FEATURE
‘Through our learning interventions, the bank
has seen vital skills transfer with competency
enhancement, personal growth and longterm career planning taking place among
employees.’– Nedbank
is making a tangible contribution to accelerating the transformation
of the Nedbank Group and, indeed, the South African financial
services industry as a whole. On an industry level, Nedbank won
BANKSETA’s skills@work award and the Knowledge Resources
Chief Learning and Development Officers Award for 2013.
Nedbank says through its initiative it sees itself leading the
industry in employment equity and skills development.
Absa will not specify how much it has invested in skills
development, stating only that it has far exceeded industry
minimums. The Barclays-owned bank says it has developed and is
currently delivering on an integrated model that includes employed
and unemployed youth. This is aimed at ensuring that the bank’s
skills development agenda is aligned to BANKSETA’s “scarce and
critical skills” requirement across the financial industry.
‘Absa is one of the few banks in South Africa that co-funds
unemployed learners and takes responsibility for the majority of
learners from rural areas. Ultimately, this contributes to making
unemployed youth more employable, and assisting youth with
the opportunity to attain higher qualifications,’ the bank said in a
statement.
‘From a staffing perspective, our skills development initiative has
helped create a learning culture, improved the skills of staff while
providing staff with improved career opportunities and options. We
also provide the children of our staff members with better schooling
opportunities through bursaries. As a result of our comprehensive
programme, Absa was recently honoured by BANKSETA skills@
work awards for best practice in skills development.’
Absa points out that professional skills development is important
for executing succession and transformation initiatives. The bank
says that its succession plans depend on “growing its own timber”.
Edition 8
Professional Development.indd 21
BANKER SA
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2013/12/20 10:05 AM