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Shefali Gupta was a key player in DBS Bank’s digital transformation. Eight years ago, they had a traditional bank, and as she’ll tell us, just recently they acquired the coveted World’s Best Digital Bank designation.
In this episode, Shefali is going to share with us how they helped their people upskill in order to be prepared for the transformation that was bound to come.
One piece of advice Shefali wanted to leave with you that did not make it into our interview is this, “Each of us might be good at something. We each need to take it upon ourselves to teach others and ask to be taught so that we can all become better.”
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. So, as we well know we are in the midst of an incredible digital transformation around the world, and companies everywhere are looking at how they can ensure the safety and security of their customers as well as improve the customer experience. But one thing that we cannot neglect when thinking about digital transformation is how this is going to impact the workers who are bound to lose their jobs over this change.
According to the World Economic Forum, estimates ranged from 2 million to 2 billion jobs lost over the next decade due to digital transformation. So what kind of role do companies play in not only going through this transformation, but also in taking care of the workers who have got them to this point so far?
Today we’re going to speak with Shefali Gupta who was a key player in DBS Bank’s digital transformation. Eight years ago, they had a traditional bank, and as she’ll tell us, just recently they acquired the coveted World’s Best Digital Bank designation. But you don’t go from zero to hero without getting everybody else onboard.
Shefali is going to share with us how they helped their people upskill in order to be prepared for the transformation that was bound to come. One piece of advice she wanted to leave with you that did not make it into our interview is this, “Each of us might be good at something. We each need to take it upon ourselves to teach others and ask to be taught so that we can all become better.” This is at the core of what took place at DBS Bank. You can find the full transcript and Shefali’s LinkedIn link in our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net.
Here is my interview with Shefali Gupta:
Today, I have with me Shefali Gupta. She is a digital and innovation leader. And in fact, Shefali has been a part of this incredible transformation that DBS Bank has gone through in the past few years, from being just a traditional kind of bank to now being the World’s Best Digital Bank. This is an actual award that they have won. Congratulations, Shefali, on this accomplishment!
Shefali Gupta: Thank you so much, Andrea. And firstly, thank you for bringing me onto your show. It’s seems like a great platform, and I’m really happy to talk to you, and many thanks for your wishes. I think it’s completely teamwork, and I will accept your wishes on behalf of the entire DBS Bank.
Andrea: Yes. So, Shefali, what is the World’s Best Digital Bank? What does that mean?
Shefali Gupta: Okay, so for DBS, it meant, I would say, three broad things and maybe I could just take a minute to talk about them. So, how we thought of being digital is number one, I mean, be digital to the core, which means getting new technology, ensuring that everybody is being very experimental in their day-to-day – whether it’s technology or product development – and do a lot of experiments, you know, as scientists will do. And the third thing is that everybody is understanding – not just the technology folks, but everybody in the bank understands what we are doing, why we’re doing, how it’s going to help, and how can we use technology to improve our product and services and give an amazing experience to our customers.
The second thing we embarked on was looking at it from a customer angle on how we can embed ourselves in the customer journey and become a bank which is joyful. So this word joyful came up as something, “Let’s make banking joyful.” And the third aspect was the people aspect, which is how do we get our employees to be future ready and be digitally engaged and be completely part of the journey, so all 24,000 employees being part of our journey. So this is the way we thought of digital.
Andrea: So, you’re not just talking about making some changes on a website or even in the processes of how people do banking. I mean, that in and of itself is a lot, but you’re also talking about how you brought the employees along in on this process.
Shefali Gupta: Mhmm, absolutely.
Andrea: So what was one of the things that your employees needed in order to be able to be a part of this process then? What did that mean for them?
Shefali Gupta: So, Andrea, that meant three things. Firstly, they should be aware of the whole purpose, and see their role, and what role they are playing in the entire journey. So, each employee should be very well aware of all the DBS vision and overall strategy that we are trying to do. That’s one.
The second thing is every employee – and irrespective whether they are the teller or the cashier in the branch or they’re the back office team or in HR or finance – should be aware about the basic technology changes and the processes that we are looking at to revamp. That’s the second thing.
