Discover effective approaches to enhance employee skills and promote career growth. Explore innovative solutions to minimize skill gaps and foster professional development within your organization.
Miriam Cross, Tech Reporter at American Banker (Moderator)
Kim Bozzella, Managing Director - Global Leader of Technology Consulting at Protiviti
Chun Schiros, Head of Enterprise Data Science at Regions Bank
Jennifer Smith, Chief Technology & Operations Officer at Zions Bancorporation
Transcription:
Miriam Cross (00:06):
Hi, my name is Miriam Cross. I'm a Technology Reporter at American Banker. The topic of today's panel is upskilling. It's a topic that is always relevant in banking and other industries, but I feel like with the advent of AI, generative AI banks migrating to the clouds, it feels ever more pressing. You'll be hearing from two bankers, Jennifer Smith from Zions and Chun Schiros from Regions, as well as Kim Bozzella from Protiviti. Thank you all for being here.
Jennifer Smith (00:35):
Thank you.
Miriam Cross (00:36):
I'll start by asking Jennifer and Chun, how do you go about identifying where the skills gaps are in your banks? I know Jennifer, when we were talking in preparation, you talked about doing individual skills assessments. How does that work?
Jennifer Smith (00:52):
First, it's great to be with all of these amazing women. Thank you for having me on the panel, Miriam, in terms of how we identify skills gaps, it has to start with what the strategies of the organization are, and then looking at interests as well as development plans. If we don't start there foundationally, then you can identify all sorts of skill gaps. But is it relevant that I have a gap in a particular area? And then in the technology domain, we use a provider that will do, we do a skillset assessment against those skills that are aligned to our strategies to identify proficiency, and then we create development plans around that.
Miriam Cross (01:45):
And Chen, what's the philosophy at regions?
Chun Schiros (01:48):
Yeah, I cannot agree more with what Jennifer just mentioned. And I think that our vision is to always be forward-looking and constantly meeting the evolving needs of our customers. And really that means leveraging advanced technologies analytics and making data-driven decisions for supporting our business and clientele. So a very pivotal aspect of this vision is building the best team, and we need to invest in our associates today to prepare them for tomorrow. And skillset training is absolutely critical. Absolutely agree with you on that. The assessment needs to be rooted in our strategies. What do we want to build? What does the bank of the future look like? And I think our organizational culture also plays a significant role in painting that process. It has to be aligned with our core values and what our vision is and how we want to serve our communities, our associates, and our customers. And from a practical standpoint, it is sitting down, listening to our associates and lined up their expectations of their career trajectories, what their job role is, and where the gap is between that versus where the bank wants to head to. So all these three items need to aligned in order to really make a successful training exercise.
Miriam Cross (03:18):
And how do you strike the balance between upskilling your existing employees and hiring people with the expertise already built in?
Chun Schiros (03:26):
Yeah, I think we need both. We are absolutely committed to developing and investing in our internal associates. So we have all these trainings, workshops, and bring in external partners to come and talk with us by at the same time, there's also external expertise that can come in and really compliment with our internal skills. And especially in the data science and AI world, it is moving so fast, so lots of things are still being figured out. And having some experience that is coming from outside to compliment with internal skills is critical as well.
Miriam Cross (04:07):
Jennifer, how do you say that?
Jennifer Smith (04:08):
I liked what Chun said around thinking about the complimentary aspects, because many people in our organizations may be like, you're hiring from the outside rather than upskilling. And then others are like, will you please bring in someone who has expertise in this space because I want to learn from them. And so there's a balance that needs to be struck, but it has to be very intentional, I think about what are you trying to achieve and if the chemistry of your organization is really important and bringing in the right person with the right skills that can lift the whole team up is important. But bringing someone in who is an expert that doesn't help lift the whole team, isn't the right answer either.
Miriam Cross (05:03):
Ken, what have you seen at banks? What do you think the best practices are?
Kim Bozzella (05:06):
Yeah, I think we're seeing more, and I agree with all the points here, and it's really around blending now a talent strategy, which gets to what are your business objectives and finding not just skills, but what are the roles that are needed to accomplish an objective. So blending that talent strategy along with succession planning, which gets to do we have people within the organization today that are one year out, two years out, five years out, and what do we need to do for them to get them to that role versus when do we need to go outside? So kind of pulling those two things together as opposed to historically or some time ago, really just looking at skills and it's not just about the skills anymore.
Miriam Cross (05:47):
And let's break down the process of how you do this. So Chen, you lead the AI strategy at regions. I know regions, you're also going through a cloud transformation process. So is it a matter of zeroing in on people? Is it a matter of people volunteering or raising their hands? How do you actually go about upskilling people?
