WE SHAPE THE FUTURE

The Challenge

When we started working with SBG at the start of 2019, we quickly learned that we were up against some daunting challenges. After three unsuccessful EVP development attempts, senior stakeholders were disillusioned and needed to be convinced of the power of a strong employer brand. The Human Capital team owned the EVP project, but were largely disconnected on employer branding from the corporate marketing teams – and although we had 5 years of previous research, no one had been able to articulate the key findings or why people should care.

The Solution

We needed to get things right from the start so we reengaged stakeholders through a workshop, setting a bold ambition – “We want to become Africa’s best employer by 2025”. Through desk research, aspiration interviews, workshops, online community engagement and an employee survey we gave voice to every employee. Our research found that SBG is an employer that acts with a determined mind, a human heart and is Africa to its very soul. We articulated these as three Reasons to Believe: Driven to Win, Human at Heart and Africa to the Core. 

On the back of this, and during the midst of the first wave of the pandemic (June 2020) we launched the people promise through the ‘Voices of Standard Bank Group’ which is a catalogue of audio, video and written stories from employees across the Group. We helped employees to understand how their role at the Bank connects to the wider purpose and are currently embedding the EVP not only in external communications, but across every strand of the employee experience. 

The Results

To date, there has been over 9,000 respondents to the internal survey and more than 800 employees have volunteered to share their stories.

The launch video from CEO, Sim Tshabalala, was followed by a film that set the tone and sentiment for the People Promise. It is the most-watched content ever hosted on their intranet with over 9,000 views in the first week alone.​