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  |   India

Supporting L&D upgrades for Arohan Financial Services Ltd.

Arohan Financial Services Limited is a leading non-bank microfinance institution (NBFC-MFI) with operations in India’s economically under-penetrated, low-income states. It provides income-generating loans and other financial inclusion-related products to customers with limited or no access to financial services.

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Industry

 Microfinance

Use Case

360 degree feedback

What the client achieved

Remarkable awareness of leadership styles in the organization

Structured developmental discussions and interventions


We received exceptional support from Mercer | Mettl’s team. If we talk about the pricing, even that was quite competitive, especially during the COVID-19 disruption. And the way we rolled out the feedback process, most employees have really liked it. They are elated to receive feedback from all their points of interaction. They’ve found it particularly insightful to cumulatively see their strengths, development areas and perception gaps.

Anirban Majumdar

Head- L&D, Arohan Financial Services Ltd.

Business Challenges

Arohan treats its employees as critical business stakeholders. Hence, its processes and systems are designed to ensure employee satisfaction, development and high morale. The institution encourages constant employee learning and innovation to maintain a creative and inclusive work culture.

 

Therefore, the company’s main objective was to introduce a holistic feedback process that strengthened its employee development initiatives. The idea was to promote a culture of feedback. An unbiased and insightful method like 360-degree feedback could ensure the same, offering a voice to all employees. Thus, it sought an intuitive 360-degree feedback tool capable of generating insightful reports, making it easy for employees to give feedback and interpret the results.

 

The primary objective was comprised of 5 key requirements:

A robust developmental tool

Arohan Financial Services Ltd. wanted its senior management team to better understand its strengths and development needs. So, it approached 360-degree feedback as an essential L&D intervention to lay the groundwork for further developmental initiatives.

Identification of behavioral patterns

Another key challenge was to identify employee behaviors that directly or indirectly affected L&D initiatives. So, the institution wanted a tool that helped analyze its professionals on key behavioral competencies. The objective was also to reveal the blind spots in its L&D approach.

Actionable analytics

The institution was exceedingly particular about the type of reporting metrics it wanted in a 360-degree feedback tool. Crisp and actionable insights were the prime focus throughout Arohan’s search for a feedback platform. Since it wanted to use the entire process as a developmental system, such analytics were crucial for the next stage of learning and development, i.e., streamlined individual development plans.

Foundation for skilling/upskilling discussions

The institution wanted a tool that helped convince the senior managers to accept and be a part of evidence-based skilling and upskilling decisions, which mandated concrete insights into the professionals’ strengths, areas of improvement, average organizational scores, expectations, etc. The key to overcoming this challenge was to ensure that the senior management was open to receiving feedback from multiple sources.

A highly reliable precursor to ACDC and HiPo identification

The MFI wanted senior managers to participate in 360-degree feedback as a precursor to the next set of employee development initiatives. The latter includes Assessment Center Development Center exercises and high-potential identification for the top performers. Thus, weighing the existing strengths and development needs against the new set of leadership competencies was critical to ensuring the success of future activities.

Solution

Mercer | Mettl’s 360View is a fully customizable 360-degree feedback software. Developed and constantly updated by a team of experts, the software ensures seamless experiences for feedback-givers and recipients, analysts, decision-makers and other stakeholders.

 

Highlights of 360View that fulfilled the client’s requirements are listed below:

 

Provision for multiple feedback-givers

 

Accommodating multiple feedback providers is one of the fundamental advantages of Mercer | Mettl’s 360-degree feedback tool. Mercer | Mettl’s team enabled three categories of feedback-givers for every feedback recipient to match the client’s requirements.

 

These categories were:

  • Supervisors
  • Team members
  • Stakeholders

Custom blueprints

 

Mercer | Mettl’s psychometricians had detailed conversations with Arohan’s L&D team to understand its specific requirements. The experts then helped with the competency mapping process to design conclusive blueprints that included feedback statements, which were in line with the client’s existing framework.