Chun Schiros (06:07):
Yes, and I see this questions in twofold. One is upskilling, one is also internal mobility and career growth, and I'm big on internal development and recognizing our internal talents. And if you really, back to the internal external questions, I thought of it as data too, is that you cannot really customize your internal associates to best serve your company unless you use your institutional knowledge coupled with external data, which is external expertise. Now, back to your question about upskilling and internal mobility, we are really strong in focusing and emphasizing our internal talents, internal mobility. We have internal mobility programs where help us identify associates that are opposed to advance their careers. And our HR system is another tool in our arsenal where it finds skill sets in our work days that matches an open positions even sending you alerts that you may not be even aware that it is out there somewhere in this bank.
(07:15)
So that helps a lot beyond just tools, I think it's important that we have continuous engagements and conversations and building trust with our associates to truly show them that we care about their career development, we want to listen to where they want to have to. And I'm always surprised that what they wanted to do is not necessarily what I think they wanted to do. And I'm surprised by that by my kids as well. I have a perfect path for them, but they go different directions. So it is really amazing to see how they're aspired and when they own those career decisions, they're so taking responsibility. So that helps a lot to build those trust and help me understand how I and my organization can help them really support that journey. And from just another thing I cannot mention enough, and I think a lot of folks today in the panel talk about mentorship and sponsorships, and I think that I'm a beneficiary of mentorship and sponsorships and I cannot recommend more of younger associates or junior associates to tech advantage of that. And also our senior associates pay forward by mentoring someone, and those are also opportunity to recognize potential talents that may be able to take the next step.
Miriam Cross (08:36):
So you said you were a beneficiary of this yourself? Yes. How so?
Chun Schiros (08:39):
Oh, I have so much mentors across my entire career. They tell me I can do this. Before I even knew that, what is this? So that see the potential in me, and I think I asked Amy this question in her round table as well, is what is that quality that your leader sees when you don't even know that you have? And a lot of times our skills in leaderships, in relationship building in your grids are transferable to a lot of different areas. And like you mentioned, Kim is no longer just skill, skill training, but it's about your quality, your ethic, and your attitude to work that matters a lot in your potential in growth.
Miriam Cross (09:24):
And Jennifer, what's your process like?
Jennifer Smith (09:28):
This idea of do you choose someone to upskill or do you have if they're not raising their hand or you just look at someone who is raising their hand, I want you all to think about when you've been given an opportunity and did you ever stop? Why am I being asked? Because I don't know this as well as Sam may know this particular technical skill.
(10:02)
But sometimes it's not about a specific technical skill, it's about other skills that people see in us that we haven't fully owned, if you will. It may be that they may be really good, for example, at Power BI, but regardless, your analytical skills, even if you have no Power BI experience could be off the charts, but it may not have noticed that before. And so recognizing there's a couple of points I want to make is one is recognizing your own strengths and knowing that sometimes people see things in you that you don't see in yourself. And having the confidence to move into that when someone sees that in you. The next piece is specifically, this is primarily a women audience. We don't always raise our hands and we may miss an opportunity because we've already prejudged what someone's looking for because we're going back to this very specific technical item and are judging us against someone else. So raise your hand, don't select, don't deselect yourself while others would select you if you did. So I think there's this element and then sometimes we just have to ask someone who's not raising their hands because we see something in them that they may not have yet seen in themselves.
Miriam Cross (11:35):
Do you have a process at Zions for either helping people see this in themselves, encouraging people to raise their hands, especially women?
Jennifer Smith (11:43):
Absolutely. So we have a commitment in our technology and operations organization called the Leadership Promise. And what this is our print, our principles that all of our leaders agree to. So it's very clear that this is what we expect of a leader and it is going over your strengths. It is going over your development plans, having ongoing monthly one-on-one at least monthly, one-on-one coaching sessions, documenting a career development plan. And because we have systems and processes in place and we can clearly talk to our leaders about, Hey, you're not living up to the leadership promise, then we're able to have the right dialogue with our leaders. But it's all about having those organizational systems in place to ensure consistency.
Miriam Cross (12:39):
And Kim, what are the best examples you've seen at banks of processes?
Kim Bozzella (12:43):
And I think it's the combination of both the leadership. So what we've seen more so is after the past couple of years for a lot of our junior talent who have worked a lot remote, it's not just the technical skills and a lot of the incredible technical skills, it's some of the interpersonal, the professional, the leadership skills. And so marrying the programs that do both. So giving future leaders or future talent, that opportunity to both deepen their skills, whether it's hands-on work in a sandbox. I know we talked about that earlier in their playing or two in a box, and shadowing technical skills to learn the job, but also complimenting it with those leadership skills and opportunities to build out how to become that future leader and bringing those programs together.
