14 minute read
In Focus Interview: Alexander Harrison, Country CEO, Singapore & Head of Corporate Banking, Asia Pacific and Middle East, Barclays
By Lucy Haydon, Editor, Orient Magazine
In this edition our Editor discusses all things diversity with Barclays’ Singapore leader, Alexander Harrison. As a former Co-Chair of the Chamber’s D&I committee, Alexander understands the business case for promoting diversity of people and thinking, and shares highlights and the latest thinking in the Barclays journey during their conversation.
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Since 2014, Barclays have supported our diversity and inclusion efforts through sponsorship, content, best practice expertise and a stream of senior professionals who have volunteered their time to drive important discussions in the leadership of our Women in Business and D&I committees. Being a keen advocate for diversity myself and overseeing the D&I committee for many years at the Chamber, during June’s Pride awareness month I enjoyed a discussion with Alexander on Barclays’ progress in the D&I space through a year of heightened emotions, and why it continues to shape the company’s key values.
Barclays has always led the way in D&I within the banking industry, being the first bank in the UK to employ a female branch manager and, some years later, the first to feature same sex couples in your advertising. How did the company achieve that whole-company cultural acceptance of D&I as one of your key values?
At Barclays, we believe that creating an inclusive and supporting culture is just the right thing to do, and we also recognise that it's the right thing to do for business. It gives us a far better understanding of our people, how the employee landscape is evolving and developing, what people want and expect from their employers. That's really rapidly changing as we focus on talent attraction and retention, creating an environment where people can bring all of themselves into their workplace. I also think it's critical because it enables us to really understand our clients, our customers, and the global communities within which we operate in, enabling us to try and do the best that we can to serve those communities. Cultural development isn't something that you do overnight, it’s a long journey.
For Barclays, building a D&I strategy and implementation started many years back and in 2014-15, we became the official D&I partner of the Chamber. We've been a hugely open advocate for LGBT+ support, timely as we speak because it's Pride Month. We recognise that D&I is a journey, and we will continue to evolve our understanding around D&I and the importance of it, and educating ourselves along the way with areas around unconscious bias and removing bias from our thinking. I think the other key point to reference is intersectionality; how people's individual identities can overlap. I think that's really at the forefront of where D&I is moving towards; really recognising that intersectionality around how people identify themselves needs to be fully understood to be a better employer and support our communities. Because when these issues become compounded, it means that some people can be hugely disadvantaged in society and in the workplace environment. I think that’s important, through our pillars we underpin our support to understand and appreciate that context.
Last year, Barclays announced ‘inclusion in race’ champions to be embedded in all business units, along with mandatory race and ethnicity training. Thinking of the racially charged past 12 months, how has this project developed this year? And how has it been received by your employees?
Wasn’t last year a wake-up call for many in a hugely challenging way? Supporting our Black and ethnically diverse colleagues is hugely important to Barclays. What it enabled was a real catalyst for change, for us, really accelerating our activity around understanding what our Black colleagues want and need, particularly in the UK and US.
We do have already a very embedded network focusing on cultural ethnicity which is called Embrace, which is Barclays’ multicultural network. But it really enabled us to provide some genuine push and charge behind building a Race at Work action plan that was launched in October 2020. The plan comprises of a set of action points that enables new opportunities for us to attract, grow, develop and create an environment for Black and ethnically diverse colleagues. An opportunity to develop and grow, and an appreciation of what they want to see from an employer. So there's been lots of work around education across the platforms and we’ve hired individuals to help engage around what our Black and ethnically diverse colleagues want and need. And we'll look to push and expand that. In 2021, this was particularly focused on our Black colleagues, but now it's been developed, rightly so, across all of our ethnically diverse colleagues. We're now thinking about how we branch our approach out to our customers, our clients and communities as well, and really connecting.
Absolutely, it's not just how you deal with these issues in silo, it's everybody that's around you, who you work with, even your suppliers. I guess it's very similar to the intersectionality comments – identifying and understanding a diverse and inclusive society. We have very mature strategies around gender and around our LGBT+ network, Spectrum. We brought that energy to ethnic diversity, which we've been pursuing for the past 12 months. There has been some fantastic work that's already been done there previously. But again, last year, for Barclays it was a real wake-up call that we have to stand tall across our global communities and stand up for something that's right.
Fantastic to hear that progress. So you've been with Barclays for over two decades, spanning multiple roles and geographies. And having been in the Singapore country management role for just over a year already, what have been some of the highlights in your journey for leading D&I at the workplace?
Singapore already, as a country, is a hugely diverse community, with different ages, genders, physical abilities, ethnicities, cultures and religions. As well as the work that we do with the Chamber, there's an opportunity to work within the Singaporean community to raise awareness around how inclusivity and diversity is a critical component for what the country can achieve in the future. I think the key angle around all of that for me is the employees. People want and need to identify with what their employer is doing more so than their contractual obligations, I think they need to identify with the firm’s values, because that's where you get connectivity. People look for the prospect of having an employer that enables you to be who you are, without having to hide anything. And it’s great for business, because it increases productivity and retention. But equally as well, it's good for the employee because they know that they can be themselves without fear or recriminations in their career development and opportunities. That's something that we continue to strive for in our global strategy.
From a Singapore perspective, the highlights for us include the work we do with the Chamber and the committees. I had the privilege, as you know, of sitting on that leadership chair for a couple of years alongside Andrew Ashman (current chair of the Chamber’s D&I committee). Just seeing the development of that committee and how Singapore is developing its D&I approach is fantastic. How it’s thinking around gender, unconscious bias, LGBT+ rights is absolutely fantastic. But still, there’s such a long way to go. I think that's why it's imperative that companies like Barclays, in Singapore, and wherever we are globally, continues to be active in its support for D&I by supporting communities, helping to educate and helping other companies appreciate the importance of having an inclusive environment. That’s something that I'm committed to doing as Country CEO. I'm very keen that we continue the path of having internally a very strong D&I culture, which we have, supporting the networks where possible, but that we also continue to support the communities in which we operate in.
