Human Capital
MIL considers its human capital to be a valuable asset. From the outset, MIL has invested in its people and considers this dimension a key strategic matter.
Alongside direct employees, MIL also utilises the services of employees in its sister company Mediolanum International Funds Limited on a shared services basis.
Many such persons are involved in the delivery of new products given their level of skill and experience in this sector of financial services.
The intrinsic value of the human capital of the company can be classified into two different elements:
- The high level of competences and skills of the employees
- The communication process and the team work among the employees
In order to stay ahead and to maintain competitiveness, the Human Resources department has developed a strategy fully synchronized with the business strategy.
Talent Management
The company believes that in the current market scenario it is becoming more and more critical to have the capability to maintain and to develop key talent within the organisation. The Human Resource department is constantly looking at how we can develop our talent management activities.
We put a lot of emphasis and focus on developing talented people within the organisation that are able to fit our culture and reach our targets. In the market environment we work using a two-fold approach.
We hire people with the potential to grow and we aim to develop them from both a technical and management skills perspective, or, we hire people that already have a strong technical background, which can be developed from a managerial point of view in order to fit the company philosophy.
The Approach
In order to develop a solid talent management capability, the company has adopted the following approach.
Our staff recruitment and selection process ensures that those joiningMIL reflect our culture and have the necessary skills to contribute to MIL’s success, in addition to performing their own specific job to a high level of competence within the organisation. A key factor in the recruitment process is that particular attention is paid to the innovative side of our employees. We aim to develop innovation as a general predisposition. We assess the behaviour of people towards creativity and resilience.
We have created an environment in which we stimulate the creativity and risk taking propensities of everyone within the company. This approach allows the organisation to build up a fertile background in which people can be pro-active in generating new ideas that can ultimately lead to competitive advantage.
Coaching, Mentoring and Training
MIL pays strong attention to its employees in terms of investing in Coaching and Mentoring. We consider coaching and mentoring two distinctive phases of the development of an employee.
Coaching tends to be task oriented, it is usually performance driven and it covers a short term strategy. While mentoring is mainly relationship oriented, it is development driven and it requires a long term strategy. Our senior managers are deeply involved with their own staff in order to develop such skills.
In particular for training, we consider three different areas:
- Technical training
- Managerial training
- Communications
In the first case, we operate a program of support for employees pursuing relevant professional qualifications through study and examinations e.g. Accountancy (ACCA) and Investment (CFA) qualifications.
In the second case, we create and support various initiatives such as those on innovation, leadership and team building using both well established proprietary methodologies and some novel tools. These can be in-company or public participation depending on the goal in each case
MIL utilizes the latest technologies to maintain day to day contact with various parties with whom it interacts frequently. This provides its employees with efficient and secure platforms to conduct business across markets. MIL also invests time in regular team briefing sessions i.e. MIL Uncovered sessions which are run on a regular basis and enable employees to share their knowledge horizontally across functions so as to improve the understanding of the processes and procedures at all levels within the company. MIL also encourages collaboration among the different people in the organization.
It is important to create an environment in which people are encouraged to collaborate and they receive a reward based on the feedback provided by their colleagues. For this purpose, MIL has created a mechanism of reward - MedCredit - for the employees that contribute to creating a collaborative environment.
The MIL Human Resources department also collaborates with other institutions. For example, MIL has joined forces with other leading financial service companies in Ireland to promote the new Diploma in Financial Services Innovation at University College Dublin which commenced in January 2013. The course work for this initiative addresses the barriers to creativity and innovation including identifying which barriers threaten new ideas, and how to plan to reduce project risks. Participants will learn how technology is just a part of innovation and it needs to be applied appropriately and in the context of our business. They will learn techniques for balancing human, business and technical needs, on how to put multi-disciplinary teams in place with the right mix of people, and how to use creativity techniques, systems and structures.