Miriam Cross (13:31):
And picking up on that point, what's the nitty gritty of how you teach people skills? What do you find to be most effective? Is it leaning on trainings that your vendors provide? Is it sending people out, bringing people in? Is it online? Is it in person?
Kim Bozzella (13:47):
I mean, I think it varies a lot by a generational point. I think folks are super comfortable doing online training. Some kids have done it two years of school that way, and there's a lot of incredible training that's offered online. So I think there's an opportunity or there's no reason for someone not to be able to find the training that we want them to have. That said, that's just the skills and the training. I think having to find, making it real, making it more immersive in a lot of different ways you can do that. Those are the programs that are becoming more effective.
Jennifer Smith (14:21):
Can you see anything around micro learning and is that in the research that you've seen, is that impactful?
Kim Bozzella (14:29):
Like trying to embed it in along the way? They're trying to do more in that with a lot of the newer, bigger platforms. ServiceNow is doing that. There's things where they build the training as you do the job, so you're learning it as you're doing without having to sit down and just do a training course. So I think it is impactful. I think we're seeing more of it. It's hard to, you almost want to start that as you're doing design and thinking, how can you do the micro training, micro learning throughout either a career or career progression or a role progression.
Miriam Cross (15:04):
And Chun and Jennifer, what have you found to be the most effective or the most popular among your employees? What kind of trainings?
Jennifer Smith (15:12):
Well, first off, we have unlimited technical training for every one of our technology associates in the organization. So we have a provider, many of you probably do as well, that offers over 8,000 courses. That can be in supporting certifications, they can be trainings that last two hours, they can be trainings that last 40 hours. And then that's how we measure proficiency. If you're progressing in cloud skills or if you're progressing in DevOps, these are all kind of technical in nature. So those are having real impacts as well. I think what's most impactful every day for people from a training standpoint is, can I use it? The further away the training is from having hands-on use of it, the less effective it is. And so we have found, so for example, we thought, well cloud's everything, we're going to put everybody in technology through cloud training. And everyone was so excited about being able to take that training. Turns out if they can't use it right away, they get really frustrated and they're like, were you going fast enough to get things in the cloud? I can't use this right now. And so having that proximity to learning and doing is critically important.
Miriam Cross (16:44):
And Chun, how about you?
Chun Schiros (16:45):
Yeah, that makes total sense. And what I wanted to add is that, and echo to what Kim and Jennifer said is that there's unlimited amount of training, it's almost information overload and that itself is a whole different set of issues. But beyond just training through organized platforms and through hands-on workshops, hackathons through some competitions and tap into vendors, I do want to also focus and share that we are also very, very focusing on knowledge sharing and learning from each other. There are so much teams that are across the organization that are doing very much different things. So breaking that knowledge silos to learn about what you're doing, how what I'm doing is going to integrate it with what you're doing and what is the best way to do so in the analytics realm, we facilitate knowledge cafe and data science exchange. And these are monthly sessions where we did and opens to everybody in the organizations who are interested in learning more on what we are doing or just to share what they're doing.
(17:58)
So these are knowledge cafes, a firm where everybody, well external internal partners and subject matter experts come to talk about what they do sparks a lot of collaboration opportunities. Now, data science exchange is a whole different form where we get into the nitty gritty of how this algorithm work, why random forest is better than extra boosting. A lot of people roll their eyes and just leave, but we're just like, oh, tell me more. How do you set these trees or the step of the trees and what? So there's lots of cool conversations in those. And so these are really great opportunity to group the communities of data citizens in the organizations, whether they're in the same group or not, to just talk about things that they love talking about. And one more thing that, two more actually. One is that we also have monthly retrospect.
(18:51)
We wanted to learn from our mistake. We wanted to keep growing and keep moving forward. In my opinion, the most effective way to do it is don't make the mistake you make yesterday. So learn from it. Take some time moment to reflect annually we celebrate our success. We have a data science day, which is the annual event that we, again, to open up the stage like this, celebrate our success through the product services and capabilities we've built. We bring our partners together to talk about how we do this together and then we look forward to the future. So lots of funds in the data world, in regions.
Miriam Cross (19:30):
And you were saying endless amounts of trainings, it's information overload. So how do you sift through to find what's most effective?
Chun Schiros (19:38):
Well, I don't have a very, I struggle with it myself. I barely feel comfortable going back to sleep. I know the other side of the world is developing GPT version X, so I'm going to have so much ding, dinging, ding, dinging, ding. There's a podcast going on when you're sleeping. But I think it's important, again, hold back to the vision. What you really want to accomplish, is this the information you need to know or not? My top strengths go back to the strengths is learner. And I like to learn sometimes for no reason. So I struggle with sifting through information, but I think we only got 24 hours and seven days a week. You have to know what you want to accomplish, what do you want to be, and that will guide become your north that start your.
