Highly Commended - NCFE Impact Award for Inspiring a Lifelong Learning Culture
NatWest’s purpose is to champion potential, helping people, families, and businesses to thrive. For Learning at Work Week, it championed its colleagues’ potential by supporting them to have time to learn something new. They offered a rich programme of activities that focused on skills their colleagues will need for the future, and future roles.
The team worked in partnership with their internal communications team and external marketing agency; and utlised its partnership with Team GB and the Olympics to engage colleagues. The team also worked with a number of NatWest’s regional boards to amplifiy local activity.
Learning at Work Week programme
The programme featured a mix of over 20 live sessions and additional recorded workshops including a motivating headline event with Team GB speaker Annie Lush. All the activities focused on key topics and skills requirements in line with the strategic direction of NatWest. Topics on offer included AI, technology, career development and emotional intelligence.
To support accessibility and avoid time barriers for colleagues in UK, Poland and India, the team scheduled the sessions by time zones with a global audience in mind. The activities varied in length and were delivered in various ways to suit individual preferences including through Q&A, show and tell, and breakout rooms. Manually edited captions were created so they matched the verbal delivery, and all live activities were recorded.
Some sessions were short tasters which gave an overview of a topic or theme. A personalised follow up communication directed attendees to further learning to deepen understanding of the topic with links to learning content on NatWest’s Academy including bitesize sessions, workshops and external learning support. Colleagues were also reminded that they have a minimum of 2 days' time per year to dedicate towards learning.
Promotion and engagement
The team promoted Learning at Work Week across a range of platform and channels. All the communications had consistent LAW Week branding so that it was recognisable across multiple engagement activities. The team used messaging designed to empower people to prioritise learning and build their skills now and for the future.
They worked with their internal communication colleagues to place articles from Team GB on the bank’s intranet. They also led a community of practice with key learning partners across the bank to advocate for the week, which resulted in some areas such as Wealth Business doing additional bespoke and complimentary activities. A novel ‘Great Eggscape Challenge’, which required engaging with LAW Week activities, was promoted in the bank’s newsletter to 23,000 colleagues.
Evaluation and impact
To evaluate the week, the team monitored enrolments and attendance and gathered feedback. All the sessions were tagged by skill so that the team could identify trends and what was popular, which will support future planning of events and activity.
The week has given the team the opportunity to collaborate with internal and employee-led networks. Over 4,000 colleagues signed up to an event and over 700 have watched a replay. Over 14,000 learning hours were booked in May and June linked to Learning at Work Week, comprising 41% of the total learning hours at that point.
Data shows that colleagues have continued their learning journeys as a result of post-event communications, with AI and climate being popular topics on the Academy. An additional 220 colleagues have signed up to be part of an AI upskill cohort.
The business has tackled a key barrier to learning – time – and benefited from dedicated time to learn during Learning at Work Week and beyond. Through Learning at Work Week, the Bank has demonstrated a real investment in their people and commitment to champion their future.