Salz Review - Wall Street Journal

Salz Review
An Independent Review of Barclays’ Business Practices
128
Recommendation 20: Developing Barclays’ future leaders
Barclays should clearly identify its pool of current and potential leaders and
strengthen the leadership development programmes in which they participate.
These programmes should be Group-wide and embrace all business units and
functions, aiding current and future leaders to develop well-balanced skills.
To strengthen the role leadership development plays in creating a cohesive
Group, Barclays should carefully manage mobility across divisions, functions
and geographies, investing in programmes to develop well-rounded future
leaders through structured rotations across the Group.
Leadership promotion should include direct evidence of adherence to the
values and standards and the encouragement of others to live them.
Training
10.31 We found inconsistent levels of staff participation in, and satisfaction with, Barclays’
training. UK RBB appears to have some strong training programmes in place, and
many staff members are required to complete a minimum number of training hours
each year. UK RBB training is well attended and staff satisfaction is high. In other
areas of the bank a wide range of training is available. However, there are fewer and
less defined training programmes. In these businesses training is less formalised,
generally not mandatory, and primarily relies on individual initiative (except for
required compliance training and those on graduate schemes). Barclays’ internal
employee survey supports this; less than 60% of staff in Wealth, the investment bank
and Europe RBB believe they have sufficient training opportunities available. 199
In several areas of the investment bank, over 50% of staff complete no training
beyond that required for regulatory compliance, diversity or health and safety. 200
In general, training concentrates mostly on technical skills, with limited emphasis
placed on behaviours and values.
10.32 The investment bank’s own recent diagnosis concluded that few training and
development programmes explicitly addressed conduct; that leadership education
programmes with the heaviest conduct components were not delivered to all
employees; that conduct and values programmes were mostly elective; that
mandatory courses were either delivered electronically or in large groups; that
management information systems to measure training participation and effectiveness
were not robust enough; and that there was no firm-wide mentoring programme.
10.33 This inconsistent commitment primarily reflects the different emphasis given to
training and development by some of the bank’s senior leaders. Senior managers to
whom we spoke rarely cited training and development – even when discussing
people management. We concluded that this ‘tone from the top’ sent an important
signal about the priority managers and staff should give to training – evidenced by
the tenuous link between training and other people management processes (for
example, it appears that performance reviews rarely led to training
199 Barclays’ 2012 Employee Opinion Survey.
200 Not including staff on a formal graduate programme.