And the third is that each of them should also be aware that they need to upskill themselves continuously to be future ready. And maybe some of the jobs that they are doing today won’t be there, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be without a job because they would then be doing a new job which they have been trained for. So this continuous learning, you know, process is something that they should be aware about. So these, I think, would be the three things from an employee perspective.
Andrea: Having a sense of purpose, knowing where they fit in the whole vision and strategy, and then everyone understanding the technology changes and being aware that they need to upskill themselves because their job might not be there when this whole thing is over, which is so important.
I am really curious about how you helped people to understand this transition because it’s gotta to be really hard for folks who have had the same job for a long time to realize that their job is going to be going away because of this digital transformation. Was that a difficult thing for people to accept?
Shefali Gupta: Yes, definitely. It wasn’t easy, I would say. And the reason for that is firstly, when you’re talking about 24,000 people, they are all kinds, so they are come from different genres. So we add one and we have the millennials, the kids in their early 20s who have just joined us as management trainee or graduate associates. On the other end, we had people who are, like, almost close to retirement and they are in their late 50s or 60s and who have been doing the same thing for maybe thirty, forty years already. Plus, of course, there’s all sorts of other diverse population within the ordination of different countries. I mean, men and women also tend to learn differently. So it’s, like, first dealing with the mix of the employees and understanding what is it that would make each segment, you know, be more successful in upskilling themselves. That’s one.
The second thing is that not everybody will have the same amount of interest in every topic. So, we need to have a range of topics of skills that each one could pick and choose that they would like to upskill themselves in. And so this was the second challenge, like, how do we ensure that we have the people understanding what is it that they should go into – a data kind of topic or they should go into UX design – and helping them get onto that was something that was, I think, the other challenge that we were facing at that point.
Andrea: How did you help individual people when you had so many to be working with on this? How did you help individual people make that decision for themselves, or was that something that was decided for them?
Shafali Gupta: So we did two things. One is basically, when I of read a lot on this topic, I actually formed a think tank on this thing by connecting with folks in different organizations, institutions, colleges, and I made my own network. About twenty-five people, we call them Leaders and Learning. So basically, it’s my own friendly think tank, and we would meet like once a month over a cup of coffee or a drink and discuss some of these things. I learned a lot by bouncing of thoughts from these people and seeing what worked in other organizations.
And from there, one of the thoughts that came to me [is] that learning has to be self-driven. So you can take the horse to the water, but you can’t force it to drink. It’s the same thing. So you can have the best content and the best course and the best online material, but it’s the people who need to be curious enough and self-driven to be wanting to learn on their bus rides home back or when they’re taking a train and they have an half an hour or when they are at home and they’re watching a lot of Netflix and how do you take one hour? Okay, let’s do three hours of Netflix and one hour of, you know, learning something new, kind of a thing.
So it’s like making it more self-driven. And secondly, looking at it from a more curiosity point of view, let’s get the people to become a bit more curious and wanting to learn on their own because they see the benefit in it for themselves.
Andrea: Okay, so how did they decide what things to pursue, what to learn?
Shefali Gupta: So what we did was that through various discussions internally as well as externally including with institutes. We looked at what could be the future skills? And then we identified seven skills, which we thought are definitely something that will help them in the future. There could be more, I mean, we started off with 25, 30, but because we didn’t want to make it too many a number, we kind of decided to keep it to seven at this point of time.
And of course we have the option to keep juggling around and changing every year, which these seven skills should be. So we decided on seven skills and within that we got everybody to do a one-on-one on all seven for them to understand what is, for example, one of them is UX design or one of them is a customer journey mapping, or one of them is Agile. So, they should at least understand on one-on-one. So, we kept it simple just for them to literally just dip their toes and see what that skill is all about because it’s like, what they don’t know is they don’t know. So, let them at least understand what it is.
And then after that we asked each of them to pick up any two. We gave them the empowerment and the choice to pick up any two and then go deeper into them in a more engaged learning, whether it’s classroom or e-learning. The first bit was us giving them a basket of seven and then leaving them to choose between these seven.
