UK 
United States‘Talent Marketplace’ is an AI-enabled platform used by Standard Chartered Bank where colleagues can connect their skills, experience and aspirations to areas of greatest demand and opportunity for the business, including short-term ‘gigs’, learning, mentoring partnerships and jobs.
The technology was born out of a very real problem where workforce planning analysis indicated that a number of jobs within the organisation would no longer be relevant, due to changing client needs, the evolution of technology or automation of tasks. Whilst many new jobs were to be created as a result there was a broader impact on the changing demand for skills. Colleague sentiment also indicated they were hungry for new avenues to grow their skills.
‘Paving development pathways to unlock productivity potential’
Watson Stewart, the Bank’s Global Head of Talent Management & Career Experience, shared that the starting point was finding out the benefits. “Research showed us that it’s four to five times cheaper to internally re-deploy colleagues than it is buying in from the market, and there was significant productivity opportunity for the organisation,” he said.
Those two elements are hard to ignore and for Standard Chartered Bank, a powerhouse employer of around 85,000 employees it was always going to be a strategy to upskill given the numbers and to pave development pathways to keep talent onboard and deliver for clients across a diverse group of markets.
Watson Stewart
Head of Talent Management at Standard Chartered Bank
Stagnation is never an ideal place to be and it was enough of a trigger for the Bank to take a ‘hard look’. “We began by diving into what else we could be doing to democratise access to career and development opportunities whilst facilitating the movement of skills to get work done within the organisation,” explained Stewart. That was the moment the ‘talent marketplace’ was born. An HR technology solutions provider was engaged and a pilot built.
