Youand your team launched an unprecedented learning initiative at ZKB in September 2020. What do you think is special about the Give.Take.Learn initiative?
With the Give.Take.Learn learning initiative, we want to raise our employees' awareness of the importance of learning and at the same time make them want to learn. We need to see Ability to adapt as an essential part of everyday working life. This is something that does not happen overnight. That is why we have decided to talk about it over a longer period of time. Under the term Give.Take.Learn, we now communicate regularly on the topic, tell stories and provide very specific assistance and support. For example, employees report on how they learn or what path they have taken, giving other employees ideas and inspiration. We have developed new tools to provide further specific assistance, such as a digital learning map that provides a comprehensive overview of learning opportunities at the bank, a development folder and a toolbox for managers. This enables employees to take a proactive approach to their further development and managers are supported in creating the right framework conditions. The special thing is that we build on existing ideas and offers and continue to emphasize them over a longer period of time.
We are currently seeing clearly that digitisation is constantly increasing the demands placed on employees. The pace of work is increasing and you have to stay on the ball in order to have good chances on the job market in the future. An important topic of the skillaware campaign is maintaining employability through continuous Competence training training. A program like yours pretty much hits the nail on the head there. What was the impetus for Give.Take.Learn, and what personal but also bank-wide values and Mindset are behind the initiative?
digitisation is just one of the dimensions that leads to changing requirements. The environment is even more complex. From a corporate perspective, we rely on flexible and adaptive employees, as this is the only way to develop Ability to adapt and resilience while proactively shaping the future. Learning is necessary for individual employees in order to remain employable and create their own options for the future. This requires an examination of their own situation, personal values, motivators and goals as well as their future development path.
For us, learning is about give and take, which is how the term Give.Take.Learn came about. For a good learning culture, it is important that we share our knowledge and experience with others, support others in their development, give them feedback and facilitate learning experiences. On the other hand, it is just as important to take time for ourselves and our own learning and to accept offers and support from others.
Employees often have a heightened awareness of the importance of continuous competence development. However, they often seem to lack the necessary time and an oversupply of measures leads to a kind of loss of activation. How do you give employees and managers guidance in these cases?
We often find that although employees are aware of the need for development and learning, they often do not know how to go about it. There is either a lack of ideas for specific approaches or these ideas focus on formal further training or stages in other areas. We try to start here and provide guidance through the variety of learning opportunities. To this end, we have created a digital learning map with links to specific offers within the bank and an explanation of the learning format for self-initiation. It is also very important to us that employees first find their learning and development focus and pursue this with their development plan. We have several tools for this. One of these is the newly created development folder, which can be used to create a personal development plan in just a few steps.
Rolling out such a comprehensive program can be no easy task. Different target groups and specialist areas, as well as different levels of expertise and perhaps also attitudes towards the topic, certainly add to the complexity. How did you deal with this challenge?
We have been working on this topic for some time now. For example, we have developed so-called personas in order to better understand our employees. We have also intensively involved employees and managers from different areas in our deliberations. It is important to mention that although we have created some new tools, the focus was on making existing offerings even more visible.
Your learning initiative has been running since September this year. Can you already provide an initial interim assessment? How are employees and managers reacting to Give.Take.Learn? Have you already received positive feedback? What in particular has stuck in your mind?
We have received a lot of positive feedback. It is very much appreciated that the topic is given prominence in our bank. For example, we experience a great openness to participation when we are looking for employees to report on their personal learning experiences for our communication contributions. It is also great that managers mention Give.Take.Learn when they talk about leadership or that Give.Take.Learn becomes a topic in the divisional blogs. We were also very pleased that all 1,000 of the development folders - one of the new tools we have produced - are already sold out and we have already had to order more.
One final question: What advice would you give to employees in general, but also to other banks that would also like to tackle the topic of competence development ? In your experience, what are good framework conditions, perspectives and values that promise success?
There are two dimensions of responsibility in this topic and both must be addressed. Managers must create the right framework conditions so that learning is possible - for example, providing time for reflection and learning, creating challenging tasks and opportunities for learning and development in everyday working life, providing opportunities to try things out and experiment and being open to new ideas and views.
From an employee's perspective, on the other hand, there needs to be a basic ambition to tackle their own development. And not necessarily in the sense of a career, but in order to adapt changes , i.e. to be able to meet future requirements and be fit for the job market. This requires courage, openness and curiosity. And above all initiative and the willingness to get a little better every day...