Andrea: So they picked two, and then they had the opportunity to learn more based on those two. Did you have certain classes or the e-learning or the workshops that you had for them to take or was this something that you had some options, or did they choose? How did that work?
Shefali Gupta: So again, the way we did was that this was really interesting. Of course we had classroom training for some of the banking products and businesses. We also have tie up with some of the big e-learning companies across the world so that people have enough material to choose from.
But then we went beyond that by doing two programs, one is what we call Gandalf Scholars. So basically, we said to our employees that we would give you $1,000 credit in your salary account straight away if you tell us what is it that you want to learn and how then would you do it within a three month period.
So, all they needed to do is pick up a topic. Like for example, somebody said, “I want to learn about dev ops,” or somebody said, “I want to learn about Agile coaching.” We would give them the money to decide how they want to use the thousand dollars to upskill themselves externally. They could get a personal coach for themselves, or they could sign up with a program, either university or anything that works for them. The only question in that was that, they needed to come back and teach that same skill to at least ten other employees, and they could do that through a lunch and learn session or making a video on it. But that’s our way in which we kind of ensured that the content is something which is relevant, taught by their own friends or peers in the office. And that’s how it was one of the really big successes.
Andrea: Wow! It sounds like it would be successful. How did they take it? How did the people respond?
Shefali Gupta: Well, they loved it. We had a waitlist throughout, and we had, like, a lot of people wanting to, you know, sign up. Because we did it in bursts of like, you know, once a quarter, and we would give it 200 people, then you would pay it for a few months and give out. That’s how we did it. And what was the surprise for me over here was that of course they love the learning that they did because they were empowered to choose what topic they want to learn and how they learn it. That was a lot of empowerment with them. And they loved that. But what they actually really adored was the teaching. I had so many people write to me saying that, “I love coming back and teaching my friends in the office. I didn’t realize that I could teach so well. And after that I’ve made so many new friends, and I love the way I had to prepare for it, and I’ve learned so much more in the teach back.”
So actually, the teach back went viral, right? Like, they just loved it. They all wanted to teach and then they kept saying, “Can we do it more times? Is it just a ten or can I do it for, like, twenty people or can I do one more session?” And so I think that was something which really inspired us to think deeper about this concept of peer to peer learning and realize that people want to learn with friends, like, who they know well and they are very comfortable sitting side by side and someone is teaching you something. That’s how they want to learn and what I call peer-to-peer learning. I think that’s going to be the way learning would be in the future.
Andrea: Oh, that’s interesting. Are there plans for that to continue then, or is this just a onetime kind of a situation for DBS Bank?
Shefali Gupta: Well, of course, we have planned to continue with this. You’re talking about Gandalf Scholars in particular or just…
Andrea: Yeah.
Shefali Gupta: Yeah, of course. We are continuing that, but we’ve actually taken a step further, Andrea, by introducing another program, which is an idea that came out from here, which is called Back to School. So this is the new, like, I would say the 2.0 of the first program where what we did was that these people who were like really loving being teachers and then that’s when that gave us the idea. There are so many subject matter experts in any place or any organization. Maybe they are not the senior folks, maybe they don’t shine so much because they’re doing some small projects somewhere hidden behind a desk. But these are the people who really know our topic very well.
So we started this Back to School program, which actually has got mentioned in our current annual report. And it’s something that I was leading and, you know, conceptualized and executed on this whole program, which is like, let’s create a school atmosphere in the office. So we took up one entire floor and made classrooms. We had, every forty-five minutes, one session going on on very different topics. It could be technology, it could be operations, it could be about leadership, it could be on, you know, data analytics. I mean, a range of topics were being taught by people, subject experts from the company and employees could just pick and choose and go for any sessions.
So, clearly like a bell would ring like your class bell and then you would have people coming to class, you have a teacher who’s somebody from the office and then they learn for forty-five minutes, a really good solid session, and then they can go and attend a completely different class, maybe on profile building or performance management or you know and they could just pick and choose different topics.
