Building a sustainable flexible working model

Adapting to remote working
Standard Chartered Bank is a global financial services company headquartered in London, UK. It operates more than 1,200 branches across 60 markets and employs around 83,000 people. Around 90% of the bank’s profits come from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Standard Chartered Bank has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to employee experiences, but before COVID-19, demand for flexible working was low, with several hundred staff working remotely.

When the pandemic took place in 2020, the bank saw this as a catalyst for reimagining where and how employees choose to work.

“Hybrid working is the future. We surveyed colleagues during the pandemic and 80% wanted a more flexible working model,” explains Marina Mehli, Director, Digital Solution and User Experience Design at Standard Chartered Bank.

While many companies reduced their offices, Standard Chartered Bank took a more measured approach. It decided that a hybrid working model was the best way to maximize efficiency, promote employee wellbeing, and attract more talent.

Standard Chartered Bank built a new portal on ServiceNow HR Service Delivery, connecting backend processes such as document and data management, while building dynamic workflows to support employee journeys.

Initially, the bank sought employee input and used the survey functionality of ServiceNow to learn employee preferences on working times and location flexibility.

The results revealed that employees wanted the flexibility of working near or at home to manage personal commitments, and at the same time they also enjoyed connecting and collaborating in the office.

Employee views were then compared with those of business leaders managing what would be a workable solution for the future of work. Initial ideas were formulated, then pilot tests were run in eight different markets.

Applications from 48,000 people
“We operationalized flexible working through ServiceNow. We used the entire suite of products we have within HR Service Delivery and also used the ServiceNow Employee Journey Management,” says Marina. 

The bank used ServiceNow to enable the entire flexible work model, end to end workflow management and employee engagement, with a key focus on making the flexible work application a seamless and effortless experience. To date almost 48,000 people across 28 markets applied for flexible working and the bank is planning to extend the ServiceNow solution next year to additional markets across the bank footprint.

The bank continues further enhancing employee experience, and since pilot they launched additional features like people leaders dashboards and integrated workflow design such as third-party compliance declaration form for work-from home arrangements. These are automatically triggered when an application is made. Also, the bank has been able to automate 98% of flexible work letters, which saved almost 15,900 hours of manual effort that could be redeployed to higher value tasks.

“ServiceNow continues to be central to rolling out the flexi-working program across our markets. It has allowed us to move efficiently and at speed with the practicalities of putting the program in place for thousands of colleagues, something we just couldn’t have done manually,” explains Jeremy Hill, Head of Wellbeing at Standard Chartered Bank.

When users log into Standard Chartered Bank’s new myHR portal, flexi-work is offered as part of a campaign with a bank of knowledge articles to help staff learn more. If they need more support, they can connect directly with an HR advisor via live chat.

To track uptake and other insights and to drive continuous improvement, the HR team monitors performance analytics dashboards. As a result, knowledge base articles at Standard Chartered Bank receive an average effectiveness rating of 95%. Among the 48,000 applicants to-date, there were only 6,942 queries raised as well as more than half a million article views.

“Our flexi-working service on MyHR has been very highly rated with a score of 4.63 out of 5, based on our automated Voice of Customer (VoC) survey sent out via ServiceNow. By the end of 2024, the team plans to roll out flexi-work enabled by the ServiceNow solution across our global footprint,” adds Marina.

Fostering a culture of continuous improvement
As more people sign up to flexi-work, Standard Chartered Bank plans to adopt a continuous improvement model and is looking at how to use employee forums to connect people.

As Marina explains: “I used to think we had to get everything right first time, but it’s more important to be able to adapt and change. ServiceNow gives us an employee experience platform that helps us to do what’s best for our people. What we are starting to look at with ServiceNow technology is how we can make more use of the campaign functionality and employee forums to really embed flexi-working and try and understand where it is working and where it is not.

“At the end of the day, with hybrid working we can become an employer of choice and both retain and attract the best talent,” concludes Marina.

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