Edelweiss General Insurance adds 6 behavioural aspects while evaluating candidates

Edelweiss General Insurance has introduced six new sets of behaviours that they would want employees to have at the company. This new behavioural framework at Edelweiss will help the organisation to achieve its newly conceived purpose and goals.

Speaking to HRKatha, Melvin Gladstone, CHRO, Edelweiss General Insurance, reveals that recently the company has introduced some new set of behaviours which have been identified by the company for further growth of the organisation.

Gladstone shares that the company had actually gone back to its purpose and vision and reevaluated them and made some changes as per the new business environment.

Major changes have come due to the new offering the company wants to give to its customers.

As per Gladstone, Edelweiss wants to position itself as an insurtech company and some major digital transformation is underway.

“As per the new vision and purpose of Edelweiss, we have identified some new behaviours which will make people succeed at Edelweiss and in turn, the company will taste success,” says Gladstone.

The company has introduced six new behaviours which are mentioned below –

Customer first – Someone who keeps the customer at the core and centre of every decision in the company.

Hustle and make it happen – A person who has the ability to take decisions fast but also has the flexibility to change course if required.

“Behaviours cannot be built or taught, but skills can be taught”

Melvin Gladstone, CHRO, Edelweiss General Insurance

Play as a team, win as a team – Someone who is a team player. A person who knows how to celebrate success as a team and respect each team member for the skills he/she brings on the table. Further, helping team members to learn and grow in the organisation.

Be bold, be creative – A person appreciates innovation and is not afraid to do things differently. Further someone who comes with an ever learning attitude and embraces digitalisation of things. Also people who have the ability to challenge the status quo and look beyond the obvious.

The buck stops here – A person who takes the accountability of work and never says no to any responsibility. Who makes sure that the work gets done and comes with solutions while not only identifying problems.

Do more with less –Someone who realises that we are working with limited resources in the company and approaches every commercial decision as if the money is owned by you and not the company. At the same time the person should not compromise on quality over cost.

With the introduction of these new behaviours of success in the company, the company has seen a change in its performance review system and the evaluation process of candidates.

Edelweiss has decided to make these behaviours a part of a performance review system where all employees will be rated on these behaviours which can impact their annual appraisal.

“Managers will be rating employees on a scale of five against all these behaviours in the company,” says Gladstone. The rating system is quite simple with five being perfect, four reflecting good, three being satisfactory, two meaning ‘needs improvement’ and one being not satisfactory at all.

The company has also aligned the new set of behaviours with the rewards mechanism where good performers will be rewarded with monetary bonuses ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 4,000. Apart from that, gifts and vouchers will also be presented to employees exemplifying these behaviours.

Edelweiss will also evaluate candidates on these new behaviours by using psychometric tests to evaluate candidates on these behaviours. Moreover, the company has developed its own assessment process where all hiring managers have trained to evaluate candidates in 45 mins on all these behaviours.

The hiring managers are given a set of questions that they can ask the candidate to evaluate people on these behaviours. For instance, if the hiring manager wants to evaluate a candidate on ‘Play as a team, win as a team,’ then the recruiter can ask ‘When was the last time you had a disagreement with a peer? How did you resolve the situation?’ or ‘Tell us about the most difficult challenge you faced in trying to work cooperatively with someone who did not share the same idea?’

Or for instance, if the recruiter wants to evaluate someone on ‘hustle and make it happen’ the recruiter might ask, ‘What do you do when priorities change during work? Give one example’ or ‘Have you ever made a decision before consulting your boss? What was the impact?’

As per the training which is given to the hiring manager, he evaluates the candidates and gives ratings on each behaviour.

As per Gladstone, Edelweiss takes these assessments seriously and really gives a lot of emphasis on the same. If some candidate has scored less than three in any of the behaviours, as a process the candidate is rejected confirms Gladstone.

“Behaviours cannot be built or taught, but skills can be taught,” says Gladstone.

But depending on the roles and function and the level of the role, things may vary. There will be some behaviours which will have no to very less importance to carry out the role. Accordingly, there might be some exceptions.

“We are still working on jotting down how much weightage should be given to which behaviour in a particular role and a particular level,” mentions Gladstone.