IN PART ONE WE DISCUSSED how building and sustaining a Treasury Culture is a part of building Treasury Leadership (see Figure 31.1).
In this chapter, we examine how to integrate Treasury Culture into the company’s human resources (HR) cycle and some parameters for the critical aspects of development and evaluation (Figure 31.2).
The Treasury Culture can be a key criterion when looking for potential Treasury recruits. Young raw talent with the right approach need to be screened for essential Treasury Culture qualities, while experienced personnel need to be evaluated in addition for basic and technical skills of Treasury Culture, apart from job skills.
Training and development is a crucial element in the HR cycle. Companies often focus their training and development dollars on specific job requirements. Simulation-based training (see note) has become an increasingly popular method to impart and test job-related knowledge.
In addition, managerial time and effort should be invested in mentoring and planning job rotations, and training budgets should focus on general and technical skill-based training apart from simulation-based job skill-related trainings.
Source: Created by David A. Kolb
Empowerment and progression is the next stage in the process, and this is worked on by the Treasurer and chief financial officer along with the HR function in line with the organisation’s processes and practices. Also, the Treasurer needs to start involving the next level of management in the parallel support and consultative work that is part of the treasurer’s responsibility (see the next note), as an enabler of empowerment.
The area of evaluation of employee performance and their absorbing and practicing of Treasury Culture is perhaps the most challenging part of putting in place a Treasury Culture, especially when some of the aspects of culture are not tangible or measurable by conventional methods or key performance indicators (KPIs). Specific job-related aspects, such as control mind set; process orientation; regulatory, accounting, and technological skills; business skills; and job-specific performance are measurable by KPIs (see Figure 31.8).
Some of the measurement tools that can be used apart from the performance metrics are assessment centres, surveys, and supervisor reviews.
Assessment centres are used for the qualities that cannot be measured by conventional KPIs. An assessment centre is typically a programme that makes the assessee participate in a number of tests across a period of time and finally arrives at a consolidated and consistent score across the aspects that are being evaluated. Many of the situations are subjective and decision based, and good assessment centres try to objectivise the performance on some of these situations and generate scores and assessments after removing potential bias and measurement error (since the assessment is over a period and range of tests instead of a single questionnaire). The author’s preference is to use assessment centres rather than single questionnaires or surveys.
Internal customers, such as business and country operations, are the direct end users of Treasury activities and services. Hence, treasury’s output and approach from an internal client’s perspective is best observed through surveying the direct beneficiaries of Treasury performance. For some of the softer aspects, such as cultural awareness for global teams, 360-degree reviews are useful if implemented well.
Since supervisors have direct responsibility for employee development and performance, it is imperative for some of these aspects of Treasury Culture to be factored in to supervisors’ assessments of their subordinates.
The role of the Treasurer as people manager is generally underrated. Unlike all true team leaders, the treasurer’s role becomes even more complicated with the need to build a very diverse yet deep set of skills and to ensure that the team remains motivated—the degree of interface and the pace of work at Treasury has seen some churn in organisations. With Treasury roles, continuity is a core asset. That is where a strong Treasury Culture, which necessitates reinvention while playing in a larger organisational team, plays a key role in the development of the Treasury organisation.