Diana Misa, OTP Bank Romania: “Implementing a hybrid work frame comes also with a change of paradigm“

“In 2021, we organized a series of trainings for employees from Human Resources Directorate, Compliance Directorate, Legal Directorate, and Retail Risk Advanced Modelling and Analyses Directorate. We open a new paradigm for the entire organization – understanding Design Thinking, Agile way of working – adopting agile mind-set and practice and understanding Lean Methodology. Our plan is to facilitate this experience for all our colleagues and practice it as business as usual,“ Diana Misa, HR Executive Director, OTP Bank Romania told The Diplomat-Bucharest.

What are the current and future challenges you are dealing with in achieving your HR business objectives?

“Looking at the current context, it seems impossible to even imagine what kind of future challenges we will face. I trust that it is more important to care for people’s wellbeing and emotional state, invest in supporting, coaching and guide them. This way, we will be prepared to face whatever challenge.

For this reason, one of the HR objective for 2022 became actually a strategic objective at bank level – improve employees’ wellbeing. We continue to closely monitor our colleagues’ feedback on several dimensions in order to improve their experience within the company and build a strong organizational culture. The two years of pandemic changed the game rules. Now, implementing a hybrid work frame comes also with a change of paradigm. And for be sure we implement the best option; we listen to the employee’s voice.

Also, note that HR area evolved incredible during recent years. We are not talking about a traditional structure and activity anymore. Along with Recruitment, Compensations and Benefits, Personnel Administration and Labour or Learning and Development, Internal Communication and Employer Branding areas, I also manage the Internal Customer & Employee Experience team. Improving our customer centricity is key objectives for OTP Bank, therefore this is an important extension of the role Human Resources can play. Last year we have seen important improvements of TRI*M Index score and I hope to further see good results in 2022, despite the uncertainties generated by recent events in our neighbouring countries.“

What is the company’s approach and strategy in HR and recruitment this year?

“We are looking to our strategy mainly from three perspectives – employee experience, wellbeing and engagement. We build from inside out. Employee experience is an element we developed during recent years. For us, our colleagues’ feedback is essential. We develop frequent surveys on onboarding process, performance management, engagement, way of working, wellbeing and many others. As for their input, we create dedicated programs or we improve the existing ones. Pioneers at organization level, The Human Resources team adopted an agile way of working in order to better deliver strategic programs. Experts from different areas are working together using agile methodology and tools having the client (internal/external) as main focus.

On the other hand, last year we developed an extended external research in order to help us build an adapted employer branding strategy. Deep dive analysis that helped us understand how we are perceived as employer, what expectations have our potential future colleagues and how we can change the status in this regards. The new launch of our new EB strategy will further help us reach our 2022 objectives overall in HR, but also as brand.“

What game-changing initiatives have been run in the company in terms of HR and recruitment so far?  What is the evolution in this respect this year?

“The most important game-changing initiative is our transformation program, launched in 2019. For us, this transformation is first and foremost, a change of mind-set and behaviour. From my perspective, the hardest change.

We made astonishing progress in transforming our organization into an agile one, but we still have a lot to do. In 2021, we organized a series of trainings for employees from Human Resources Directorate, Compliance Directorate, Legal Directorate, and Retail Risk Advanced Modelling and Analyses Directorate. We open a new paradigm for the entire organization – understanding Design Thinking, Agile way of working – adopting agile mind-set and practice and understanding Lean Methodology. Our plan is to facilitate this experience for all our colleagues and practice it as business as usual.“

How did 2021 look from HR’s point of view in terms of hirings, talent retain and people attrition? What are the plans for 2022?

“We have good figures for 2021 overview. Shorty mentioning it, we have 500+ positions closed and an average time to hire of 29 working days. We have 22% internal movement and 400+ retentions.

For obtaining these results, we made some important working decisions. First, the HR team work on a SPOC model, in order to be sure we ensure 360 visibility on the needs, progress and special requests.

On the other hand, we closely worked to develop a Career Path Program received so well by our colleagues. Having a complex hierarchy, we had to develop career management roadmaps specific for each business areas. We cannot compare Network area with the ones form Head Office. In 2021 we defined career path maps, established eligibility criteria and prepared development plans for several job roles. This year we continue with a different approach for Head Office roles, having in place a detailed clustered positions that can help colleagues better understand the requirements (soft and hard skills) for each division. We provide them a close relation with HRBP team and counselling from Learning and Development colleagues in order to easily build their career within OTP Bank.

