Introduction

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) is one of the world's largest financial services companies, providing a range of retail and corporate banking, financial markets, consumer finance, insurance, and wealth management services. RBS Group operates in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific serving more than 36 million customers across the world and employing more than 140,000 people.

Roles and opportunities at RBS

RBS is seen as a world-class employer and ensures this by providing world-class employment opportunities, recruiting on merit. As a fast-growing company, RBS needs to attract a constant supply of talented people. It offers programmes for students to start their careers either from school or college, or upon graduation from university. There are career options in banking, sales, and customer service, as well as business support roles such as finance, risk assessment and Human Resources.

Motivation

What is it that makes people want to work harder than others? Some key management theories are:

• Taylor and 'scientific management'. Taylor thought that every job could be measured by the amount of work done and is often linked to the number of 'pieces' made, or 'piece rate'. His theory was that workers would work harder because they would earn more.

• Herzberg and the 'two factors'. Herzberg said that certain motivating factors, called 'hygiene' factors, needed to be in place first. Examples of these are a clean workplace and good basic pay. Once these were in place, other factors could be brought in to motivate workers. RBS uses a number of these motivating factors, such as recognition for work done well, opportunities for promotion, and additional rewards, as part of its performance management.

• Maslow and the 'hierarchy of needs'. Maslow showed that people have to have their basic needs, such as feeling safe and secure, met first before they could move on to higher levels of emotional fulfilment. RBS knows that meeting the higher needs is a vital part of motivating and engaging its people, and has put in place a number of measures to meet these needs.

Total Reward

As part of its strategy to motivate its employees, RBS has designed a special benefits package called 'Total Reward'. At the core of the package is good basic pay. Total Reward also offers flexible benefits in many areas including health, pensions and childcare. All roles at RBS have performance targets. Employees can earn a bonus for reaching their targets. On top of this there is a generous profit-sharing scheme which pays all employees a bonus of 10%. RBS also gives direct support to the community projects and charities that matter to its people, for example, youth charities and the NSPCC. It does this by trebling any money they raise.

Work-Life Balance

RBS knows that it is important to have a good work-life balance (the trade off between time spent at work and time spent outside of work). RBS employees have the opportunity to work more flexibly - for example, working part-time, or from home. The RBS 'Your Time' programme also helps by recognizing that employees may need time off for reasons other than sickness, for example, taking a career break to go travelling or to spend more time with family.

Conclusion

RBS operates an exciting and forward thinking Human Resources strategy. It provides a world-class employment package for every employee, at every level, wherever they work. In RBS, motivation theory comes to life.