Striking the Balance
CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Future Learning at Scale
How does a global organization strike the right learning balance to prepare its employees for the future? Standard Chartered, the multi-national bank that employs nearly 100,000 people across 60+ countries, set out to do just that.
A review on the “State of Learning” within the bank shed light on the imbalance of push and pull information, an over–reliance on classroom learning, a need to embrace learning technologies and a learner experience that needed to be improved.
“A big driver for change was the ‘Voice of the Employees’. Wereally listened to what our employees had to say about how they wanted to learn.” – Casey Mee, Director – People Capability, Standard Chartered Bank
What were the employees saying?
- “It’s hard to find useful content and resources when I need them to learn.”
- “We need more on-demand learning that gives me the flexibility to learn when and where I want.”
- “So much mandatory learning is pushed to me, and I just don’t have the time to focus on other areas of development.”
- “Learning is not personalized to me.”
So, the bank needed to make some changes and set out a strategy to do this, which was led by cultivating a culture of continuous learning and improvement. However, enabling a culture shift and empowering employees to take control of their learning and career development across 60+ countries around the world was no easy feat.
“A big driver for change was the ‘Voice of the Employees.' We really listened to what our employees had to say about how they wanted to learn.”
Casey Mee
Director - People Capability,
Standard Chartered Bank.
To address this, Standard Chartered provided a technology–enabled learning solution that provided access to top–class learning content (both external and internal) to employees around the globe and upskilled them effectively, when and how they needed it. It invested in a digital platform experience that provided an “always–on” learning environment for its employees. In this platform, Standard Chartered housed:
- Learning Academies (Data & Analytics, Digital, New Ways of Working & Cyber)
- Industry and role–specific learning
- Key skills initiatives
- Broader learning topics to guarantee a 360-degree learning approach
Casey stated, “A critical part of the strategy has been to ensure that learning initiatives are aligned with the strategic company initiatives and making sure that our Business is fully engaged and encourages adoption.”
Moreover, Standard Chartered created learning champions in each country, go-to learning “cheerleaders” that created region–specific learning content and helped create awareness and drive an improved learning experience for their employees. Another key mantra was to “Curate not Create” when it came to content and program development.
In doing this, Standard Chartered struck a balance in creating a break-through solution that reached employees and prepared them beyond their day job. This exciting journey continues for Standard Chartered as it prepares its “Future Ready Workforce” throughout 2020 and beyond.