Bosses should help their staff be employable for life, says StanChart talent chief

SINGAPORE – One of the trickiest decisions to make as a boss is deciding whether to let your best employees go and pursue greener pastures elsewhere or fight to retain them. 

Talent hoarding versus talent sharing is in fact something company leaders often spend a lot of time thinking about, said Ms Tanuj Kapilashrami, chief strategy and talent officer at Standard Chartered.

“How do you move away from hoarding your talent to sharing your talent? How do you become the leader who is a talent magnet? How are you attracting the best talent?” said the London-based executive.

To encourage talent sharing, the bank has introduced a “leadership dashboard” that can be used to measure metrics like inclusion scores and attrition rates.

“One of the things we measure is: What is the percentage of people who work for you who are moving on to other roles or expanding? That’s part of you being a good leader in our business. So that’s cultural. But that’s also infrastructural,” she said in a recent exclusive interview with The Straits Times in Singapore.

One infrastructural change was launching the bank’s talent marketplace in 2019, an internal portal where managers can post gigs and employees can sign up for them.

Ms Tanuj said: “It’s to move away from the idea of having your line manager controlling your destiny. We’ve created that system to democratise access to opportunity. People want flexibility in not just where they work, but also how they work and why they work.”

This pivot from jobs to skills that pushes people to “rethink everything we know about work” is a premise of her book The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey To The Next-Generation Enterprise, which she co-wrote with author Ravin Jesuthasan in 2024.

In the book, the writers noted that employees who seek variety in their work invest their energies in it, and the internal gig construct will allow them to lean towards the work they feel most passionately about.

“Singapore is leading in the world in terms of the way they are thinking about the skills that are needed for the future. I think in many ways, as a country and an economy, Singapore is very evolved,” she added.

Singapore as a critical hub

Ms Tanuj noted that a key corporate strategy for 2026 and the next few years is investing more in client-focused and front-office roles.

“Singapore is very well positioned for that,” she said, adding that the areas of focus in hiring include wealth relationship managers, wealth advisers, and corporate banking and institutional relationship managers, among others.

StanChart’s office premises include those at Marina Bay Financial Centre and 6 Battery Road, where its wealth and retail banking as well as corporate and investment banking teams are based. Its human resources, operations and technology teams are based in Changi Business Park 1 and 2.

Singapore is the second-largest market for the group. “It’s at the heart of not just trade and commerce, but the way wealth is flowing as well. Singapore will continue to be a very critical hub for us, and this is an area where we are going to continue to invest and grow.”

More than a job 

In hiring, one of the company’s approaches in attracting talent is in “generating people’s employability more than generating employment”.

“We want to work with our colleagues to make them employable for life, not just give them a job,” Ms Tanuj said, noting that more employees today are thinking “far more holistically” about their jobs than in traditional terms.

This means working for companies that are not only investing in their career development and growth, but also providing them with the tools to rescale and giving them a job that is purposeful and impactful. “They want to work for a company that is socially aware,” she added. 

Additionally, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at work has pushed people at different stages of their career to make sense of what it means for themselves.

Ms Tanuj said: “We used to talk about the future of work for many years. We are in the future of work. We want to deploy AI in areas that are linked to our strategy to deliver greater experiences for our clients and colleagues. So this is not AI for the sake of AI.”

She is also proud of the high number of returning alumni at the bank. As at October 2025, nearly 20 per cent of all hires made in Singapore are rehires. The bank’s approach to flexible working has contributed to the overall attractiveness of the brand as well, she noted. 

The approach is “freedom within a framework”, she said, where “very loose” guidance is given to employees without being prescriptive, such as a fixed number of office days. 

Working globally

Ms Tanuj, who began her career in India before moving to Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and now the UK, believes that staying curious has gone a long way towards helping her adapt to different cultures and be a better leader.

While cultures are different, some human principles like making people feel included in decision-making, respecting others and good listening skills remain universally important, she noted.

“Curiosity is a very underrated leadership skill. When you get very senior, people are a little bit reticent in giving their views because they think you have all the answers,” she said. “I’ve got multicultural teams, and when you approach a conversation or interaction with a level of genuine curiosity and sometimes showing vulnerability, I think people really open up and lean in.”

Ms Tanuj may be familiar with travelling and working with teams in multiple markets, but she also recognises that packing up to move to another place for a few years may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Many Singaporeans are

seemingly more resistant about uprooting their lives for a work stint

– a trait which she thinks is not exclusive to Singapore.

For one thing, people are re-evaluating options, she said, with changing expectations on what they want from work and life after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another reason is more restrictive rules on international travel. “There are nationalistic pressures everywhere. The visa regime and immigration rules are getting stringent, and for many people, they don’t want to risk the certainty of being in the context that they are in because of the uncertainty in the world.”

Still, international mobility remains a big part of the bank’s talent attraction features. This allows the company to think about mobility in various ways, like short-term assignments and projects, and getting cross-functional teams together in different locations to solve pieces of work.

“We are a firm believer that to understand the diversity of our customer base and the diversity of our workforce, there is no better experience than being part of a cross-functional team,” said Ms Tanuj.

Some employees also worry about whether they would have their jobs back if they take up a stint overseas.

“The trend is changing. Companies need to work harder if they move talent around to ensure that they’re thinking about their return, and they are thinking about their career progression holistically.”