Human resource strategies for expanding Mountain Bank's corporate banking sector

HR Strategy

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Mountain Bank

Strategies to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace

Organizations thrive by providing a level of value or services for their customers that their competitors cannot. Mountain Bank currently has a strong retail banking business, but it wishes to expand its outreach into the more lucrative business banking sector. It wishes to expand into retail and corporate banking. To do so, it desires to better use its tellers to convince current private banking account holders to open up corporate accounts.

Tellers are the 'face' of Mountain Bank. They are a critical asset, because one of the main reasons consumers desire to use a bank beyond basic 'nuts and bolts' needs is the confident and concerned image presented by the teller. Of course, more and more banking is being done online today. However, many consumers are frustrated by this, and often it is when a bank goes 'above and beyond' the bare minimum and truly addresses a consumer's personal needs that the patron is more apt to show loyalty to a particular institution. But Mountain Bank employs tellers as entry-level workers, which means that the quality of service they provide may be variable, particularly as the most competent tellers are promoted from their entry-level positions fairly quickly.

Of course, the human element is not the only reason various enterprises and individuals choose a bank. Low interest rates for loans, a willingness to extend credit, and assistance with overcoming regulatory hurdles are all reasons that a business is likely to choose a particular bank. However, given the competition that Mountain Bank is faced with, there is a limit to which Mountain Bank can pursue a cost leadership strategy (offering bargain basement rate loans). Instead, a differentiated strategy based upon the quality of its services, specifically catering to small businesses, is a more feasible approach (Porter's five forces, 2011, Quick MBA).

Four human resource strategies

An organization that wishes to grow must strive to foster its talent from within (otherwise known as an internal strategy). Some external methods can be used, such as trying to recruit top talent for teller positions from local universities, to ensure highly promotable candidates serve in entry-level positions. But without fostering internal talent through mentorship programs, tuition credits, and other perks for existing workers, retention levels will be low.

A cost leadership strategy stresses cutting costs (including, very often, the paychecks workers receive) as low as possible, to pass on the value to the customers. A differentiated strategy, in contrast, focuses on training workers to give superior customer service as an added value, and attracting (and paying for) top talent.

An internal cost-leadership strategy would strive to maximize the value of current workers, while cutting costs as much as possible. This might prove difficult to do, unless the labor market was so tight, workers had few other employment options. An external cost-leadership strategy might be more feasible, as a high level of worker turnover would be acceptable to the company, so long as paychecks were kept low. This might be called a kind of 'McDonald's strategy, which deliberately uses a high rate of turnover amongst entry-level workers to pursue a high volume, low-cost business strategy.

An internal differentiated strategy would stress training existing workers to assume new capabilities, so they could provide additional information and value to customers in specific areas the company wished to develop. Workers would receive additional responsibilities, benefits, and bonuses for their ability to convey added value to the consumer. An external differentiated strategy would 'import' new workers with higher educational credentials and other distinguishing features to fulfill new capabilities the organization desired to develop.

Recommendation

At present, Mountain Bank is unlikely to be able to recruit substantively new types of workers to fulfill entry level teller positions. It should instead strive to foster existing talent by educating its current tellers in better customer relations and to make them more knowledgeable about the products Mountain Bank offers. It could then institute a 'tiered' system, where certain tellers would be given additional responsibilities for dealing with commercial banking and other banking sectors the organization deemed to be critical areas of expansion and development. These tellers could be assigned to give additional information and assistance to customers when needed.