About
A new Learning Portal and smartphone app to disrupt the traditional banking workforce training concept, increasing employees’ engagement and making them “falling in love” with our new Netflix-inspired digital learning service
Innovation presentation
The digital era has substantially modified the way we work, learn and inform ourselves.
In the Banking Industry new technologies have significantly innovated the way we work and engage our Clients and the workforce experience is the candidate pillar to embrace a Bank full digital transition.
Intesa Sanpaolo Banking Group is the Italian market-leader and a European giant with around 100,000 employees, more than 19 million customers and around 5,000 Retail branches.
To empower such a diversified workforce and meet their need to assimilate contents that are immediately applicable in the daily environment, be in touch with each other and up-to-date with the latest trends, we have identified as essential to design a new learning service that is flexible, user friendly, easily accessible and more and more customized to individual needs, following a J3 approach: just in time, just for me and just enough.
We have seen a huge opportunity to increase employees’ engagement and improve the way we develop, deliver and communicate our learning services thanks to digital technologies.
Learning is now available on smartphone and laptops, employees can access with a non-mandatory approach and select digital contents based on digital self-planning and assessment of needs. This way, in-presence training has a new role: former classroom courses are now “events” focused on networking (e.g. Meet the Guru series classrooms, large outdoor events on managerial contents) and one-to-one in presence initiatives as mentoring, tutoring and coaching have been empowered. Both are delivered with a “phygital” approach, as the mobile App is a part of the training experience.
We have hence developed two new Digital channels:
- Apprendo: a “Netflix like” brand-new learning portal targeting the overall workforce with newly re-designed digital training contents that are internally produced, whose formats are well defined and mainly based on fiction, video tutorial and infographics with 5-minute maximum duration. Topics span from products, processes, procedures, regulations to selling behaviors.
- “Management Academy” Mobile App: an ad hoc created mobile App, addressed to nearly 7,000 Group Executives, whose aim is to train, inform and enable networking in a smart, digital and comfortable way. The focus of its video contents ranges from best managerial practices to cutting-edge banking, business and technology trends, incentivizing the App users to become Digital Ambassadors for their own employees. Daily ad hoc press review and strong social features empower the service. The App enables a completely customized experience, leveraging on the “My digital Trainer” functionality, launched in June 2017. Through this innovative tool, a dedicated algorithm suggests the best contents for each skill the manager wants to develop.
The main source of inspiration has been the revolution that is happening in the Digital media industry following Netflix launch: extraordinary richness and high personalization of the content provided, user-friendly navigation and on demand content selection.
Behind the scene, to support the introduction of this innovation, we had first to challenge ourselves and change the way the learning department used to work. We have now new operative models, roles and responsibilities - e.g. the Learning Factory in charge of the content design, with the business following a design thinking approach, and the Learning Media Lab, in charge of the content production with a truly agile way of working.
The entire Learning Services have been transformed and all the new Learning initiatives are now following the new services model. So far more than 650 ad-hoc digital contents have been delivered. Apprendo and Management Academy App are loved by employees: Apprendo has a total of 42,600 users and more than 1.6 million views, while the App has collected 200,000 views and thousands of enthusiastic comments and ratings in the first 6 months (80% of Executives are active on the App and participate to discussions), with more than 30% of total usage outside traditional working hours.
Uniqueness of the project
Our new learning approach is the first of its kind in the Financial Services Industry at world level, aligning us with the world digital media champions. Moreover, it allowed the creation of the first social and the first mobile chat among the Intesa Sanpaolo Group Executives.
It is also the first time learning content is specifically created inside the Bank, with the set-up of the Learning Factory and Learning Media Lab – today run by 70+ digital learning specialists.
To deliver excellent content we have created an ecosystem of institutions partnering with us (top-ranked Universities, international Research Centers and top influencers), all collaborating to develop innovative content and knowledge to be used internally.
Its unicity stands exactly in the virtuous exchange triggered by the concept of the digital HR transformation: working one for the other to build a more cohesive and engaged work environment.
.jpg)
