Did Apple Just Become a Banking Company? Now That Requires Collaborative Talent Change Management

Just this week, Apple released a revolutionary new mobile payment app dubbed ApplePay which promises to blur the lines between tech companies and financial companies. In reality, retail banks are becoming de facto technology companies with functionality like mobile check deposit, mobile funds transfers, and a host of other online/mobile banking becoming a prime point of competitive advantage. This change has spurred a race to source tech skill sets like .php developers, Javascript developers, and all kinds of network security experts.  Competition for these resources is high, as they are in demand in other industries as well. As a result, banking concerns must adapt to this change or risk being overtaken by the competition. If it hasn’t already, managing change within banking workforce solutions is about to get innovative.

Leadership has learned what works and what does not when it comes to implementing a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Vendor Management Systems (VMS) where only paper-based systems existed before. Or when it comes to implementing an MSP administered by a third party outfit. What doesn’t work well is the old school, autocratic mandate from the C-suite. Collaborative change management accepts that those being asked to change must foster a proprietary attitude toward the change being proposed.  They must intuit the “what’s in it for me” or the initiative risks being derailed by ambivalence and self-serving resistance.

In short, all change management by definition is based upon a mutual agreement between leadership and the rank and file. There can be no effective change management without collaboration between these groups. They are entering into what is essentially a Psychological Contract. The Psychological Contract refers to the relationship between an employer and its employees, and specifically concerns mutual expectations of inputs and outcomes. With so much of an organization’s competitive ability tied closely to its workforce strategy, it becomes imperative to understand how change management evolved and why it is crucial to success.

The commercial banking industry, an industry in which nextSource has significant experiential knowledge, has been here before. The effects of mobile technology on how consumers interact with their financial institutions are nothing short of transformative.  If the advent of the ATM machine was a disruptor in the late 1980s – spurring demand for workers with IT and information systems architecture the likes of which banks had never needed before – the evolution toward today’s model represents a tsunami of change.  Consider the multitudes of workers needed to develop the mobile apps so popular among retail banking customers today. 

 Collaborative change management is so important to the health and well-being of a workforce management program. Yet, it is something that is overlooked with surprising regularity by companies seeking to burnish their competitive advantage through workforce management strategies. This is not because it is a new idea. In fact, change management has been a generally accepted discipline for decades.

Convergence of several paradigm-shifting factors including the advent of personal computing, the Internet, and the resulting globalization of business fundamentally altered the nature of labor practices.  Not only has the business environment and defining characteristics of the workforce changed, but so have the methods used to manage human capital. Innovations in tech like ATS and VMS (as well as in business practices such as the MSP service model) have impacted the processes supporting workforce management.  Getting HR practitioners to adapt to (and adopt) these new technologies and practices is critical to the success or failure of every organization. Clear enunciation of the Psychological Contract is essential to the success of any potentially disruptive new solution implementation.

If your organization is wise enough to intuit the great need and exceptional value of developing a definitive and robust workforce management strategy, make sure it is equally well-versed in collaborative change management to ensure the need is adequately met and the value is copiously delivered. Those that adapt and adopt flourish!