Swiss Academy - A very special culture of further development! BNP Paribas Suisse explains how it works.
In this interview, Marie-Angélique Rault, Head of Learning & Development / Talent Manager, tells us all about her career, her team and how the project was able to succeed.
Ms. Rault, we are about to talk about what your team has achieved in your bank over the past few years in terms of development culture. Before that, however, we would like to find out more about you, because your career is extremely impressive: further training and development are topics that you are passionate about. Has this always been the case?
First of all, I would like to thank you for this award. It is a great recognition for our team, our bank and our employees, and I am delighted to be talking to you today.Let me introduce myself a little more: I am Head of Learning & Development, Talent Manager and also responsible for Diversity & Inclusion at BNP Paribas in Switzerland. I have been working in the HR department at BNP Paribas in Switzerland since June 2019. Previously, I worked as Learning & Development Manager at BNP Paribas in Canada, where I started in 2015. However, my background is quite atypical as I was not originally a specialist in HR, let alone employee development. I ended up in the world of training and HR purely by chance, which is why I like to say: what a nice coincidence! For a long time, I was an expert in cash management, in combating money laundering, and then I worked as a project manager. So I know the business and the challenges quite well, which was certainly an advantage for the position I hold today. So when I took on the role in Learning & Development, I had no experience in HR and even less in further training.
What prompted you to make this change?
I have always been passionate about the human aspect and looking after employees, and I also enjoyed working on projects. At the end of 2015, I wanted to give my career a boost, challenge myself and get rid of the expert label that had been attached to me for years. So, without further ado, I applied for a temporary position at further training in the HR department of BNP Paribas in Canada. The position required me to manage projects and have a "human" side. To my great surprise, I received an acceptance letter for my application and thus my chance. I quickly realized that this job suited me perfectly, that I could make a positive contribution to the employees and help them to develop in terms of their work. I was also able to give free rein to my creativity. I was lucky that I had to invent this job first, and my manager at the time gave me free rein. This allowed me to shape the position according to my own ideas and wishes. I then perfected my skills and completed a course to become an instructor in Learning & Development at UQAM (Université de Québec à Montréal). In 2019, I finally wanted to move to Europe and joined BNP Paribas in Switzerland. Since then, my role has constantly brought new developments and challenges, and I am particularly pleased that I am now also able to take care of the management of our talent as well as topics related to inclusion and diversity, which are also very close to my heart!
This exciting career shows what is possible if you recognize your own interests and strengths and pursue them with determination. Impressive! You have turned your back on business and financial administration and are now focusing entirely on employee development. You and your team have initiated something new, if not created a new perspective, a new attitude towards further development within the bank. Tell us about it.
To develop our employees and create a culture of continuous development, I believe you have to be passionate, highly committed and hands-on. I am fortunate to be surrounded by a great team with diverse skills who, like me, want to make a difference. Our team is also anything but conventional, as we are located in different places such as Geneva, Zurich, Lisbon, etc.. However, this remote collaboration works very well and everyone brings in ideas based on their background to expand the role of Learning & Development and better support our business units. We regularly work on various projects that aim to change the mindset of our employees. It is important to our L&D team to show that the classic pattern of the past, where you had the same job in the same companies for your entire life after graduation, is now obsolete. You have to keep learning and reinventing yourself, and it is our job to guide and sensitize our employees and business units to this. We want Learning & Development to become a key area. It is therefore crucial that our managers, employees and business units recognize that L&D is of immense importance to regularly support them in developing their career and employability, to provide them with the appropriate tools and to prepare them for the changes of our bank.
What does this mean in detail?
As mentioned above, we regularly carry out various projects to create this culture of continuous development. For example, we have introduced the "social learning" approach. As part of social learning, our internal experts can train themselves as trainers on a voluntary basis and share their specialist knowledge with as many others as possible, thereby overcoming silo thinking. Together, they form our internal training community. They also contribute to employee development and thus become agents of change. They make it possible to create a culture of continuous development and cover both technical topics and areas relating to Personal development that are essential to our bank. Since I have been working in Switzerland, we have also maintained a strong partnership with the business units and HR business partners. This enables us to better understand the expectations of our employees, managers, business units and the bank and to develop proposals. This tripartite alliance (L&D, managers, HR business partners) plays a key role as it enables us to build and embed a culture of continuous development within the teams. In this way, all our employees can better prepare for change, remain "experts" in their fields and also address their employability.
So you develop your further development programs and offerings in an interdisciplinary alliance of three. How did you manage to bring all three parties together and convince them of this approach?
This brings up an important point. It would be unrealistic to say that everything worked perfectly straight away. Step by step, we had to build a relationship of trust and partnership between the L&D team, the business units and the HR business partners. After arriving in Switzerland, I very quickly realized that I would inevitably have to adapt to this new reality, this new culture. The problems and challenges of BNP Paribas in Switzerland are nothing like those of BNP Paribas in Canada. I had to quickly familiarize myself with the business areas and expectations of our employees, and to this end I approached my colleagues, the HR Business Partners, directly in order to better understand the business areas they support. As I have always had a sense of partnership and teamwork, this approach seemed the most appropriate and ultimately proved successful. Subsequently, we also had to exchange ideas with the business units and employees. In this respect, we were fortunate to have the support of the management and we also continued to work with the HR Business Partners so that they could introduce us to the managers. In this way, we were able to uncover issues or challenges that the managers, employees, etc. were facing. We proposed concrete measures to provide better support, which was much appreciated. In 2021, our HR department was restructured and the entire L&D team joined the HR Business Partner team. As a result, the partnership strengthened automatically and we were still able to rely on the support of our management. Looking back today, I would say that in 2015, the L&D team contacted the business units or employees and made them aware of the importance of continuous development. Today, it is mostly the others who approach us directly so that we can jointly develop projects to support them in the areas of technical skills, management and personal development. This jointly established tripartite alliance (L&D, HR Business Partners, business units) is quite innovative within the BNP Paribas Group and we are very proud of it as we can see the positive impact of this approach at all levels.
Mrs Rault, do you have any final advice you would like to pass on to colleagues or other organizations?
My advice is to have courage and change the traditional perception of L&D. Even today, HR departments, including L&D, are often perceived as an administrative area far removed from real business processes. I find it regrettable that many employees still see it that way. I speak on behalf of my entire team when I say that an interdisciplinary approach should be tested and the silo mentality with which we view HR and the business should be abandoned. We also need to move away from this very administrative side of Learning & Development and focus more on promotion and development rather than just training provision. By strengthening this alliance with the business units and HR Business Partners and putting it into action, you can better understand the challenges and expectations of employees and the developments in the business units. We need to be perceived as strategic partners at all levels of the organization. Of course, this relationship of partnership and trust takes time. However, we are very pleased and extremely proud that we have been able to build this alliance together and achieve positive results for our employees and business units.
Skilly Award well deserved
The skillaware team would like to congratulate BNP Paribas on Skilly Award 2022 and wishes them continued perseverance and development power for the continuation of the "Swiss Academy" - and hopes for more exciting projects!
Would you like to find out more about the initiative and benefit from tips and tricks from our award winners? Click here for the detailed Podcast interview with Marie-Angélique Rault. (only available in French)
