Let’s get the elephant on the table – you can’t TRAIN your way to a good culture. That statement gives you the immediate option not to read any further if you think I am so wrong you can’t be bothered to read on. But think on that … you are so certain you are right you won’t listen to another POV!
And there lies the problem, particularly in the big banks. From the outside looking in these huge firms are rich and an employer of choice for many ambitious young and not so young folk. Land a job with one and of past performance IS a measure of future success – you are onto a winner and an income, often many times Joe Average.
They set the standard and have the reserves to weather almost any storm. And right now, a storm is brewing. The regulator, FCA, in its wisdom has, through its recent legislation SMCR, sought to make Senior Managers personally responsible for failures and malpractice that occurs “on their watch” so to speak.
Leadership however determines whether in fact this knowledge and competency is allowed to be exercised. In this regard the shadow of the leader is everything
This has been designed undoubtedly to encourage firms to do right by the customer. Treating Customers Fairly, should be a default culture in every bank and financial institution. And if it doesn’t happen then, SMCR gives the regulator the ability to “track and trace” (to use a vogue expression) the perpetrator and punish them.
Trouble is, that since it became law there has only been 1 successful prosecution under SMCR and many in the industry believe, that whilst the intent was right the execution is flawed. One could of course conclude that prosecution data is evidence that the legislation has achieved its objective. One might be in a minority?
What drives the culture in any group is leadership. Say what you will, if the exec doesn’t want to change it, then change rarely happens. Or it happens at a pace that would embarrass a racing snail!
Training. Case in point. Who believes that by subjecting employees to mindless one size fits all, annual, tick box compliance training is going to achieve anything … positive in terms of ? It isn’t.
And whilst training cannot in itself change the culture of an organisation the methods adopted and deployed by firms in relation to regulatory training speak loudly as to actual intent.
Paying lip service to important Training & Competency of employees by way of largely useless and ineffective methods, designed to deliver a tick in the box for the lowest possible cost, speaks volumes as to the real culture of the business. We know to what I refer. Annual refresher training of the same old stuff, taking no account of actual individual knowledge or competency in any subject. Everyone in a given function or job family, gets the same. A short-term memory test concludes, competence, job done, box ticked.
Anthony Seldon in his book the 4th Education Revolution explores the role of AI in the true education of the populace. What AI enables us to do is to treat employees, every single one of them with respect and guarantee they at least know what they SHOULD be doing.
Leadership however determines whether in fact this knowledge and competency is allowed to be exercised. In this regard the shadow of the leader is everything.
Conduct Rules bit from the end of March and these are aimed at ensuring good and appropriate behaviour in our financial services sector. At some point FCA is going to point to systemic poor L&D practice as a rationale for deeper investigation of a firm. In poker I am told they call it a “tell” where a player inadvertently discloses the value of her/his hand through some sort of physical manifestation, or tick.
In the FinServ sector the “tick” maybe really obvious!
Our sponsors help bring T-CNews content to you for free
