22 Jul 2013

Barclays Bank of Botswana employees have been urged to live up to the organisation’s values by exhibiting good conduct at all times.

This call was echoed by one of the bank’s board members, Mr Alfred Dube during a staff recognition award ceremony in Francistown on on July 20. The occasion was held to reward the bank’s top performers and those who got promoted for doing well in their work.

Mr Dube noted that Barclays was a bank with a long standing commitment to a set of pillars encapsulated in their five values of company, colleague, customer, citizenship and conduct. These values, he highlighted, were a yardstick against which they wanted to be measured.

In so far as conduct was concerned, Mr Dube explained that this was about the behaviour of leadership as well as the behaviour of every Barclays employee.

“It’s about ethics and responsibility, respect and cooperation. It’s our promise that where you see a Barclays employee, you will see a role model at work, at home and within the community,” he said. He further said the bank had serious challenges in the last two years with conduct thus urged employees to be exemplary.

For many customers, he highlighted that the face of Barclays was the employees at the counter or someone processing their loan application.

“If the face across the counter is an unfriendly face, for the customer that is the face of Barclays,” he said. On the event, he added that it recognised the important role that employees played in the story of the bank.

“We are here to celebrate top achievers and those of our colleagues who were rewarded with promotions, our brightest stars for the past quarter,” he highlighted.

Consequently, he noted that an organisation that failed to acknowledge the contribution of its employees is on the right fast lane to losing both direction and market share.

The board member also explained that research had shown that the number one reason employees left their job was lack of appreciation and 75 per cent of employees identified lack of appreciation as a main concern.

He also asserted that even as they celebrated their achievements they should realise that there were many challenges to be confronted going forward. The global recession, he added, had not abated and its impact on the local economy should be expected to continue.

Barclays bank’s sustainability as a business, he mentioned, would require the development of innovative products and strategies and said their implementation depended squarely on the employees.

The bank’s interim managing director, Mr Aupa Monyatsi said that the success of the bank over the last 60 years had not been by mistake. For the bank to create a high performance culture he highlighted, it had to recognise its human resource.

He mentioned that the bank had not lost its place as a leader in the banking industry and said that its corporate culture and sustainability would see it through any challenge. He added that as bankers, employees sold trust and integrity.

“We need to honour punctuality, especially for appointments with our clients,” he advised.

 He also said employees were recognised because they had made a difference and excelled in their respective roles. ENDS