Global financial services organisation State Street is bringing together a team of HR professionals from across the company to help it simplify and improve its talent processes, CHRO and citizenship officer Alison Quirk has revealed to HR magazine.
The initiative, called ‘The Next Big Idea’, involves taking 15 people from around the world out of their normal roles for the rest of the year. This May, the selected HR professionals moved to Boston, US, where State Street is headquartered.
Fifty people applied to take part in the programme.
“They are looking at all of the talent processes that managers use and all the talent systems [HR] uses,” Quirk explained. “The challenge is to take 30% of the work or time out of the process, simplify it and make it more effective.”
She added: “I can’t afford [to] do it one piece at a time. These guys know as much as any consultant, and they’re not going to try and sell me a system.”
She said that this is “a test” that might be repeated on a different topic if it’s successful.
The main aim is to reduce complexity within HR, Quirk added. “When you are busy and running these highly complex organisations it’s very easy for your products and services to get very complex,” she said. “You tend to layer on top of things instead of smoothing things out and simplifying.”
Beyond this HR initiative, State Street is aiming to give its millennial employees “intentional experience” by inviting them to take part in challenges.
“If there’s a business unit with a gritty problem, we’ll put a call out [asking people to solve it],” said Quirk. “We’ll say how many people we need, the topic and how much time we think it will take. It’s consulting but without needing to go outside for it.”
State Street has been focusing on innovation over the past year, partnering with conference series TED and inviting employees to apply to give TED talks on a topic of their choice. Quirk herself has given one and another member of the HR team used a TED talk as an opportunity to come out as a lesbian to the rest of the firm.
“There’s room for innovation in all sorts of ways,” Quirk said. “Whether it’s the ‘Big I’ technology or something like this [HR initiative]. I think by the end of the year we’ll have some really creative ways to make our organisation better.”