They loved it. I mean, we had like 1500 signups within three hours of opening up for registration. Then when a class would finish and I will open the door or the facilitator would open the door and there would be like a crowd waiting outside to enter in for the next class. It was like, people just absolutely love this, you know, and we recorded.
We video recorded many of them and made them into small bite-size YouTube kind of learning, which they could just watch in twenty minutes. The ones who couldn’t attend a class could watch it on video then. Then we released it like season one, season two, with like eight or ten classes each where people could actually, you know, refer to them or go back to them and listen in again.
Andrea: Hmm. There are so many things that I love about that. I love how it really gave people that were already in the company an opportunity to share their expertise and to shine, really. And then everybody else has a chance to learn from them and you were able to use it again by turning it into videos. I mean, it sounds like a fantastic program. Was it a one day experience then, this Back to School – did it take place in one day?
Shefali Gupta: So first time, we did it for two days, two whole days so that people could come and go when they felt like. I mean, sometimes people are more free in the afternoon. Sometimes some people in banking get free post 3:00 p.m., right? After the banking cut off as branches are shut down. So, we did it for two whole days, but the next time when we did it the second time we did it for four days, but we kept half days. But we did it over four days, I think from Tuesday to Friday. So it could be like, I think two days is a good number. One feels short because it was like, you know, many people are not there or they are busy in a meeting and then they just missed the whole thing. I think between two and three is it seems the right number of days to do this.
Andrea: It sounds exciting, sounds exciting. So when it came to leading this digital transformation, it sounds like this getting everybody on board, at least getting understanding, awareness, and then positive feedback or positive experience with it. It sounds like, you know, bringing in, doing this education, helping them to see that you care about them must have made a tremendous impact on the buy-in of the whole team.
Shefali Gupta: Yes, absolutely it did. I mean, it helped, in overall, just collaboration. I felt that people have become more collaborative because of everybody having the same vision. Everybody was excited to do something different. So teams are different units and functions are working together, like technology in business and operations with business. So everybody is more collaborative for sure. And the second thing is that everybody feels that they are going through a very exciting phase in their career. I have had so many of my team members come to me saying, “This is the best year in my career,” kind of a thing.
So, because there’s lots happening and they all feel empowered that they have a chance to make a difference and not just be boring bankers, but actually be in a very exciting phase of their life and here was a chance for them to make a difference. So, I think these two things, you know, have a collaborativeness and just maybe slight, definitely a more driven self-initiative kind of a excitement that’s built in to the company. That’s really good.
Andrea: So when we’re looking at this overall transition from being this more traditional kind of bank to being the World’s Best Digital Bank, could you take us back a little bit to the beginning of this process and why there was a desire or a decision to make this change and how the ball kind of got rolling? At what point was this? Why did it start?
Shefali Gupta: It’s a good question. There was a definite trigger point – and that came up, I think almost like eight years back. So we have, you know, like a country level customer satisfaction survey, which is done by the central authorities, like the government and some of the top institutes. So that kind of survey was done and DBS was like almost at the bottom of customer satisfaction. That was, I think, a wakeup call. It was all over the media.
But also we knew from our customers that they weren’t happy and there were a lot of pain points and there were a lot of noise on, “Queues are too long.” “The processes are not friendly.” “Staffs are rude.” I mean, all sorts of negative.
And of course, just like the processes being very slow and everything takes too much time. So that was how the trigger point was that boom, like, “Okay, we were lowest,” and it was like a wakeup call for us to do something about it. And at the same time, we actually happened to have a new CEO being appointed to the company who’s extremely dynamic and extremely driven to do something really big. And actually not just improve where we are going wrong, but to reimagine the entire way of, you know, banking is done and, you know, the position that DBS could be in the name that it could have and become a worldwide known name. I mean, those were the kind of aspirations that our CEO came in. So our leadership was very supportive and extremely positive and driven to do this change. And I think that’s kind of had a good spiral effect across the company.
Andrea: At what point were you looped in on this process and did you start to collaborate to help figure out how to move forward?