We've also done a lot of work externally, supporting the community but really engendering an environment that is supportive in Singapore, and that’s something we'll continue to do. We were recently voted 6th in the Straits Times Singapore’s Best Employers Award; the only bank in the top 10. That ranking is voted for by employees, former employees and recommendations, so the external marketplace has recognised Barclays as a good employer. And I think it's primarily driven by our culture, that we've developed a very supportive and inclusive framework that makes it a good place for employees to be.
That's fantastic news. Have you found any D&I challenges unique to the Southeast Asia region in terms of rolling out some of the global policies and initiatives that come from HQ?
There are always going to be regional and country-specific complexities, but I don't think there's particularly anything across this region that we've not been able to front up and manage. The key thing for us is to always be aware of th¬e different maturity levels in different markets, so far as they accept D&I agendas. There are certain challenges that exist around attracting, retaining and developing diverse talent that's universal to all markets. But our global D&I strategy is a cornerstone of our values framework. That is enabled whichever market we're in, so I don't think this particular challenge for Barclays is there. For example, we launched a gender neutral non-primary caregiver strategy in 2017, which previously wasn't in place in Asia. The primary caregiver gets a number of weeks, but the non-primary caregiver gets a number of weeks as well which has not been historically the case. That's just a case of removing that bias around who is and isn’t the primary caregiver, and removing the labels.
It’s also about unravelling those wrinkles that we have in global policies, which are there for historical reasons. As we've already alluded to, over time as we educate ourselves and become more aware on that journey, we can look to iron these weaknesses in how we approach our employees. The next level of that, once we've done that work internally, is to ensure that we vocalise that externally, through channels like the Chamber and other various support networks which we have with our communities. When a global brand like ours does something good, identifies an area that needs developing, does something about it, and comes up with a plan that implements that to the benefit of all of its employees, then we should be more vocal around that and push it out into our communities to help others on that education journey.
I find with diversity, companies are willing to share what is working, to get the best practice out there, because it's in everyone's best interest.
But that's an interesting point, isn't it? Because I think definitely over my time in this industry, and working over various locations, that maturity of understanding is different. That's where I think more work needs to be done to get the global framework across countries to a level there where that appreciation of what a good D&I framework looks like is homogenous. We’ve discussed this in the committee in the past – the purpose of a D&I committee should ultimately be to make sure it's no longer needed. It just shows you the journey that we that we're all on, but equally we should always look back, because the journey we've been on is hugely successful. The appreciation and awareness of a diverse and inclusive workforce is now understood, and I'm not sure it was five years ago. The business case conversation has really moved on. I think we're at the stage now, depending on the maturity of the company and diversity within the sector, where people are ready to have those difficult conversations and how you react when one particular trigger, like racism last year, suddenly comes to the forefront. Are you ready? Do you have the resources in place for your staff? Or have you got to move quickly and suddenly roll something out?
I think bias underpins all of this. The D&I agenda is not standing still. So if you think about how historically firms approach this, you would in essence have a network and that vertical would just cover that network. Gender is a prime example of this. But actually, you then start thinking, what about if your employees identify as LGBT+ but also female and Black? That’s when you go into that intersectionality conversation. I think it’s the next level of awareness and appreciation around how we approach talent development, and it will be the next evolution of D&I.
Lastly, could you elaborate on how you work with the broader community in different markets to drive the D&I agenda?
Within Barclays, we have six broad networks, with regional and country representation. Bridge, the multigenerational network; Embrace, the multicultural network; Reach: the disability, mental health and neurodiversity network; Spectrum, the LGBT+ network; Win, the gender network; and the Working Families Network. We build country-specific frameworks, depending on the ask, the awareness and the educational need, and connect globally to make sure we share best practice, and that collaboration happens across the networks. They're really a framework for us in understanding our people and our communities. They raise awareness around some of the challenges that they're having, whether that's across policy changes, education, or just raising profile.
We have a citizenship framework that exists across Asia Pacific, where we look to support various charities and businesses. One of the key components of that is how they approach diversity and inclusion, so we make sure that they're connecting with our brand values, and what we're seeking to do from a D&I perspective. A perfect example of that is a social venture we’re supporting called Agape Connecting People. Their mission is to empower disadvantaged and marginalised people. We've supported them in helping to set up a training and job placement centre in Singapore where they're looking to train and place people from vulnerable communities into entry level jobs.
They particularly focus on empowering the disadvantaged and marginalised, helping them integrate back into society, giving them roles, educating them, training them, giving them jobs and helping to place them out into the Singapore community, which I just think is incredible. I'm genuinely really proud that we've supported them and we'll continue to do so.
Singapore is home for many people that work for Barclays. That identity that Barclays can bring, by not just being business here, but by being a business here that recognises the community, is something we can support. Making a positive impact on the community that houses you is one of the cornerstones whilst I am Country CEO and it's one of the three pillars I've identified that we will continue to drive and develop.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Barclays is a transatlantic consumer and wholesale bank offering products and services across personal, corporate and investment banking, credit cards and wealth management, with a strong presence in our two home markets of the UK and the US. With over 325 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 40 countries and employs approximately 83,500 people. Barclays moves, lends, invests world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank, all of which are supported and protects money for customers and clients worldwide. Find out more at www.barclays.com.
