Cross Cultural

What was the overall culture of the organization like?  What it caring, risk averse, individualist or something different?

The overall culture in both India and Singapore is harmonious among colleagues, they do not try to steal each others’ clients. Being in the banking and finance industry meant that the environment is highly risk adverse and very conservative, whichever country you are at. In Singapore they’re many rules and regulations that has been set in placed by MAS which banks and financial institutions have to follow. Hindi is the national language in India, but English is used in business settings. In the private banking industry, performance bonuses are largely based on individual performances, thus day-to-day work is very individualistic and self-focused. People from different departments do work together to serve the private wealth clients, but the peers among the private bankers themselves would not interfere much with one another’s work.

Compared to Singapore, India is much more formal and hierarchical. A lot of communication is from top to down. Whereas RBS in Singapore is more informal and open in 2-way communication. In RBS, there’s more autonomy to make your own decisions as long as you produce results, managers do not micromanage. Indians do not like to express ‘no’ verbally or non-verbally, they usually would relate it in an indirect or subtle way, they are generally non-confrontational. Instead of a negative answer, they prefer to provide vague answers instead. So the communication differences needs to be noted to prevent misunderstandings.

In Singapore you deal with a very varied and multi-national environment. The work environment in Singapore is a lot more cosmopolitan, you get expatriates and foreign visitors as Singapore is one of the key business hub in ASEAN. The concept of time which Indians have is more relaxed, meetings can be scheduled, postponed or organized with short notices. The different notion of time usually takes time to get used to. They’re more one-to-one meetings with the direct managers to subordinates in Singapore, whereas for India, it is mostly group meetings. In New Delhi, the superiors are less receptive to feedback and comments. Therefore, it is always instructions passed down from top to down. Today they’re still some gender bias in India’s society, while Singapore values more gender equality. Unlike ICICI bank in India, RBS Singapore, they practices 360-degree feedback which allows employees to evaluate their bosses. Which promotes a more fair and understanding work culture. However at RBS Singapore, there were many restructuring and moving around of co-workers in different teams, which caused many distractions as a result. In ICICI Bank India, work teams were more stable and structured.