Insurance Services
In 2013, Standard Life was owned and managed by it’s Head Office located in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company had the ambitious project of taking its 600-people technology department to a leadership position in Canada, both in terms of technological advancement and team structure. A Chief Information Officer was appointed and given the mandate. A matrix structure was defined by the internal human resources team but assigning existing and new employees to all the new roles was a gigantic task that the internal recruitment team was not equipped to handle. Standard Life’s HR management hired Talent Strategie to work hand in hand with the CIO at filling all the new roles, which included several Vice-presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents, and Manager roles.
An internal recruitment campaign was first conducted to appoint all qualified existing employees to new roles. The remaining roles were then filled by external candidates. During the 9-month mandate, 30 managerial roles were filled by the consultant assigned to the project.
When Manulife acquired Standard Life in 2014, one of Manulife’s executives told the CIO that a premium of several hundred thousand of dollars was added to the offer to recognise the outstanding quality of Standard Life’s technology operations/team.
Despite Manulife being at advantage to keep their own team members instead of Standard Life’s due to the acquisition, most of the employees who were promoted or hired externally during the project stayed on with Manulife and several have been promoted to higher level jobs since acquisition.