Shefali Gupta: So I joined DBS from Citibank after being in Citibank for about fourteen years. I joined DPS and I was in the customer experience and was handling the customer experience for the wealth management part of the business. And then after two years of doing that, what DBS did was that they set up a separate cell, like a small team, known as the Improvement Team which was back to the CIO and the CEO of the company, which would then be the team which would drive the entire transformation in the company.
So, I was fortunate enough to be asked to join the team. And I think that was like definitely a turning point in my career because here I got a chance to not do just my work, but actually be being in a position where I could have oversight about the whole company and be able to influence and support them in, you know, as we move forward.
So, from this team, the methodologies, tools, and the training, or even many of these programs were being rolled out from and executed across the organization. And later on in the last few years, I became the head of strategy and planning for the technology and operations group. And that’s how it gave me the leeway to be working with teams on upskilling the entire technology future readiness. And those are things that I was leading once I got into even a bigger role in this particular team.
Andrea: I’m sure that was exciting, but probably also a bit of a challenge for you personally. What did you find to be the biggest challenge for you personally?
Shefali Gupta: I think there were two things. One is, I think, the containers, very high speed of learning that was needed; like there was no stopping, right? Like every day there was something new that was happening. So, in some sense, you always had to keep evolving yourself and stretching yourself and learning new things. So, it’s not easy when you’ve come from doing very regular kind of jobs where you know what you have to do when you come in the morning and your day is like a set day. Here, every day was different. And I was thrown into new topics, new projects, new tasks like, “Okay, go help with the workforce strategy,” or “Go lead this particular thing.”
So first, I mean I think it was continuous learning, which was a personal challenge. But after some time I started really enjoying that. And you know, being able to take a topic and upskill myself first and then go and see how I could, you know, add value to others.
The second challenge for me, which actually became very positive towards the end, is that it’s a very matrix sort of… You are like a center cell in a huge organization. And it’s not that everybody is reporting into you, but you still have to influence them and get them to do what you want them to do and for them to trust you. And especially in countries where English might not be even the first language like China or Taiwan or maybe people who haven’t dealt with and who were completely new to me and I was new to them as well.
So just being able to work in a collaborative way and getting them to trust you and looking at the bigger picture and not worrying that, “Will I get the credit for it,” or “How will it help me?” But just looking at it, “Okay, this is the right thing to do and we should do it.” So, that’s what is really, you know, I think one of the challenges, initially I faced. But then once I started to make the connect and get people to trust me, I really started enjoying working with very different teams and helping and supporting them in every way I could without worrying about whether it’s going to benefit them or me or, you know, who gets the brownie points. You kind of have to stop thinking too much about that.
And that’s what has led me to now like really think of now that I’m in North America, I want to really continue doing that. Like, just working in teams, helping them solve the problems or execute on some of their programs or just helping them think through and learn from, you know, my experiences.
Andrea: So how did you gain their trust and be able to have influence in that situation?
Shefali Gupta: So, I think part of the ways to gain trust was using my experience and my knowledge and skills to make a genuine value add to the work they’re doing and they saw the value of it. That was first.
And the second thing is that what I mentioned earlier, not having expectations on what is it that I would get if I were to help them or gain their trust, but actually just doing it because it’s the right thing for the customer and for the organization. So they saw me being like that I’m thinking not just on my personal agenda but overall the organization agenda and definitely the customer agenda.
Andrea: So they could see that you are for the customer but also for them individually, I’m sure, because everything that you ended up bringing into play with the Gandalf Scholars and all of the upskilling that you made room for in the future that had to have a huge impact then for them to be able to feel like you were for them.
Shefali Gupta: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrea: Now you’d mentioned that there were some things that didn’t go so well. What did you learn from this process?
Shefali Gupta: Okay, I mean for me personally, the two things that I learned from here is firstly, no job is small or too big, I would think. Anything that’s given to me, there were sometimes like even the smallest of things that I would be doing, like “Okay, we have this visitor who has come from some other country and they want to understand what we’re doing and …to us.” So, sometimes I would say that, you know what, it’s a lot of time but then afterwards you start realizing that everything adds up, right? Every small thing makes a difference. It’s what you make out of a particular task or assignment and how much you can add value by doing it completely differently. That’s my learning.
