Chris Meyrick
Vice President of HR—Asia Pacific, American Express International Inc.
Topic: Building change capabilities
Over its 164-year-long history, American Express (Amex) has been continually modifying its focus to provide for its customers’ new needs, shifting from freight forwarding to traveller’s cheques and then to its best-known and most recent form—the credit card. Suffice to say, when it comes to change, Amex is something of a trailblazer. Meyrick shared that the firm now finds itself in the midst of its next big shift—becoming a digitally-enabled company.
Meyrick stated, “The new normal we’re operating in is VUCA—Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. We have had to take a look at our traditional competitors—banks—and our non-traditional competitors—such as Paypal—to see how they’re handling it.” In order to stay relevant Amex found it would have to take subtle yet purposeful steps towards becoming more digital—a step that required an update to current HR practices. While the company has, in the past, employed consultants for various change projects, it was keen to standardise its training infrastructure across country and language barriers to avoid inefficiencies.
To bolster its future efforts, Amex has put in place an agile workforce, Meyrick explained, “We’re not aiming to keep up with, but to get ahead of, complex change. Our L&D strategy is a growth mindset.” In order to employ the right people, during the recruitment process candidates face questions relating to their previous experience of adapting to change. He added, “We assess the cultural fit, the most important is mindset, first and foremost.”
As a ‘gamification’ exercise in teamwork and change management, Amex challenged its regional managers to play its very own board game at a global meet up in 2014. Meyrick commented, “We want to promote working together. We want people to be making use of virtual communication and even phone calls, not only emails. We want to maximise the togetherness, there is more than enough separateness. This is innovation in how we think of change management.”
Amex continues to look for more ways to be quicker, nimbler, leaner and more efficient. Its new global playbook and toolkit is functioning as a central resource depository, enabling all corners of the Amex world to understand and benefit from the lessons learnt by others. Meyrick added that it is essential to continually invest in these training support materials, and ensure that they are used consistently across the company.
Meyrick shared his top five change implementation tips:
- Be clear on why—by being more strategic and transparent
- Tell employees what to expect and when.
- Make it personal—gauge awareness and understanding, get their buy-in and encourage communication.
- Bring HR together, to be one HR—if you’re a global or regional firm, make sure you create sharing opportunities.
- Invest in L&D—including training courses and completion medals—think ‘what’s it going to take to thrive?’
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Paul Arkwright
Publisher
