Career Advice
Capital One’s UK HR Director: Our Real Strength Is Offering Strong and Diverse Career Progression
Glassdoor Team
Glassdoor Team | Author & Career Expert at Glassdoor | 6 Dec 2017
If being the #11 Best Place To Work in the UK and having a great workplace culture wasn't enough, Capital One offers perks such as a 150m running track on the roof of their London office (yes that’s a perk) plus a fully serviced gym at their Nottingham base. And it doesn’t end there, employees can also listen or play songs in one of their designated music rooms when they need to let off some steam.
The credit firm has been driving serious positive change in the finance industry for some time now with their innovative products and clear straight talking consumer advice. To find out more, we spoke to Capital One’s UK HR Director Mike Lynch, to reveal what it’s really like building a top notch company culture and how they've achieved Best Place to Work status in the UK this year.
MDT: How do you help build a great company culture?
ML:Capital One take great pride in having an open, friendly and informal culture which you see in our open plan office environment, casual dress code and flexible approach to working hours.
We’re very ambitious and driven, working in a highly regulated industry during a time of digital transformation and an unprecedented pace of change.
Our teams are always learning new skills, adopting new technology or trialing different ways of working together.
Our team, in HR, sets the framework for our people to be the best they can be – regular surveys and open communication with our business partners is key.
We’re also very open when talking about what’s not going so well and the challenges we face collectively.
What does leadership mean to you?
We invest heavily in developing great leaders through training programmes, both in the UK and over in our US office.
Once a year, we take all people leaders away for a dedicated all-day event focusing on their development.
Our leadership model focuses on how we Inspire, Empower and Include our people.
What do you do to foster employee trust and engagement?
An open, transparent culture is the primary way we foster trust and engagement.
At all times, everyone needs to feel connected to the business and feel like they’re a trusted member of the bigger team.
A range of annual events are held to keep our people connected with the bigger picture, including our Mission Day (an offsite around our mission featuring guest speakers and workshops), Customer Week, Risk Day and our Data Expo, to name a few.
Amy Lenander, our CEO, delivers an all-hands business update each quarter, typically featuring a round-up of the brilliant work our business is delivering and any challenges on the horizon.
Of course, we use our intranet platform, Pulse, which we aim to run like a social media channel; news feeds, thought leadership and followers. We know how important it is to have a range of regular communication channels open to our people.
Your employees love working here as we see the strong rating on Glassdoor - How do you make this a great place to work day in and day out?
It’s a combination of the things listed above – the culture we have here, the way we engage with our staff and the challenging work we deliver.
What is the best part about working here?
Depends on who you ask!
Via surveys, we’ll see answers ranging from, “EVERYTHING!”, to more detailed responses linked to the individual benefits we offer – for example, our mail service, our in-house gym, our restaurant, or our cycle to work scheme.
It is important to be responsive and tailored to different team needs. Our tech teams have 10 per cent of their time to spend on side projects, and our design team have a half day a month to spend on any activity that will inspire them.
What do you look for in informed candidates?
From day one, our business has been about helping people succeed with credit. It’s our wish to hire in-line with this mission.
Informed candidates pick up on this through their research, either on our careers site, or places like Glassdoor.
The financial services industry is changing fast and people’s relationship with money can be emotional, so picking up on the challenges and opportunities in the sector is important.
How do you retain talent - what are some of your best practices?
One of the real strengths of Capital One is offering strong and diverse career progression – our CMO started with us as a graduate.
Good talent and performance management processes help us really keep our high performers feeling valued.
We also promote career transitioning all over our business – some of my team have come from Legal, Brand and Tech. This really is a win-win, as we benefit from their company knowledge and the individual can grow and develop.
The quality and range of courses on offer through Capital One University – who provide all our L&D support – is always very high, and our employee demand is huge.
What are some of the coolest or most unique perks and benefits you offer?
I’m not sure we go in for ‘cool’ as we tend to take a more utilitarian approach to our benefits.
Recently, we’ve seen great uptake of some innovative tech via our partnership with Babylon, who offer online GP consultations.
Our on-site gym, mindfulness and music rooms in Nottingham are always being used, and our London office has a 150m running track on the rooftop (as well as a bar) which I guess is pretty unique!
Glassdoor Team
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