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Human Resources
For the staff of Bank Austria Creditanstalt, 2005 was a year in
which we moved forward. It was a year of upturn and of permanent
structural improvement. At the same time the formation
of a truly European bank has opened new dimensions.
The forthcoming integration of Bank Austria Creditanstalt into
the new Group will of course involve organisational changes
but new job perspectives will also be opened and horizons
broadened. Bank Austria Creditanstalt will play a prominent
role in the new Group. It is well equipped for expansion
thanks to its structures, know-how and not least the experience
gained in integration over the past years.
These overall conditions characterised the work of the Human
Resources division in 2005. In Austria the implementation of
the business model was in the foreground. In CEE the focus
was on organic growth and the integration of newly acquired
banks. The future responsibility in Vienna for CEE presents
new challenges. Within the framework of UniCredit’s human
resources management, BA-CA’s Human Resources (HR) division
has been working intensively in preparation for these
tasks since 2005.
� In Austria HR played a decisive role in the implementation
of the business model as virtually every project and every measure
has a staff policy aspect. The Human Resources division
with its vision of “Culture of Excellence and Empowerment”
partnered the separation of bank functions, specialisation in
sales, settlement services, product development and in particular
the subsequent cooperation within the banking group in
line with the principle of division of labour. In addition to
structural organisation and staffing – from the introduction of
the new relationship management model to the creation of
Administration Services, the company specialising in settlement
and processing activities – training was one of the major
focal points of current personnel work. Major prerequisites
had to be created in 2005 to introduce more flexibility and to
reward individual performance.
Modernisation of internal service regulations: New internal
service regulations were introduced at Bank Austria Creditanstalt
AG in April 2005. They include much of the target
agreement worked out together with the Employees’ Council
in December 2004. The guiding principles behind the reform
are the protection of confidence, a stronger focus on individ-
100 Human Resources
ual performance, attractive work conditions and security.
There will be no new “tenured positions” at the bank. The
salary structure will be shifted, with longer transition periods,
to that of the collective agreement for employees of banks,
which applies to BA-CA following the switch to membership
of the Austrian Association of Banks and Bankers. Employees
are individually classified so as to avoid any loss of income.
This will limit the impact of automatic annual advances, thereby
paving the way for a more performance-oriented remuneration
system. We believe that we have succeeded in introducing
moderate transition regulations for existing staff and
attractive internal service regulations and salary structure for
new staff.
A change in framework conditions such as membership of an
international banking group with group-wide functions, the
internal service regulations introduced in 2005 and the growing
importance of performance-related bonuses as well as a
new, enhanced understanding of careers required new job
classifications. For this reason HR started a comprehensive Job
Families programme in autumn 2005. Under this programme
all existing jobs at BA-CA AG are described in standard job
profiles and bundled into job families, i.e. groups of related
jobs. Defining “HR target groups” enables us to adjust the
various HR applications to specific requirements. This increases
transparency – as is common practice in many large companies
– as we can now differentiate between job requirements,
ability and qualifications, and personal performance components.
Job families also make allowance for the trend towards
more recognition being given to professional know-how and
flexibility/mobility and not only to the management level. The
job families concept helps the bank to put a new performance-oriented
and transparent remuneration system, comprehensive
performance management, new career paths, more
targeted staff qualifications and strategic personnel planning
on a consistent and transparent basis.