LONDON–Credit union leaders pondering the future of work may want to learn from one bank here, where the idea of a traditional full-time job is becoming increasingly irrelevant as it looks to remake its workforce for the AI age, according to a new report.
This story is part of an ongoing series in the CU Daily that is looking at how financial institutions are responding to the effects of artificial intelligence on the workplace.
At Standard Chartered, a British multinational bank offering wealth management, corporate and investment banking and retail banking services, employees still have job titles and descriptions, but within the firm they are acting more like gig workers, taking on ad-hoc projects that may have little or nothing to do with the job for which they were hired, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Tanuj Kapilashrami, the bank’s chief strategy and talent officer, told the Journal the more flexible approach—mediated by an in-house ‘talent marketplace’—is critical to redeploying human capital that can be far more productive with AI tools, as well as speeding the pace of new AI deployments.
‘Less & Less Relevant’
“The idea of a traditional job being a currency of work is going to become less and less relevant,” Kapilashrami told the Journal. “You don’t have to think of an individual by the job title or the job description, but you think of an individual as a collection of skills.”
According to the report, the gig work on Standard Chartered’s marketplace, which was set up in 2020, has helped create more than $8.5 million in value by enabling projects that might have been sidelined in the past due to understaffing or a lengthy hiring process, said Kapilashrami.
“On the talent marketplace, workers can post and apply for gigs in things like basic programming or communications. Currently 60% of the bank’s employees globally are active on the platform, nabbing gigs they can spend up to eight hours on within their regular workweek,” the report explained. “While they don’t make extra money, staff see it as an opportunity to network and build new skills, especially important at a time the labor market is shifting, Kapilashrami said.”
‘Best Use of Skills’
For the company, the marketplace has been a way to best use the skills it has instead of overhiring, the Journal added.
“As new pieces of work are coming up, as opposed to very quickly going, ‘How many new [full-time employees] do we need?’ We are having a very clear conversation on: Is it about building skills? Is it about buying skills? Is it about borrowing skills?” Kapilashrami was quoted as saying.
The talent marketplace is also allowing the company to move quickly on building and rolling out new uses for AI in areas like wealth management, advising clients and marketing, the report added.
