Man at the top
TIME FOR
REEVALUATION
8
Talking heads
What's NewS Issue 5 September 1995
first, we decided we wouldn't invest in it.
But after a year we started to do it up. After f
a year of working on it, a friend asked if I
would like to be part of the National Gar
den Scheme, which means allowing people
in to look at it. That's when we got the bug.'
The Gentises and their two children were ex-
tremely lucky when they returned to Hol
land after eight years in the UK. 'We weren't
looking for a huge garden, we just happened
to find one. It was a mature garden, but
neglected. It took us three years to repair it.
Every year I think: next year I'm just going
to sit in it. But there's always something else
to do. A garden is a long-term commitment.
You plant things and you have to wait for
quite a while before you see any results. Not
long ago, my wife came running into the
house shouting: 'We've got a handkerchief
tree'. The tree had always been there. This
was the first time it had flowered. It really^
was an amazing sight. I don't want to get
too philosophical here, but what you plant
today may start growing tomorrow. But it
will only show next year, or even later. In
that sense, it's a mirror of life,
and a mirror of what we're
trying to do here in the bank.
You nuture and look after the
things you sow on the
ground. You have to plan
ahead - you can't hurry a gar
den. And you can't hurry a
relationship in banking. You
have to work on it all the
time. I may have been raised
and educated in towns and
5 cities, but the things I do in
my spare time are not really
out of character. They're ac-
tually more a different aspectJ
a- of what I do at work.'
Corporate banking's field of activities is expanding all the time, genera-
ting more and more fertile ground for divisional chief Henk Oentis and
his team to work on. But besides new markets and sectors, Gentis also has
another growth area to deal with every day, as What's NewS found out
when we asked him about the man behind the job title.
The head of corporate banking's office is or-
dered, but permeated with an atmosphere of
activity. Seated at his rather modest-sized
conference table in his well-cut grey suit,
Henk Gentis is every inch the urbane, effi
ciënt but also accessible top-level banker. So
at first it's rather hard to image him spend-
ing hours up to his knees in an icy river
patiently casting for fish. Nor can you im-
mediately see him with a shotgun in hand
tramping rural areas of Holland. 'These are
actually my neglected hobbies,' he laughs,
and suddenly you can picture him in a Bar-
bour coat and rubber boots.
'The type of hunting I do is
basically culling - the necessary
thinning of herds and flocks. In
Holland, it's very difficult to get
a licence - you have to be al-
most a biologist to obtain one.
That's because the emphasis
here is on conservation. And I
don't just shoot animals for the
pleasure of shooting them. I ac
tually clean and then eat every-
thing I bag during the season.'
Fishing, shooting - for a man
who was born and raised in an
urban environment, these hob
bies seem a little out of charac
ter. 'And we haven't even got to my main in
terest outside of work,' he smiles. Gentis
readily admits he is an avid gardener. 'It's
something I look forward to during the
week,' he says. 'I really enjoy the sense of
anticipation when I think: this weekend I'll
do this or that in the garden.' By 'garden' he
does not mean a neat plot comprising the
obligatory lawn and odd flower bed. Gentis
and his wife Brigitte work 15,000 square
meters of land around their home. 'It all
started when we went to London for the
bank. Our house there had a garden. At
The agreement between social partners in
the Dutch banking industry to cut work
ing hours to 36 per week will have far-
reaching effects not only for staff but also
for clients. According to José Bours who is
part of the team working on implemention
within Rabobank, it could be good news
for all concerned.
'Clearly,' she says, 'the primary aim of this
agreement is to preserve and generate em-
ployment in the industry. But what it has
also done is force us, as an organization,
to reexamine how we work.' Bours, con
troller in the operations division, has been
working closely with P8cO to discover the
most efficiënt and most feasible way to
implement the new agreement. 'We began
by charting the consequences of imple-
mentation throughout the whole of CBS,'
she explains. 'We needed to discover how
it would affect efficiency and, importantly,
whether it was actually feasible in div-
isions, such as corporate banking, where
staff has to be available for clients.'
All divisions were asked to complete a
comprehensive questionnaire on potential
effects of the reduced working hours. 'The
results showed that some divisions would be
affected more radically than others, but all
agreed it should be feasible in principle. One
positive effect is that opening hours for
member banks have become more flexible.
That can have far-reaching consequences
here at CBS, especially for financial markets
and private banking and trust. Here in oper
ations, we will also have to adjust our work
ing hours to provide coverage from 7.00 to
20.00 on weekdays and for a period on
Saturdays. In fact, this is a really useful de-
velopment in that we will also be more
accessible for the international network.'
Although the agreement comes into force
officially on October 1 this year, Rabobank
has slated 1 March 1996 for implemen-
tation. 'We currently have pilot schemes
running in some sections of operations, in
the treasury products department of finan
cial markets, in one of the account manage
ment teams in corporate banking and in
international,' says Bours. 'These will help
us discover just how the new agreement
can work. The bottom line is that there will
always be people who will put in more
hours than they actually get paid for. But
what we want to find out here is whether
those staff members who do work very
long hours aren't in fact overloaded. If that
proves to be the case, then we'11 have to
recruit. And that, of course, is one of the
primary aims of the agreement. We'11 keep
you up-to-date on the pilots.'