Introduction

DBS is the leading financial services group in Asia and enjoys the strongest credit ratings of AA and Aa1 which is the highest in the Asia-Pacific region. From 2009-2012 consecutively for four years it earned the accolades for being Safest bank in Asia by Global Finance. DBS has created a mark and acquired the leading position in corporate, SME and Consumer Banking, wealth management, equity and debt fund raising, treasury and markets, and security brokerage (DBS BANK EXPANDS OPERATIONS IN INDIA, 2011). DBS was established in 1968 by the name of Development Bank of Singapore and it acted as the catalyst for Singapores economic development while the nation was undergoing independence. The best competitive strategy which DBS adopts is to acknowledge the commitment, can-do spirit and passion which reside in all the 15,000 staff of varied nationalities at DBS. It believes in educating, empowering and engaging its staff so that DBS can emerge as high performing organisation which is well known for its not just innovative business solutions but also for its out-of-the-world customer service experience (DBS BANK Ltd., n.d.). DBS has been serving retail, corporate and institutional customers through its Asian operations in many countries like China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Hong Kong. During the tenure of Koh Boon Hwee, DBS Chairman who stepped down on 30th April 2010 DBS focussed and developed sustainable competitive advantage by building a strengthened DBS culture and made DBS more customer centric and helped the bank to manage its business in totality (KOH BOON HWEE TO STEP DOWN AS DBS CHAIRMAN , 2011). The robust performance management system which rewards and helps in differentiating the employees who perform well was implemented during Koh Boon Hwee. The two way communication strategy with the staff of DBS has been stepped up to gain competitive advantage. This has helped in instilling strong sense of organisational provide along with collective ownership amongst the employees at the bank. This has helped in developing a much customer focussed culture at the DBS Bank, Singapore (Company Overview of DBS Bank Ltd, 2012). The DBSs Wealth proposition Plan follows Bank Smart strategy under which 5,000 man hours of training is conducted specifically for the Relationship Managers who serve the High Net worth Individuals in Singapore.

DBSs Competitive Advantage Entrenchment

DBS establishes its competitive advantage through the efficient and quality manpower by implementing:

Senior leadership team right in place Relationship Managers acting as single point of contact which provides clients the finest of DBS. Attracting the best talent globally. Combination of wealth creation with solutions-based wealth management Preeminent focus on training the staff.

Discussion and Analysis of Three HRM Strategies

Best Practices for Leadership Development at DBS
The clearly defined leadership development philosophy and process is being adopted at DBS under the flagship of Tom Pederson, head of talent Management and Learning and Development. This is the reason why DBS Bank Ltd., Singapore bagged the Best leadership development award for the year 2012. The bank has developed and set up academies with a suite of leadership development programmes and functional training programmes which helps in bringing out the best from the staffs potential. This is done by mapping out the leadership succession plan by the manager s for the coming three to five years (Wong, 2012). The leadership development process and philosophy is strongly connected with business requirements and career development at DBS. The results have been seen in the form of Management Committee members being chosen and promoted from within the organisation. Few best practices which are being implemented and practised at DBS for leadership development are:

More focussed approach towards developing Asian leaders in Singapore and then exporting or sending them to rest of the Asian Region. The flagship leadership programme of the DBS Bank is the finest educator for the staff to coach them about managing people in DBS. While developing a talent pool of efficient leaders at DBS the role of the managers is defined specifically. Sustainable leadership programmes are being developed at DBS.

The main HRM strategies of DBS are focussed in development of next Generation Asian leaders for the whole DBS Group across Asia. To fulfil this strategy Tom Pederson developed the DBS academy in 2010 which is totally concentrated towards sales, service excellence and leadership which are delivered through the learning Centres of DBS situated in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore (HRM Awards, Best Practices Congress, 2012). Rost (Rost, 1993) and other scholars believe that since society ahs shifted to knowledge-based world which is networked (Allen and Cherrey, 2000) new ways of relating , learning, leading and influencing change which involve principles of leadership like moral purposes , collaboration, leaders who are capable of transforming followers into the leaders on their own and ethical actions, have become prevalent (Covey, 1992). Thus the concept of leadership identity (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) which developed over six identity stages was developed which had a centrals base of Grounded Theory where a person develops leadership skills along with developing a leadership identity strongly (Komives et al., 2005).

