Emerging from the pandemic has been a difficult journey for banking businesses across Southeast Asia, according to Heriyanto Agung Putra, Bank Danamon’s Human Capital director.
He notes that the main challenges HR leaders in the vital banking industry are facing include: building people capability (because of the continuous changes in business models), better management of retention and attrition rates, and further building employee engagement and productivity.
Bank Danamon’s shareholders in particular are tapping their most senior HR leader to manage these challenges amidst the difficult economic environment of 2023.
Putra reveals, “Because of the current tight economic situation, the banking industry finds it tough to face the reality of the business. It’s not just because of the pandemic. The employees’ expectations have become different, too. Some focus on mental health, well-being, and the possibility of working anywhere.”
Enumerating these challenges, Putra’s HR team categorises many of its long list of tasks under one broader goal: to future-proof its talents.
“In Bank Danamon, there is a shift in the engine of business (and) we have to profile future talents,” he says. “Now, we focus on preparing the foundation, which creates more training and develops people, mostly fresh graduates. We’re preparing the foundation for future talents to strengthen our competitiveness since we all know that new business models could be different.”
Getting agile across the bank
Putra stresses the focus on cognitive agility for its current and incoming employees. “The reality is that we have to implement an agile organisational model. We have to prepare people’s capacity and minds to be agile.”
Under his HR leadership, the bank is also pushing its learning agenda. His goal is for employees to be able to move smoothly from one job to another as the business priorities change.
“If they have no agility, they cannot be people of the future,” Putra notes.
Technology facilitates knowledge transfer and enables everyone to access learning conveniently.
“We put everything in a digital platform by collaborating with other learning platforms so the participants can earn certifications,” Putra says.
For the HR director, these efforts are Bank Danamon’s innovation to future-proof its employees. “Competitiveness requires agility because the ways of business are changing now.”
This feature was extracted from Chief of Staff Asia’s exclusive interview with Heriyanto Agung Putra, Human Capital Director of Bank Danamon. For further coverage please see the below link:
Heriyanto Agung Putra beats attrition and wins talents
