UK’s first automated teller machine (ATM), employed the first female bank manager, and have been pioneering in our approach to recruiting those from less privileged backgrounds,” she says. “But with the fallout from the crisis, we realised we needed to rebuild our strategy, especially around openness and transparency.”
Free Wi-Fi in branches was one element of the transformation. And this seemingly unspectacular innovation soon “snowballed”. Barclays bought 10,000 iPads for employees to demonstrate mobile banking, but Atkin says: “We soon found we had a cohort of staff who are ambivalent to IT. We knew we’d need a different approach.”
The solution
In 2012, the bank issued a call for ‘Digital Eagles’ – existing employees who were passionate about IT and could pass on their skills to front-line colleagues in retail branches. More than 300 volunteered immediately, and by 2015 their numbers had swelled to 13,000.
The idea has been quietly backed by a more formal training programme. In January, Barclays introduced a ‘digital driving licence’ which allows employees to study towards a City & Guilds-approved qualification. Being a Digital Eagle has been made part of induction processes and the licence has been integrated with the employee app, where the bank is introducing social learning elements including the ability to post videos of specific digital techniques. Many staff organise ‘Tech and Teach’ events with care homes, schools and charities – a useful CSR initiative that has been immortalised in a TV campaign.
What unifies such activities is a clear decision to restrict the amount of central control and increase the trust placed in staff to manage themselves. “We’ve consciously wanted to build trust back,” says Atkin. “What I feel we’ve been able to tap into is genuine energy, through staff themselves, which means it’s been able to happen much faster.”
The result
“From realising we couldn’t just tell staff ‘you must get trained’, we’ve created an entirely new internal and now externally-facing culture,” says Atkin. “If HR had driven this as some sort of central process, it would never have worked. The almost genius part of this has been letting staff just take it and run with it.”
Barclays’ PR machine has helped the Eagles soar, recently organising a photo call in Downing Street where they taught children how to code. “We’ve hit on something our 42,000 staff have completely engaged with,” says Atkin. “HR could never have trained this many people, with the results we’ve had, in such a short space of time. It’s no coincidence that since the project started, we’ve quadrupled our customer satisfaction data. We’re definitely changing our brand perception.”