If some work is given to me or a task is given to me, there’s one way would be is, “Okay, just go on and do it as you were told to do it.” The second way would be that: can you completely reimagine it and do it in a way which is very different and just in a much larger scale or looking at it as a much bigger picture. So that was my first learning.
The second learning would be just be very open to people of different personalities, different age groups and, you know, different backgrounds because from every human being, there’s something that you can learn from them.
So the older folks or people who’ve been there for 30, 40 years who had a very specific way of thinking but there was so much I learned about, you know, the real way of doing control compliance, the eye for detail that they had that was really very impactful.
And from the youngsters, I work with a lot of twenty something people. So, I have like, literally my daughter is 19 and I think half the team reporting to me was slightly above my daughter’s age. There was so much I would learn from them, the freshness of ideas or the ability to question everything. And just the energy which goes behind the thinking and how they work together and collaborate, so I think that was the second thing, just be open to younger, senior, junior. It doesn’t matter. Just try and learn what you can what that person has to bring on the table.
Andrea: Wow, what an amazing transformation it sounds like took place not just in the company but also in you.
Shefali Gupta: Absolutely. Yeah. I feel so too.
Andrea: Hmm. So when you think about somebody who wants to be a Voice of Influence® in their own company, what kind of advice would you give them to help navigate changes or personal challenges, especially when it comes to leading change?
Shefali Gupta: So, I mean, I would say, three things here. My advice would be firstly, think of a bigger purpose, a higher purpose that you are doing. So when I was asked to look at, you know, upskilling of the employees, so one way I could have looked at it, “Okay, I’m training a bunch of people.” The other way will look at it is that, “Okay, I’m going to ensure that these eight thousand people would have jobs even ten years from now or twenty years.” So they would be employable or their employability is going up and hence I’m contributing to the overall sustainability of them, their families, and you know, the people around them in their communities.
So my first advice would be to whatever you’re doing, look for a higher purpose. What is it that you would like to do that you could bring in and that you could make a bigger difference in your circle of influence or the world around you.
The second thing that I would say is that when you are doing something, it could be it in your personal life, at home or in the office, just try and always think through, “Is there a better way to do this?” So this continuous improvement thing is something which is, you know, _____, because once you do that, you will see others also start thinking like that, that look at continuous improvement. There’s something that, “Okay, is there something or better way to do this?”
So keep trying to pivot and improve whatever you’ve been doing, so how you have Apple go from whatever from different to 9.0, 10, and 11 or whatever. The same way, it’s like you have to say that, “Okay, I’m gonna have a new release of new way of doing something every time.” So that’s the kind of culture in organization you bring in then you will have people thinking on their feet all the time saying, “Okay, why should we do it the same way? Let’s look at it differently.”
The third thing, I mean patience. I think not all change comes overnight and that’s why we have all these problems. Like Rome wasn’t built in a day; it does take time. People take time to change. So when you try and go on to a change management or a transformation journey, any organization, give it a time. I mean, it will take time. It’s not going to be in one year or six months. It is a multi year journey and keep that in your mind.
Andrea: Hmm. Wow, well, thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Shefali. I really appreciate it. If somebody is interested in connecting with you or asking you a question about what you did with the work at DBS Bank, where should they find you?
Shefali Gupta: I think LinkedIn would be a good place. That’s something that I’m quick in my responses there. And now that I’m based in the US, like, if any of the folks want to catch up or just chat or meet up, I’m happy to be connected over there.
Andrea: All right, well, we’ll make sure to link to your LinkedIn page in our show notes on voiceofinfluence.net. And I thank you again so much for being here with us today.
Shefali Gupta: Thank you, Andrea. It was a pleasure, and I’m really happy that, you know, you’re doing this podcast and hope you much success and hope we remain friends forever.
Andrea: Oh, thank you!