THE CHALLENGE

Connecting manager effectiveness to business outcomes

Werner Merbold and the People and Culture team at Standard Bank prioritized improving managerial effectiveness to drive business success. Recognizing that effective leadership is pivotal to employee engagement, retention, and performance, they set out to equip 9,000 managers with comprehensive, actionable insight through Visier. By introducing True North metrics aligned to organizational goals, such as client focus, employee engagement, and diversity, Merbold's team made sure managers could monitor and act on key performance indicators.

These metrics form part of [senior leaders'] performance contracts as well as their remuneration plans, so it is critical for managers to make sure that they deliver not only on the financial results of the organization, but also the non-financial metrics. - Ampie Swanepoel, Head of Workforce Insights Value Management

THE SOLUTION

Defining the True North metrics of an effective workforce and tying them to performance

Standard Bank set out to identify its value drivers of client focus, employee engagement, risk and conduct, operational excellence, and C-suite financial outcomes. The idea was simple: if the company focused on clients and kept an engaged workforce, it would deliver operational excellence and be financially successful and socially responsible. So the team worked to define which employee metrics actually have the biggest impact on business outcomes, then built a leadership effectiveness index scorecard of five to seven True North metrics that senior leaders are reviewed against each year. The index keeps evolving: on learning and development, Merbold notes, the team quickly shifted from measuring how much people learn to what they learn.

We are the go-to people now for the business, for insights around their managers, their leadership effectiveness, and the return on investment. - Werner Merbold, Head of Workforce Insights

THE OUTCOME

Gains in retention, diversity, and leadership effectiveness

By consolidating disparate data into one platform, Standard Bank could build specialized metrics and gain deeper insight into the business. In one operations team, the group identified high absenteeism, declining Net Promoter Score (NPS), and numerous employee relations cases; analyzing these together revealed significant issues, leading to a management change and a positive turnaround across all indicators, including retention.

Making diversity metrics highly visible and part of the performance evaluation drove accountability. Standard Bank set firm targets for women's representation in senior management, monitored pay gap information, and tied progress to managers' goals, improving diversity numbers across the organization.

The leadership effectiveness index also had a profound impact on performance. The ability to drill into specific metrics and trends helped managers implement targeted interventions, and the dashboards fed a monthly people pack for senior leadership, embedding people analytics into strategic decision-making and fostering a data-driven culture.