Epic show report

E-learning for Financial Institutions Conference

Amsterdam, 26-27th January 2005
Report by Andy Webber, Account Manager, Epic

This event is intended to provide representatives from the top financial services organisations in Europe with a valuable forum at which executives can share best practices, advice and insight, with the goal of helping companies advance e-learning in the financial services industry.

Irit Ashkenazi Head of e-learning and Knowledge Management at Bank Leumi

A number of challenges have been identified within the Bank associated with the distribution of information and knowledge quickly and efficiently but most important of all effectively.

In order to meet these challenges the Bank has developed an approach which combines e-learning with a knowledge management strategy.

E-learning at Leumi is delivered via a central e-learning website and associated LMS accessible remotely as well as from the office. There are 40,000 hours of e-learning available to users. An e-learning group administers the development process and creates and uploads the content.

Knowledge management is facilitated by the HR department and is delivered via the technological infrastructure but its success hinges upon ‘Knowledge Leaders’ (SME’s) taking responsibility for their subject. There are 51 intranet sites and 470 ‘Knowledge Leaders’ (KL’s) who have had their role in this project formalised into their job descriptions and have specific objectives relating to this project.

End-users are also actively encouraged to participate and interact with the KL’s – asking questions, providing feedback and writing material which they can then submit to the KL’s for approval and then post to the relevant site. Lastly end-users are able to communicate with one another using message boards within each of the sites.

The approach has been highly successful in increasing the level of communication across the organisation and ensuring that knowledge is disseminated as effectively as possible.

John Rogers, Head of Barclays University Business School and Ian Carlton, Head of Operational Planning

John and Ian presented ‘take the lead’, their leadership learning portal that was created in partnership with Epic.

Background to the project was that the training budget was being halved from £70 million to £35 million and one of the strategies implemented for achieving this cut was through increasing the percentage of e-learning used in the training mix within the organisation. At the time the split was about 90:10 in favour of face to face learning, plans included shifting this to 60-40 in favour of e-learning. Significant progress has been made towards this figure but there is still some way to go (no exact figure was available).

Barclays University as a whole represented a significant cultural change for the organisation, and take the lead as a part of that was a very different way of approaching leadership training.

The focus was very much on the individual and his/her training needs rather than processes – it was felt that the organisation was already quite bureaucratic, and increasing the rules and regulations would only hinder learning. What the University and take the lead sought to do was change the way that learning was perceived in Barclays – focusing on the individual and asking them to take responsibility for the own learning and development.

Take the lead provides for a number of different ways of learning:

• Information can be accessed in a ‘linear fashion’ via nine core modules. This enables learners to work through a series of theories, diagnostics and practical tools packaged together and describing a different ‘facet’ of leadership such as teamwork, change or communication
• Users can read ‘learning nudges’ which condense learning into short, two minute, bite-size chunks of learning that can be used as a reminder on a just in time basis or aide memoire
• All the information comes form leadership theories – and these can be looked at as a whole if the learner prefers
• Take the lead actively encourages learners to return by providing a meeting point and Forum for learners to communicate with one another and share ideas
• Lastly take the lead offers some suggestions of next steps – including further reading, more diagnostics and tools and face to face workshops that can be attended

Recently accreditation has been gained through the Nottingham Business School such that take the lead can be used as the basis for a degree in leadership. The qualification must be funded by the learner but Barclays University is rightly proud of this achievement, and already a number of employees have chosen to study for the qualification.

Dave Buglass, Head of Learning Advisory Services at The Royal Bank of Scotland

The RBS e-learning story was shaped by the rapid growth that the organisation experienced via its’ programme of acquisitions. In 1998 the largest division within the organisation was looking for an Induction programme that would provide a consistent experience for new staff and wanted to use e-learning. This prompted Human Resources to explore the development of an infrastructure for delivering technology-based learning in an effective way.

The business case presented to the board for investing in e-learning rested on the savings that could be made but also on the real benefits that could be derived through offering more learning which was more consistent and more focussed.

Results were positive – some of the added value derived includes:

• Providing a platform for helping to integrate acquisitions
• Offering an ideal media for compliance and regulation training
• Offering process and product training
• Supporting enterprise initiatives
• Reducing the ‘time to competence’ of new hires
• Reducing the costs of training

In order to deliver the learning RBS looked into sourcing an LMS, which eventually they decided to design themselves – the result was GLEN, which is only recently being replaced by Access2Learning (A2L). This project has provided significant challenges and the time frames for the project were aggressive. Nonetheless around 40,000 users are already registered and further roll-outs this year will take that figure over 100,000.

As a footnote Dave urged caution when ‘selling’ an LMS internally – it is important to focus on the content rather then the LMS, as this is what interests the end-user.

Kristien Bergans, e-learning Manager at Fortis Bank

Kristien began her demonstration with an experiment. She asked one of the delegates (Ian) to join her on stage, and taught him some (fairly!) simple dance steps. She asked the rest of the audience to stand up and have a go at the same time.

The results were that Ian was quite quickly able to pick up the dance steps with her help. The rest of the audience had varying levels of success, but no one was as successful as Ian in terms of skill and Ian was clearly much more motivated to implement the dancing skills gained.

Kristien contended that this was largely due to the level of control that Ian had over his learning experience in the one-on-one nature of his coaching session – he had the opportunity to slow things down or speed things up, ask for feedback, check understanding, and even change the tuition methods used (e.g. demonstration versus having a go).

The rest of us did not have this luxury and as a consequence had to go at someone else’s pace and with their choice of having a go/exploring the theory/being given a demonstration. This not only impacted upon the level of skill acquired at the end of the experiment but also on the level of motivation for doing the task – the audience was largely apathetic about trying it!

Kristien extended her point to identify that one of the key benefits of e-learning (over classroom training) is that the learner has the potential to have control over their own learning experience – Kristien advocated giving the learner as much control as possible in e-learning through a flexible learning design. Good e-learning should, as far as possible, allow for different routes through the learning giving learners experienced in the subject the option to undertake the exercises and answer questions demonstrating and reinforcing their knowledge, while offering more underlying theory and information to those less familiar the topic.

User engagement will also be achieved by enriching their experience with appropriate use of media, exercises, activities and case studies.

Robert Gimbl, Director of Finance Training & Development at Citigroup

The project that Robert introduced stemmed from a very clear business need. It had been noted that each time a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was needed within the organisation, in order to fill the role it was necessary to recruit from outside – incurring considerable costs as a result. It was also noted that there was no shortage of financial expertise within the organisation – expertise that, with some additional effort, could be used to fill these positions internally.

It was decided that a programme should be introduced to train existing finance staff so that they were in a position to take on these roles in the future.

This began with identifying the competencies (financial and human) needed for the role and then providing for the training of these skills, in a 4 stage programme spread over approximately ten years. This is made up of a series of training interventions – largely e-learning but including some face to face elements and culminates in a 15 hour simulation designed to replicate the CFO role as closely as possible.

The simulation is designed to allow learners to make mistakes in a ‘safe environment’ and expose them to some of the grey areas they will encounter in the CFO role. It focuses on leadership skills rather then the technical and financial competencies trained during the programme and models the consistent decision-making behaviours and values that CFO’s within Citigroup should live by.

Robert acts as mentor to those undertaking the simulation and the information tracked enable him and the learner to decide what sections of the programme need to be revisited or whether the learner is now ready to take the next step up.

Results? Last year 33 of the 36 CFO vacancies that arose were filled internally using candidates from this programme.