CaixaBank

At the beginning of 2015, CaixaBank presented its 2015-2018 Strategic Plan, the main objective of which is to “achieve leadership in quality, trust and reputation while focusing on customer service” and which placed the human team as the strategic element of its growth. In this plan, the figure of the internal trainer is called upon to play a crucial role:

• The local financial market has become highly competitive, with increasingly well-informed and cautious clients, which required the improvement of the skills and knowledge of the bank’s professionals and, therefore, of the trainers who were in contact with them.
   
• The technological evolution of the market moreover causes a profound change in consumer habits. The internal trainer should be a key in detecting new trends and phenomena which affect the consumer. 
   

With an unquestionable level of commitment and dedication, in addition to in-depth knowledge of the institution and what it offers, the bank wanted to foster greater efficiency of the work of the team of internal trainers.

• Despite having numerous digital tools available, the team of internal trainers was not making the most of technology to design more attractive training actions. The digital gap threatened to detract from the effectiveness of their actions.
   
• The team of internal trainers moreover had an uneven level of digital specialization, was dispersed around the territory, was heterogeneous in relation to profiles and age, and their concern to explore new trends and phenomena linked to the new knowledge economy was at an initial stage.  
   

With the aim of making the contact with their colleagues more effective, CaixaBank and the Institute of Lifelong Learning of the University of Barcelona designed an online “Digital Skills Programme” intended for the team of 1,500 internal trainers.

• The programme was organized as a pathway of eminently practical workshops capable of providing the trainers with a framework of reflection on their teaching methodologies and the impact of the emergence of ICT resources on their work and on their markets.
   
• The workshops were designed to promote greater understanding of the knowledge; its correct application, its analysis, synthesis and discussion, and collaboration and experimentation in relation to the learning acquired.
   
• It is a tutored programme, which supports trainers in order to improve the effectiveness of their work and which opens up their mind in relation to the new digital technologies and the direction that the world is taking. 
   

• In addition to a high level of commitment and in-depth knowledge of the processes, products and services of CaixaBank, the internal trainers now have new digital skills to contact their colleagues more effectively and, more importantly, to awaken in them the desire to be up-to-date in an ever more rapidly changing market.
   
• In addition to reducing the digital gap of the bank’s employees, the programme was decisive in promoting the initiative of its professionals, who proactively make new technological component proposals to improve the marketing of the institution’s products and services.
   
• The fact that the team of internal trainers is aligned with CaixaBank’s strategy of using technology intensively is proving to be a key to guaranteeing a constant knowledge flow within the organization.