In the next in our series of Covid-19 interviews with Senior HR Leaders, our Founder & Managing Director, Peter Banks, talks directly to Susanna Yallop, Chief People Officer, Starling Bank – an award-winning and fully-licensed bank that was founded in 2014 by industry-leading banker Anne Boden. Starling has since raised £363 million in backing and was voted Best British Bank three years running. Starling has opened more than 1.8 million customer accounts with over £3.6 billion in deposits.
Susanna shares how Starling Bank, a rapidly growing organisation with just under 1,000 employees, has moved easily to working remotely. This has been helped by the fact they are a technology company, so it was about deploying that technology in a different locations. Their people and teams have been extremely resilient throughout these challenging times and they have responded well to this new way of working. Communication and Wellbeing have been Susanna’s priorities – with people being more isolated – and it has been important to listen to their individual needs, which vary hugely.
Peter Banks, Founder & Managing Director of theHRDIRECTOR commented: “Starling Bank clearly doesn’t have the legacy issues that many more long-established competitor banks struggle with and were very well set up to manage the impact of this pandemic, with technology being a huge enabler. Their ‘Never home alone’ campaign was a terrific communication and engagement tool, concentrating on four key areas; Mind, Body, Development and Nutrition.” Peter adds: “Susanna is clearly energised, determined to take different approaches to finding solutions and can see that there is definite opportunity for further change going forward.”
Watch the next in the series now as we look to uncover a rich source of ideas, insight, strategies and new working practices to continue to guide us through this. Just what have we learnt from this global pandemic and is there an opportunity to return to ‘the new better’?
To watch the video interview, click here
Watch our previous Covid-19 video interviews in this series on our HRDTV You Tube channel https://www.youtube.com/thehrdirector