As the pandemic hit the world in 2020, businesses across every industry faced several challenging consequences. The banking industry was no exception. One such consequence was the increased need for reskilling employees to fit their changing job roles, allowing them to survive and thrive in unprecedented times.
Reskilling has always been a complex and lengthy process. In the banking sector, reskilling requires a lot of preparation and may not be impactful in the long term. Effectively reskilling your existing workforce for changing job roles is a better and more economical option than firing and hiring new employees. This article will examine the ways banks can leverage finance training programs to reskill their employees.
1. Proactive upskilling and reskilling aligned with strategy needs and industry trends
Proactive upskilling or reskilling requires you to be aware of your purpose and expected outcomes. By paying close attention to industry trends, you can better predict the skills your employees will need, and the training required.
Implementing self-assessment tests and aligning training efforts with your strategic business goals helps your employees to figure out what kind of critical skills and general skills they need to improve. Accordingly, they can leverage customized banking training to master those skills before any major problem presents itself.
Aligning the learning objectives of your banking training program with your business strategy can help in effectively closing skill gaps. Such training programs will also help equip employees with general, critical, and enhanced skills.
2. Analysis of skill adjacencies
Analysing skill adjacencies requires you to find roles with complementary skillset requirements, if not identical. For example, you can train ops employees with customer service representatives or the marketing team. In this scenario, the ops team is set up to become more engaging and influential communicators. In the same fashion, customer service reps become high-performing universal bankers with a better understanding of the products and services. This step has benefits like:
- Minimizing reskilling needs
- Enabling quick reskilling focused solely on missing skills
- Providing opportunities to your workforce for exploring different career paths
- Expanding the culture of learning across the organization
Training employees with skill adjacencies together results in effective reskilling. It helps employees in understanding their job’s impact and the relevancy of their skills in the banking domain. It bridges roles together and enables the workforce to perform their jobs impactfully, ultimately driving the success of your organization.
3. Invest in a learning culture and develop a scalable learning infrastructure.
Company culture plays a significant role in the success of your reskilling venture. The culture of your organization should foster learning by developing an inspiring communication plan and providing a supportive employee experience. Training-driven company culture does not come naturally; it requires significant investments to grow.
Along with developing a learning culture, you must invest in scalable learning infrastructures. As the workforce grows, the learning infrastructure of your organization should ideally fulfil its needs. It should have elements that:
- Portray the skill inventory
- Encourage mobility
- Offer training resources for both online and offline needs
- Facilitate the development of reusable learning content
Conclusion
Organizations in the banking industry must understand the significance of making a move early and decisively. Taking actions proactively, using skill adjacencies, and investing in a culture of learning help banks in leveraging training programs. Also, by developing a scalable learning infrastructure and ensuring committed leadership, banks can effectively strengthen training programs for a futuristic workforce.
Learn more about how our personalized banking and financial training program has helped financial institutions’ sales personnel perform better than ever.