Talent Sourcing at DBS

DBS adopts the strategy of HRM where it employees both local as well as foreign talent and that is why it is rated as the largest and best HRM winner in the world. There is severe talent gap because even though Singapore has almost full employment and still it cannot find people to fill up the positions that are why to fill this talent gap DBS imports expatriate talent. The small labour pool of Singapore is not enough for DBS to fill its total talent demand and that is why it has been found that out of 16 top management executives at DBS Bank are expatriates. DBS Bank with huge total assets of $200 billion and a market capital of $28 billion and CEO Jackson Tei belong to U.S. and two more top positions are held by people form U.K. and Malaysia (HRM, 2008). The Senior Vice president Samantha Mark, head HR, DBS Bank, Singapore believes that the demand for talent in the financial industry is being understood by only few people. Sourcing talent form overseas by DBS bank is not just HR strategy but rather it is strategic business imperative and to counter the competition for local competition for talent in the local markets. Sourcing and relocating talent from abroad helps in achieving certain strategic directives in case of DBS Bank. The main reasons for importing staff from abroad are:

To gain more advanced technical skills from matured financial markets Increasing talent shortage in Singapore along with strict jurisdictions for recruitments. Regional expansion calls for regional know-how.

Therefore DBS develops as strategic business plan to attract global talent base which is diverse too. In order to attract expatriate talent DBS exploits the huge brand presence to the fullest, offers better career development and advertises by highlighting an incredible overseas experience. DBS makes the relocation experience a real-time positive one and this is obvious from the significant expatriate workforce at DBS and mostly within the Board of Directors and senior management levels. Talent management at its best help in connecting and engaging expatriate talent within DBS it is quite evident (Cheese, Thomas and Craig, 2007). Multicultural teams manage the multinational firms where members are experienced well enough to work in heterogeneous cultural environments. Staff spanning multiple cultural and geographical boundaries has become a common feature in many industries and this why multicultural and multinational distributed teams have become noticeable part of many organisations in every sector (Ricart, 2011).

Training Culture at DBS

Training interventions have become common sight at DBS Bank since Piyush Gupta became the CEO of the organisation. An organisation-wide learning, training and development framework has been developed at DBS and is a part of key HRM strategy at the bank. With around 15,000 staff all across 15 countries it is not an easy task to develop an all-encompassing training program or system for DBS. In the year 2010 the bank provided more than 100,000 staff days of extensive learning opportunities and it was mostly done by internal staff sharing their knowledge base. Enhanced and advanced training is a prerequisite because now the bank is entering a significant growth phase. The training experience should be advanced and should make the people ready to take higher roles in the bank. For this kind of training the staff needs an exposure and needs to experience various geographies and across varied cultures (DBS: Banking on development , 2011). Tom Pedersen is emphasising on competency based as well as theoretical training at DBS to enhance the practical experience of staff at DBS. For this kind of training Singapore-based Financial Industry Competency Standards are being used and the bets part is that these standards are portable all across the country in Singapore. This means that according to Pedersen the DBS staff will have well recognised and certified assessment of their banking skills which will make their staff stand at par with other staff at various competitive banks in Singapore.

The three broad categories which are being covered by the Training and development program at DBS are:

Product and Technical Knowledge Personal excellence Leadership and Cultural Skills

Thus a very heavy emphasis is being laid on training, development and learning at DBS. A specialised and complete floor at the Bank is dedicated to the training as exclusive training space at the DBS bank which is also referred to as Ministry of learning. This bright space is an ideal training space with bright space and natural lights emerging from all the entry points and consists of few unique interactive points too. For example the inflatable igloo acts as nice area for small time barnstorming session. Thus a great learning environment which helps in improving their understanding of colleagues and the business as well is being created at DBS (DBS: Banking on development , 2011). Thus training helps in optimising the staff capabilities which they already have and their potential can be enhanced by giving necessary skills training and if need be retraining. A training roadmap can be chalked out in order to assess the training needs of the staff (Beebe, Mottet and k., 2004).

Conclusion
After assessing the three human resource management strategies which are being followed by DBS that is leadership development, talent sourcing and training and development culture at DBS it is quite obvious that DBS already has good amount of competitive advantage. Leadership development helps in preparing leaders for future management at DBS and talent sourcing helps in acquiring the best and quality talent across the globe which brings along technical expertise as well as better multicultural aspect to the multinational bank like DBS. The best practices of talent management being followed at DBS will definitely help it is global or regional expansion which is its business objective and the efficient leaders developed through effective talent management will help it in doing so. Then there is training module which is being developed as per the best training and development standards to train the staff as well as management so that the staff gets both theoretical s well s practical training experience. The DBS banking can become much more efficient by adopting the Competency mapping Framework where the bank can achieve the best fit for various banking positions by understanding the needs of each and every job at the bank. After analyzing these requirements they are further broken down to specific traits or requirements which are expected from the candidates which are selected for particular positions. This CMP framework can be further reinfpo0rced by developing

Key Performance indicators ( KPIs) which will help in measuring performance by acting as objective criterion for measurement (Ghose, 2008). Few recommendations which DBS can apply are that it should try to develop the leadership identity through six stages in the staff. For proper learning growth they should hire key bankers and staff from foreign banks who have good exposure of international scenario and it should try to foster better internal communication strategies. MB67