Maybank to invest $7.6m in digital upskill of employees
Maybank on a mission to increase employees’ digital literacy
Malaysia’s banking heavyweight, Maybank, has launched its “FutureReady” digital upskilling programme and set aside MYR30 million ($7.6 million) to fund it.
The bank says the programme “aims to increase its employees’ digital literacy as well as equip them with capabilities that will ensure their relevance now and in the future”.
The training, which is mandatory for all employees, is anchored on six key areas of skills:
- digital awareness;
- data-driven decision making;
- human-centred design;
- agile;
- future communication;
- risk and governance in the digital world.
FutureReady is “part of Maybank’s continuous commitment to humanising people development, and enabling them to meet customers’ needs more effectively in the fast-changing digital world”, the bank says.
Maybank Group President and CEO, Datuk Abdul Farid Alias, explains: “The programme was developed to future-proof employees digitally to support the bank’s aspiration to be the ‘Digital Bank of Choice’. Technology is rapidly changing the way we do business today and the future, and it is important that our employees are kept abreast of new developments.”
He says that under the programme, “employees are empowered to take charge of their growth, undergo weekly learning modules and participate in uniquely created FutureReady Lab sessions to put their learnings into action. We are also training our managers to facilitate the FutureReady skills learning in their respective teams because employees need to be encouraged and given the opportunities to experiment and apply the learnings to practice.”
Group chief human capital officer, Nora Manaf, adds: “The lack of new Industry 4.0 capabilities could render individuals and the organisation as irrelevant. Through the FutureReady programme and its opportunities, we aim to empower employees to take personal ownership of their learning and growth, as aligned with the Bank’s Employer Value Proposition of ‘GO Ahead. Grow’.
“By the end of March, 91% of Maybank’s employees across Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines have been assessed on their levels of digital literacy, and over 20,000 employees underwent the foundational e-learnings. 800 managers have been trained on how to conduct FutureReady Lab sessions to immediately enable further internalisation and application of learnings. These managers have conducted FutureReady Lab sessions for over 3,100 employees.
“The FutureReady programme has required us to push the boundaries of learning and technology in the workplace. We have had to re-define our learning strategies based on the fundamentally different and challenging business environment that we are in, where employees are tasked to problem solve and make use of new tools to benefit our customers.”
Last year, the bank also developed the “Maybank Immersion Programme”, which enabled employees to have a six-month internship with various start-ups and fintech companies to understand how technology is being used in different ways.
There was also a “Go Disrupt Challenge”, a digital payments simulation, and the “Go Ahead Transform” programme, which enabled employees from all levels to experience new ways of working and learning.
“Essentially, all these programmes were designed to make learning new digital skills fun, self-initiating and accessible for all employees,” Manaf says.
