Winner: Coursera Impact Award for Powering Internal Mobility
Santander used Learning at Work Week as an opportunity to create a better culture where moving job role feels effortless and rewarding. Their objectives for the week included:
- Launching a brand-new career hub, playbook, and connections platform
- Educating colleagues on the career mobility tools and support available to help them achieve their career aspirations
- Encouraging colleagues to explore alternative career paths and opportunities and thinking differently about their career
- Helping colleagues to embrace a growth mindset
- Introducing the career coaches and demonstrating how they can support career aspirations
- Increasing employee engagement
To support their internal mobility objectives, Santander ran Learning at Work Week activities that included:
- Career aspiration workshops
- Sessions with external speakers including an inspirational session with Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill about growth mindset and achieving goals and career aspirations
- ‘Connect For’ workshops with colleagues looking to grow their careers and identify and overcome real and perceived challenges
- Encouraging colleagues to share their learning heroes through the recognition platform, (Kudos) and LinkedIn. They were asked to consider and share how their hero supported their career growth and how they can pay it forward.
In addition, they used information from colleague feedback to understand the key challenges across different audiences. They also worked with their Learning at Work Week champions to design activities that would appeal to colleagues from different areas of the bank. They analysed feedback and data from past Learning at Work Week activities to understand the sessions were most popular, had the biggest impact across different audiences and how they could be improved.
To promote their activities, they began by earning buy in and support from their HRBPs, Senior Leaders, Learning Ambassadors and Learning at Work Week Influencers. They then designed an eye-catching brand for all communication materials to develop brand awareness and build anticipation.
Working with the corporate comms team, they built a bank wide plan that included an email from the Chief HR Officer, teasers, Intranet articles, banners and people manager updates leading up to, during and after the week. They also utilised their community and people network sites by sharing teasers and adding banners to build engagement. HR colleagues and learning ambassadors also added a Learning at Work Week image that linked to the event gun on their email signatures.
As a result of their activity, Santander saw an increase in colleague awareness and usage of the tools and support available to help them achieve their career aspirations. Over 50% of colleagues across the bank engaged with at least one activity and this number is still increasing via their playbacks, downloadable session and online learning modules.
Since the launch of their career hub during Learning at Work Week, they have had 41,000 hits. In addition, 80% of colleagues who attended the ‘Connect For’ career mobility sessions fed back that they have taken tangible steps towards their career goals.