Standard Chartered Bank Recognised for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at CIPS Awards

Standard Chartered Bank has clinched the Outstanding Diversity & Inclusion Practices in Procurement Teams and Best Initiative to Build a Diverse Supplier Base at the CIPS 2023 Awards, a strong testament to its commitment to ensuring diversity in its business and talent development practices.

Striving to help people and businesses prosper across Asia, Africa and the Middle East and actively aiming to lift participation through three strands – clients, employees and suppliers are the ethos of Standard Chartered Bank, and these awards further recognise the progress they are making on this front.

1. Outstanding Diversity & Inclusion Practices in Procurement Teams

The goal of Standard Chartered’s Supply Chain Management (SCM) team in Asia is to improve profitability and collaboration with stakeholders for innovation solutions. Standard Chartered Bank’s goal is to at the same time, contribute to local communities and become a leader in supplier diversity. A diverse team of suppliers, brings a variety of perspective, experiences, and ideas together, driving creativity and innovative solutions.

The Problem

Any transformation plan requires a leap from tactical to strategic and stakeholder focused, but it’s not without its challenges.

In a competitive and changing job market, hiring the right people became more challenging, especially following the impacts of Covid-19. There was also a longer turnaround time as there was limited access to diverse and inclusive suppliers, with Covid-19 restrictions impacting the ability to work face-to-face. Cost savings were also reduced as sourcing initiatives had to be done via tactical processes, where immediate needs and short-term objectives are not the most cost-effective. It took an average of over 150 days to onboard a third party and the cost savings in 2021 only reached two-thirds of the bank’s target.

The Approach

The supply chain management team implemented a range of practices that promotes their values, including but not limited to:

• Flexible working arrangements such as remote work and flexible hours to support a range of workstyles and needs. This includes relocation possibilities.
• Employee Support networks such as “SCWIN, Standard Chartered Women International Network”, LGBTQ+ employees, and employees with disabilities.
• The Supplier Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) program ensures that its suppliers reflect the diversity of the communities, such as women-owned, minority-owned, and more.

The Challenge

There were employees who were resistant to change. Programs and tools were provided, allowing opportunities for diverse groups of staff to work together and learn from each other to meet the current and future needs.

This includes a 4-month coaching programme for female senior managers, aimed at growing female leadership personally and professionally, and a 12-month programme where staffs and managerial mentors were paired, working with participants with diverse background, accelerating their professional career journey.

The Results

Through their efforts, the following were achieved.

• 70% of SCM country head leadership roles in the Asia region markets are held by females.
• 77% of the SCM teams across the 12 markets have flexible working arrangements, working at least 2 days from home.
• Diversity and inclusivity led to creativity and innovation, resulting in cost savings improvements of 30% in Asia.
  

With their commitment to promoting equality, diversity, inclusion, and creating an inclusive and flexible work culture, Standard Chartered Bank clinched the “Diversity & Inclusion Champion of the Year” at The British Chamber of Commerce Singapore’s 23rd Annual Business Awards and “Best Employers for Diversity” by Forbes in 2021.

The Learnings

A diverse and inclusive procurement team brings plenty of benefits to the organisation, including improved innovation, risk management, reputation, and employee engagement. It needs to be prioritised organisation-wide for it to be more successful, while hoping to help create a more just and equitable society.

Clear policies and standards need to be established at the start to minimise bias and avoid discrimination, minimising negative impacts on team morale, productivity, and performance. A motivated team will be more committed to their roles, increasing their engagement and fostering a sense of camaraderie among employees, resulting in an increase in productivity and performance, making the business more efficient and competitive. However, changing would require time and continuous effort. Communication with stakeholders is vital for such situations to be transparent, and structured regular training and awareness communication is also needed.

2. Best Initiative to Build a Diverse Supplier Base

With a purpose for being “Here for Good”, Standard Chartered Bank aims to connect emerging markets with established economies by leveraging on their unique footprint to drive positive economic and community impacts. In 2022, they recognized the need to accelerate and increase the number of diverse suppliers. To ensure this, they extended support to existing and potential diverse suppliers, particularly women businesses.

The Challenge

To become a leader in D&I supplier by 2025, Standard Chartered Bank accelerated support to diverse supplier to enable them to better meet corporate business requirements in a global marketplace. A specific aim was to unleash the potential of women entrepreneurs as 83% of women owned SMEs were located across Asia and AME, indicating that there were significant social/economic impact opportunities for the bank to integrate women-owned businesses into their supply chain.

Standard Chartered Bank also realized that they needed to leverage supplier D&I with their large corporate suppliers. With Asia being the largest region (with 60%+ of all global suppliers and 70% + of total global spend), it was important that the regions senior managers and stakeholders drove initiatives to ensure successful onboarding and partnering with more D&I suppliers.

The Approach

Their strategy was to work and spend only with diverse-owned suppliers and larger suppliers who are committed to D&I suppliers (40% of newly onboarded suppliers to be diverse and 15% of all global spend to be with diverse suppliers by 2025), with concentrated support to develop the capabilities of women SMEs.

In 2022, Standard Chartered Bank extended partnerships with NGOs to embrace their driving supplier D&I best practices, providing support to them. During International Women’s Day 2022, senior leaders hosted a supplier D&I forum that involved 500 participants. In September 2022, they sponsored WEConnect International to deliver their Asia Conference, and their supplier D&I lead promoted the importance of gender related inclusive sourcing.

The Challenge

The biggest challenge was the manual tracking and reporting of D&I suppliers on a global scale. Generating the report was time-consuming and prone to errors, and as user demands increased, it become more challenging to meet deadlines. Reports were being produced centrally, and this limited local user understanding of current status and progress, further impacting the planning of future actions. In other parts of the world, there are certifications of diversity for suppliers, but in Asia, identification, verification and tracking of diverse suppliers had to be done manually.

Standard Chartered Bank invested significant resources to develop a bespoke D&I reporting tool, automating data calculations and report production with increased speed and accuracy, and it was easier to meet compliance, audit, and governance requirements. Dashboard views were made available for independent user access.

The Results

The aim was to increase numbers and spend with D&I suppliers with a focus on women-owned businesses. The results include:

• Globally, 2200+ internal stakeholders were trained in D&I supplier and in 2022, 38% of all requester/stakeholder led purchasing (RLP) were awarded to diverse suppliers.
• Their ‘Education-for-Entrepreneurs’ programme reached more than 105,000 micro and small businesses (where 64% were women owned), exceeding their 2023 target of 50,000.
• In Asia, 38% of newly onboarded suppliers were diverse compared to 22% in 2021, a 73% increase. Newly onboarded women suppliers increased by 22%.

In 2022, Standard Chartered Bank won the World Development Indicators Overall award due to their inclusive sourcing work. They were also highly commended in the 2022 CIPS Asia and British S&I supplier awards.

Our Learnings

Company-wide collaboration was critical in delivering the solutions to ensure there’s an ongoing success of their D&I supplier programme to reach and develop diverse SMEs and supplier. Teamwork across their Group D&I, Finance, Product, and Communication departments were also crucial in aligning the needed support.

Feedback and opinions from forums, conferences and webinars that involved their diverse suppliers, clients, and employees were crucial to enhancing D&I supplier initiatives. In 2023, their D&I supplier programme will continue to be a key part of tackling inequality and promoting greater economic inclusions in their markets.

Congratulations to Standard Chartered for winning Outstanding Diversity & Inclusion Practices in Procurement Teams and Best Initiative to Build a Diverse Supplier Base at CIPS 2023 Awards!