By Jonathan Sharp
There has been a lot of noise about how AI is changing culture in financial institutions, but culture is about people, derived from and driven by a company’s values, such as integrity, transparency, and innovation. People are at the centre of culture not technology.
A company should NOT be changing their culture to implement AI, and if it is, then it needs to take a step back to redesign its culture before they even look into deploying AI. Being mindful that they cannot achieve any strategy if its culture isn’t aligned.
Lead by Example
A company’s culture was once viewed as ‘fluffy’, but it is far from that. It is the heart and soul of the company that determines how people communicate with each other and behave at work. For example, in financial services, the regulating bodies now recognise that culture protects people and companies, ensuring they are not working in a toxic culture. Think Baring Bank days.
Culture is set by a values proposition and must be championed from the top. Employees will look to leaders to see how the culture is delivered. Leaders should live and breathe it, and if it’s authentic (and people can tell if it’s not), it should come naturally. For example, in an honest and transparent company, if employees know something is going on, tell them that, unfortunately, you can’t share it with them at present, but that you will when you can. They will appreciate and respect your transparency.
Financial institutions should be transparent if they use AI in their communications rather than passing it off was their own work. And ethical AI is essential to ensure it is non-bias and correct, guardrails should be implemented to fact and sense check AI usage.
Remote Working
When remote working went mainstream after the COVID-19 pandemic, this changed leadership to an extent, as leaders had to grapple with managing remote teams. It also made keeping a culture alive harder, but there were ways around it, such as hosting online social sessions and activities. If a company has a strong culture, then it can sustain remote working.
A strong culture should embody trust and autonomy, which are essential for a hybrid or remote workforce. It is also vital to have accountability in place, but with a solid culture, employees are empowered to achieve not only for themselves but also for the business overall.
Retain and Attract Top Talent
A successful culture enables companies to retain top talent because it is like a relationship. You get what you put in and feel valued when you are appreciated. Therefore, employees are more likely to stay because it is mutually beneficial. It also helps to attract top talent because you will gain a reputation as a company that people want to work for.
Stellar Reputation
The same goes for other stakeholders, such as your customers and suppliers; people want to do business with an authentic and honest company that respects the values of your culture. For those who preach a solid culture but don’t carry it through, people can easily see right through them. Identifying that something doesn’t sit right with them leads them to question everything else.
A Strong Team
If you cultivate a culture that rewards employees for helping each other or for achieving those values, it empowers people to feel safe to speak up respectfully or to challenge if something is wrong, so it gets resolved. This is opposed to rewarding and recognising results irrespective of how they affect other people, which produces a toxic culture.
Listening
People underestimate the power of listening. By listening to your employees and customers, you show that you value what they say. It is also vital to teamwork, where listening to each other helps solve problems and resolve them together. Or listening to a dissatisfied customer and sorting out their issue. Employees of a strong culture will not fear AI is taking their jobs because the communication of the company will be transparent and honest, discussing where and how AI will be used to augment their roles and not replace them. It is imperative to take the time to listen and understand.
Culture For All
Create a culture that is all-inclusive and caters for different people, being mindful that your culture isn’t just set for you, because then you will be operating in a vacuum, where there won’t be any diversity of thought and background. Your culture will be too similar, and it needs to work for everybody.
Nurturing and Evolving
You must keep culture alive by constantly maintaining the same values but changing how you communicate them and how people engage with them. Maybe introduce rewards for achieving a value or for nominating someone to do it. Culture is a living, breathing attitude that constantly evolves, not just a policy.
And leaders should be on their guard because culture changes all the time. If you grow your business, hire someone who doesn’t fit your culture and starts changing the values of the team, you must nurture it to protect it.
Trust
Employees and customers trust a company with a robust culture because it delivers what it promises. They can see through the fake companies that say one thing but don’t deliver and fall short. Trust is built on what you say and what you deliver, and transparency and integrity so when you fall short you should admit mistakes, but make amends.
Innovation
If creativity and innovation are part of your culture, then this is where you bring in AI, exploring different ways to use it to improve your processes and productivity by making your employees more efficient and effective and transforming customer service.
Learning
Financial institutions with a strong culture should focus on learning and development for its staff, providing training on how to use AI and encouraging employees to experiment with AI, informing them that it’s okay to fail or make mistakes – a growth mindset culture.
The Heart and Soul
A financial institution with a strong culture aligned with its strategy will attract and retain top talent and drive success with both its employees and customers. Culture is the heart and soul of a company and is now more important than ever, especially with remote and hybrid teams, defining how people communicate and act, even when no one is watching, and shaping the decisions they take. If you provide a culture based on values such as transparency, trust, integrity and innovation, your employees know you appreciate and respect them, so they feel valued, empowered and motivated to work as a team to drive success. Putting your people first.