 

The competency framework essentially reflects a list of behaviors that are valued, recognized and rewarded as part of a 360-feedback process. Arohan wanted Mercer | Mettl to map the following key competencies with 360View:

  • The ability to act like an owner
  • Impactful communication skills
  • Results delivery
  • Potential to lead
  • Problem-solving faculties
  • A propensity to work as a partner

The final blueprints included elaborately structured rating statements mapped to the above competencies and additional behavioral indicators. It encouraged feedback-givers to rate the feedback recipients on the same parameters.

 

Behavioral indicators at the workplace

  • Takes ownership
  • Ensures commitments are met on time
  • Does not blame
  • Provides mentoring and opportunities to improve
  • Motivates the team
  • Formulates a vision
  • Sets a strategy
  • Engages people toward common goals

High-quality reports

 

Mercer | Mettl’s 360View thoroughly fulfilled the client’s priority for high-quality, insightful and analytical feedback reports for every feedback recipient.

The reports revealed:

  • Known and hidden strengths, blind spots and areas of improvement based on the ratings.
  • Detailed, open-ended feedback highlighting various perceptions about the feedback recipient.
  • Recommendations for learning activities that the individual can undertake.

Individual Development Plans

 

Insights from Mercer | Mettl’s 360View were instrumental in formulating highly precise Individual Development Plans for the senior management team. Backed by cumulative data from the feedback exercise, these IDPs had specific, actionable inputs tailor-made to boost the learning and growth of every feedback recipient. The IDPs were sub-divided into sections like:

  • Development tips
  • Suggested activities
  • Suggested readings

Support and ease of use

 

Mercer | Mettl’s team seamlessly set up the feedback process. The team was constantly available to help participants and administrators understand the platform and overcome any challenges at any stage. Moreover, the user-friendly interface added to the appeal of the platform. Since it was a new process for most feedback recipients, this support and ease of use were crucial to making it less daunting and more acceptable.

The Impact

Arohan Financial Services Ltd. has set a commendable example of maximizing the benefit of a 360-degree feedback process. It used the tool to serve as a cornerstone for sustainable employee development. Additionally, it utilized the available data and insights to initiate career conversations in the workforce.

The following pointers sum up the impact of this collaboration:

  • The L&D team observed a widespread acceptance of and faith in the 360-degree feedback process despite conducting it for the first time.
  • Members of the institution’s senior management team gained a remarkable awareness of their leadership styles and flaws. Moreover, it prompted them to actively participate in further interventions such as the 9-Box Model mapping and readiness for ACDC activities.
  • The process revealed key blind spots and hidden strengths at an organizational level. Such insights were essential for making informed business and L&D decisions. For example, identifying certain patterns in L&D exercises vis-à-vis their results revealed that the company has been progressive in its people processes. It was one of the encouraging revelations that enabled the institution to continue with its efforts. Similarly, familiarity with crucial blind spots helped direct the L&D team’s attention toward making focused improvements.
  • A series of developmental discussions and interventions have been set in motion after analyzing the feedback reports and statistics.
  • The institution has been able to build a roadmap for embedding key leadership behaviors to support business strategy.
  • The process helped initiate engaging career development conversations to develop colleagues at all levels.

In conclusion, the 360-degree feedback process has provided Arohan with actionable talent data to create an array of development programs targeting opportunities. Also, helping senior managers understand their unique strengths and development areas has set the right tone to expand the possibility of a pan-organizational feedback program.

 

Way forward

 

Right now, we are undertaking a 9-Box mapping of the entire organization. And over some time, we will call the people who fit in the top 3 boxes for an assessment development center. At that point of time, depending on the number of participants, we would want Mercer | Mettl to conduct the ACDC for us.

– Anirban Majumdar
Head- L&D
Arohan Financial Services Ltd.

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Mercer | Mettl’s 360 View helped Arohan Financial Services Ltd. add to their employee well-being.

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