Furthermore, we re-written the Onboarding and Induction Programs, after collecting feedback from several newcomers and better understanding their experience.  It is important to adapt at the new contexts and improve any point of interaction. We plan to keep the recurrent surveys on these topics and to update our programs as for the findings. We learned that there is always place for improvement and working in sprints facilitates a lot this.

Therefore, retention is the name of the game in 2022. In a highly competitive market with a highly and unpredictable dynamic, retaining skilled resources is key. There is high demand for resources in the market with a special mention for IT skills, the salary offers are constantly increasing and people behaviour is shifting to purpose, flexibility and work-life balance.“

What is the approach on DEI aspects (diversity, equity, inclusion) in the company? What should be considered and prioritized in this respect?

“Actually, diversity conscious is one of our main employer branding pillars. Internally, within our engagement survey we obtained good scores in this aspects and we are continuously creating growth opportunities for everyone, regardless age, gender, race. We trust that our evolution comes precisely because of this mix of diverse people co-creating tomorrow as a team, each bringing their individuality to the table. As our commitment in this regards, in 2021 we have signed the Diversity Charter, as a normal step towards enjoy living with diversity, to overcome prejudices, to remove barriers and to realize that this does not in any way undermine the coherence of our values, but on the contrary, is a gain for teams and communities.

We plan to further openly acknowledge main diversity aspect our organization is facing, trying to build a more humanistic, empathetic organizational culture. We have some exciting partnerships we will communicate soon on this very specific subjects and I am confident we will see fantastic reactions from our followers and colleagues.“

What Learning & Development projects have proved successful in 2021 and what are the L&D priorities for 2022?

“An important program for us, mainly during pandemic context, is OTP New Leaders – dedicated initiative for new managers. Offers benefits of developing managerial skills, aligning management practices at the level of the organization and the new agile way of working, and increasing the quality of management actions.

Another program for my leader colleagues was Essential Conversation in People Management, with focus on Conflict Management and Performance Management. The webinar series provided practical tips and suggestions to help managers develop the ability to provide feedback and set goals effectively. Communication is key for leader, no matter the topic. We invest in this area of development for all our colleagues. In the same direction, Process Communication Model program is another example through which employees learned techniques for using adaptive communication skills and learned how to build strong engagement across the organization by applying effective management and increasing operational effectiveness. I think we can say that PCM is for as a traditional workshop. Therefore, we have already started the 2022 sessions.

Of course, as an organization that desires to become customer centric, we had to continue the series of Customer Centricity and Customer Care courses for all employees in which they learned various techniques to better understand customer needs. As strategic objective, we will continue to invest in this area of knowledge and improve our colleagues’ skills in this regards.

The business operations are continuously digitally transformed. What kind of projects’ initiatives have been run in the HR departments to support the digitalization of processes, operations and most of all, how are being supported the people’s adjustments to the new technologies?

Digital transformation is not an option, is a need. In 2021 we decided to go further with our internal communication platform and we launched a dedicated app facilitating interaction and collaboration between colleagues. Also, because we need fast and accurate info, we implemented a chatbot for the most frequent HR questions our colleagues might have.

As recruitment is such a fast-changing area, we adapted our tools and implemented Phoenix ATS, with huge outcome in our team activity. Also, a new Performance Management tool and process was implemented as for 2021, following to be improved this year.  Furthermore, in 2022 we will have in plan to adapt our payroll and admin platforms and already defined all the details, implementation being the very next step.“

What kind of workplace transformation-based projects have been developed in 2021 and how did it evolve in 2022?

“Before the pandemic, we started to test various workplace transformations – we tested the hot desk policy, we created two special flexible working areas that are adapted to agile working, implemented some individual quiet spaces.

As for pandemic context, we knew that hybrid work would be the future. Therefore, we tried to accommodate the spaces, as much as possible. We are just entering into the testing phase, as for Covid relaxation measures, therefore we will decide afterwards what other changes will be needed.“