The recent global crises wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has necessitated that most Financial Services Industry (FSI) firms continue to effectively leverage digital technologies to innovate and improve the customer experience.
However, a recent study reveals that to become fully digital enterprises, many firms in the financial sector may need to shift the focus inward and innovate the employee experience to prepare them to meet the digital requirements of customers.
According to MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital survey, overall, the Financial Services Industry (FSI) is on the cusp of a digital transformation right now.
“FSI firms are making significant investments to enhance customer experience and engagement through the development of new digital products and capabilities.
“The survey revealed that of the FSI firms with a digital strategy, 93 percent agree or strongly agree that the objective of their digital strategy is to improve customer experience and engagement”.
Additionally, in the quest to achieve market leadership, Financial Services Industry (FSI) firms continue to focus on becoming ‘holistically digital, customer-facing enterprises’.
More so, a majority of the financial institution employees surveyed also indicated that they do not believe their firms are ready for widespread digital transformation, even though 90 percent of the firms agreed that digital technologies are disrupting the industry to a great or moderate extent and as such cannot be ignored in these crucial times.
“As a whole, the industry has not fully explored what it means to be digital, from the inside out” which is very worrying, the survey revealed.
“Many FSI firms, focused primarily on leveraging digital capabilities to become customer experience champions, have not devoted enough attention to the other side of the coin: the employee experience”.
“Employee experience” according to the research undertaken is defined as how employees feel about their organizations with regard to both opportunities for growth/skills development, and employees’ willingness to continue to work for their current firms.
“Only 38 percent of FSI respondents agree or strongly agree that their organization offers employees the resources or skill-development opportunities they would need to thrive in a digital environment”.
Highlighting some recommendations for the Financial sector on how to ensure that employees are well prepared to handle the digital transformation drive in order to improve customer experience, one of the key suggestions hinted that an organization must successfully align its “culture—a system of values, beliefs, and behaviors that shapes how work gets done—with the business, operating, and customer models found in digital enterprises.
“This is largely because, in a dynamic digital environment, the legacy approaches involving a firm’s adaptability to change, work style, leadership style, decision making, or for that matter, risk appetite, may not be effective”.
Finally, the survey brought to bear some attributes that the financial services industry needs to be better prepared in pursuing the path of digital transformation. This includes agility which involves moving rapidly and flexibly in order to make adjustments in a continuously disruptive ecosystem.
Others include collaboration of both virtual and physical participation of employees, a well distributed organizational structure as well as a bold risk-appetite culture.
All these attributes are “positively related to better preparedness for digital disruption and higher employee retention” and as such should be keenly adhered to as the country wars against the coronavirus pandemic which appears to be more delicate and economically disruptive.
