Royal Bank of Scotland

Protecting knowledge at risk of being lost through restructuring, redundancy and offshoring.

The Challenge

RBS was striving to become a more efficient organisation, reducing costs across all areas including within its technology business.

The technology function was also heavily reliant on a couple of specific geographic locations within the UK and it wanted to spread that risk by utilising its India operations. As part of this process, RBS was looking to transition approximately 1000 roles from the UK to its operations in Bangalore and Chennai.

From earlier experience, RBS knew that a great deal of knowledge could be lost when employees left the bank, and they needed a way to prevent this experiential knowledge from leaving the business. As many of the individuals within the UK operation were being made redundant, there was a need to handle the process carefully and with sensitivity.

The Solution

RBS engaged Amsphere – a third party knowledge transition specialist – to help with the knowledge transition.

Consultants from Amsphere met with the RBS Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), assessed the knowledge transition situation and defined a suitable knowledge transition methodology.

They then worked with the RBS team to implement the programme, applying Amsphere’s Kaams® methodology to complete the planning, preparation and execution of the knowledge transfer process. The programme included workshops, Q&A and interview based solutions to capture the knowledge, which had been built up over many years, from these experienced SMEs.

The final deliverables, including multimedia (audio and video) artefacts and other documentation, were delivered to RBS on the Amsphere’s Kaams® portal.

The Result

Due to the experience gained on previous projects within RBS, Amsphere was able to hit the ground running and start work immediately without any additional orientation time.

Amsphere not only understood the challenge faced by the bank, but also understood the sensitivity of the individuals who were being made redundant.

Amsphere quickly gained the trust of the employees, which encouraged them to open up and share their experiential knowledge to ensure a smooth transition over to the Indian operations.

At the end of the programme, RBS had a full suite of videos, audio files and process map documentation that captured the key knowledge from these experienced individuals ready for use by their offshore colleagues. Through the Kaams® portal, the knowledge was intelligently linked, accessible to all and ready to be used for the benefit of future RBS change programmes.