Barclaycard was established in 1966, as a part of Barclays Bank PLC, and has become one of the largest global credit card businesses.  It has 15 million customers world-wide.  Barclaycard International is Barclaycard's non-UK credit card and consumer lending business.  It first became profitable in 2003 (with profits of £4m), and its goal is to be the same size (financially) as the UK cards business by 2013.
 

This aggressive growth strategy has required the International cards business to rapidly strengthen its presence outside of Europe, through acquisitions and joint ventures: The acquisition of the US credit card issuer, Juniper Financial Corporation, was completed in December 2004; 'Entercard' was launched in Scandanavia in July 2005, following a joint venture with FSB; and with Barclays Bank's acquisition of Absa in July 2005, Barclaycard International now has a significant foothold in South Africa.  In the last 12 months, the PBT of the business has increased from £4m in 2003 to £8m in 2004. However, if Barclaycard International is to achieve its ambition, many more such inorganic or organic growth opportunities will need to be realised.

 

Barclaycard International is currently a 'young' business but growing rapidly.  It employs 2500 colleagues across its portfolio of businesses, of which only 200 are based in the UK.  The rapid growth of the business in the last 18 months has resulted in an entrepreneurial, 'start-up' culture - which is unusual to find within a multinational corporation, but one it is keen to retain.  As the business grows, the need to stabilise the operation, while retaining the dynamism of before becomes more of a requirement.

 

 

The HR team in Barclaycard International comprises of 25 HR professionals located across Europe, USA and Africa. The team has a pivotal role to play in the globalisation of this business. In addition to driving the business agendas in each country, it is enjoying the challenge of transforming the local HR policies and practices into globally applicable interventions.  Two such examples include:

 

1. the need to clarify accountabilities and decision making responsibilities within a global organisation design (OD); and

 

2. the requirement to develop people management frameworks that bring sufficient stability, governance and control to the business, that avoid undue bureaucracy and still enable rapid future expansion. 

 

 

It became apparent in mid 2005 that the organisation design for Barclaycard International was too Europe-centric - a factor which would neither aide global expansion nor support the non-European businesses which had recently joined Barclaycard International.  As a result, work was undertaken to create an OD which could support the strategy of rapid growth, while providing sufficient flexibility and control.  The intention was to retain portfolio businesses, which operated different management and business models, while that ensuring central governance and control requirements were met. The final outcome is a regional model, supported by a small corporate centre.  As with any decentralised/regional approach, certain decisions must be made by the corporate centre (in this case the Board of Barclaycard International) and a key output of this work has been the articulation of these decisions.  These decisions have been tested to work in each portfolio business within Barclaycard International and they will now form the basis of discussions with future inorganic growth partners across the world.

 

 

At present, a wide range of people policies and processes exist within Barclays Group, most of which can be applied effectively in a UK operation.  These provide guidance on people matters to leaders in non-UK countries, but need to be adapted to suit local legal, cultural and social requirements.  As a result of the idiosyncrasies of every country, a 'one size fits all' approach to people policies and processes can never work. In order to support global expansion in Barclaycard International, the HR team needs to devise frameworks which can be applied in the countries in which Barclaycard International already has a presence, and also the countries into which it may enter.  The latter is no mean feat - in essence, the people management frameworks will need to be sufficiently flexible and provide sufficient clarity around governance to work in almost any country in the world. 
 

The first such attempt in Barclaycard International has been to devise an international mobility framework.  Rapid global expansion requires the business to be able to deploy skills and experience in a multitude of countries at short notice.  This cannot always be achieved through local recruitment, so expatriation of current employees is often the best solution.  However, employee mobility is often an issue, as is the increasing cost and complexity of having a large percentage of employees on expatriate compensation packages.  The recently devised framework seeks to employ some new recruits on to global contracts.  These individuals would be internationally mobile and could be moved as the business required.  Standard terms of expatriation have also been devised as a core component of this framework and will soon be tested within Barclaycard International.

 

Fortunately, the HR team in Barclaycard International does not need to devise every global framework by itself.  There are a number of Group-wide global standards to which Barclaycard International must adhere.  One such example is the new global pre-employment screening policy.  With the increasing need for control monitoring processes to be well established (Sarbanes Oxley), Barclaycard International needs to manage its business risk by conducting rigorous levels of due diligence on potential employees.  Certain requirements of the new Group-framework cannot be met due to legal constraints and others are difficult to meet due to local cultural and social constraints which cannot be ignored. A significant challenge for the HR function is to find a means of adapting the policy requirements to ensure compliance, while accommodating the idiosyncrasies of each country by the end of 2005.

 

 

Barclaycard International has a challenging and rapid growth strategy.  If it is to be as successful as its stated ambition, the need for a truly global approach to doing business will become ever more apparent.  In support of this, the HR function has an exciting, interesting and challenging agenda to deliver in the next few years.