Business Need

Our Banking client was set up with the declared purpose of promoting home ownership by lending to local families, small businesses, and communities. The Bank offers a variety of loans, deposits, and online products to retail and businesses. However, the era of automation and digital transformation ushered in a complete transformation of the lending landscape. As Customer needs and tastes evolved, our client started experiencing a consistent erosion in brand loyalty and customer base.

To recoup lost grounds, our client invested over USD 1 Billion in modernizing its IT backbone. Full automation of the lending process was accomplished within 24 months. This rapid transformation resulted in an extreme pushback by the employees and managing the change became a nightmare.

KS Solution

KS Change Management Experts worked closely with client group HR to put together a comprehensive change management plan for aligning collective talents, capabilities, and expertise and work like a well-oiled cohesive organization.

An Organization-wide 100-member Core “WE THE CHANGE” team was formed by roping in key Executives, Managers, and Team Leaders from different functions and locations to ensure business buy-in and readiness, visible support, and plan adoption and ensure timely communication to managers and employees.

An Organization-wide 100-member Core “WE THE CHANGE” team was formed by roping in key Executives, Managers, and Team Leaders from different functions and locations to ensure business buy-in and readiness, visible support, and plan adoption and ensure timely communication to managers and employees.

The change management plan was carried out in five stages-

Stage 1: KS worked with the client HR to develop a change portal to share timely information, updates, and action items to the WE THE CHANGE Team. A dedicated threaded Q&A and chat section was enabled to seek answers to questions specific to the program rollout.

Stage 2: Once the Core team championed the change plan, a manager-specific resource page was opened on the portal with a week-wise learning plan. The learning plan included self-paced learning modules and VILTs to establish the WHY, WHAT, and HOW of the change during Week 1. During Week 2, the focus was on learning and reinforcement through videos, self-study using articles, and microlearning and group discussions within the cohort. Week 3 of the plan focussed on preparing Managers to communicate the change by Practice Labs, Individual Skill Practice, and one-to-one sessions with Learning Coaches and peers for feedback. Week 4 focus was to apply these acquired change management skills through a capstone project.

Stage 3: The 4-week learning plan specially adapted for employees was rolled out for the entire employee strength.

Stage 4: Employees were surveyed to capture their current understanding and state of change. Survey also captured employee needs regarding this change.

Stage 5: Continuous support and reinforcement was provided through the Employee Portal.

Benefits

The rollout of this massive change has been mostly uneventful with minimal resistance from the workforce, resulting in greater adoption of technology in the overall lending process. The company is experiencing 6% more lending queries due to this digital transformation and 19% faster loan disbursals.