Miriam Cross (20:31):
And Jennifer, I want to pick up on something you were saying. So you've put all these investments into training and into programs, into identifying employees. How do you gauge whether it's working?
Jennifer Smith (20:45):
Well, through our work we measure, so we take a snapshot of where someone is at the very beginning of us developing a skill and then we measure partway through and then measure all the way through. So we're looking at the movement from proficiency up to expert. They don't necessarily need to get there, but we measure that and that's how we understand where they're at. The other piece is we actually just look at outcomes and it's performance approving. Okay. I just have to go back to something Chun said though is, so Chun, your title is head of enterprise and data science, and I'm just imagining you as you're trying to stay on top of, you mean awake, awake while other people around the world are developing new, how AI is developing on AI with billions of computers out there doing processing, how you can stay up with it. But I just highlight that it's almost this beginner's mind and this curiosity that is we learn at a very, very young age and I just love how you continue to build on it and you're at the top of your career in this data science space and what a great role model you are to others. That's really impressive.
Chun Schiros (22:15):
I think I call the data scientist the curious cat sometimes we'll get into trouble being too curious, but needed. Yes.
Jennifer Smith (22:23):
Following the data everywhere. Yes.
Miriam Cross (22:27):
And then in terms of improvement and results, have you noticed, have you been able to measure results? I think when we were talking.
Jennifer Smith (22:34):
We have, I'd love to share one of the programs that we did, it was right after the summer of 2020 and it was after George Floyd's murder. And many of us were awakened in a way we hadn't been before. And I sat, I did some listening sessions with many of our colleagues who many of us were highly impacted, but many were just traumatized by it and understandably and really focused in on the employees who historically haven't moved forward at a rapid rate or just were stalled. And through those sessions, and this was primarily with our minority colleagues, what I was hearing is no one's asked me if I want to be in management. No one's asked me of that. No one has expressed their belief that I can make an impact. And I mean that wasn't universal, but it was just kind of some of the themes that I was hearing because we had this place where people were just getting stuck in the middle. And so we developed what was called our emerging leaders cohort. It's a six month program.
(24:10)
We target and invite in our employees who have really, they may have just have demonstrated in different forms, some success in areas. They're not using the traditional criteria because we're trying to really get at what are the important skills that we need to be building upon. And so those cohorts are representative of our communities. So it's very, it's not predominantly white male. It's very representative of, and we teach leadership skills. We teach how to be impactful. We teach about our company strategy, we teach about career opportunities. And the emerging leaders who go through this have a 10% higher promotion rate than those who don't go through it working. You make investments, it works. And just expressing your belief in people makes a difference.
Miriam Cross (25:16):
And Chun, how have you measured results?
Chun Schiros (25:19):
I cannot speak better than what Jennifer just mentioned. And again, the result is on the company's growth, the team that we get to build, and of course the community we serve is flourishing because of the investment we put into our associates. So you can measure those tangible results, but having a best team that is engaged, owning the responsibility of moving the entire company forward together really requires a lot of deep cultural and investments that takes you not only just on strategy and vision, but really tangible exercise in terms of how we going to do that with our associates. So with lots of trainings and the reflections of the success of those program will be you have higher retention rate, you have better product and services, your community can sense that you have a great organization because people love working there because the organization care about them as a human being.
Miriam Cross (26:29):
So what have you seen in that regard at Regions?
Chun Schiros (26:34):
With a lot of the technology advancements and just changes and bank is rapidly evolving, our training is rapidly evolving as well. We rolled out the lease programs that is in line with our vision to train every single associate, develop every single associate to be a leader. We expand our platforms to provide more training opportunities, either as pursuing degrees or certifications. So these programs, we have seen more training hours in technology. We actually have a, it is training Tuesday. And so you see that when Tuesday comes through, there is a higher rate of training hours and people are, and it really requires our organizational leaders to say, we need this and we're going to carve out a juror tickets. That is one story point that allows you to do the training. So it's not just say, Hey, do training, but you're fully occupied to do the work. So it's just really create a space for training, monitor the training results, celebrate and recognize the success and that will become a positive feedback loop.
Miriam Cross (27:37):
And Kim, how do you think banks can measure such things as skills improvements? It does seem like it is. I mean, for example, you saw a measurable result with that program, but overall it does seem like something that's hard to measure.
Kim Bozzella (27:51):
It is hard to measure though. You can measure the things that you ask your employees to do, whether it's courses or certifications or pieces like that. But you really want to measure, and it's part of what Jennifer said earlier, you really want to measure the outcome. So you should be seeing more productivity, more deliveries if it's technology, more just more productivity from your organization. So you look at those key metrics and a lot of it's productivity, you'll look at attrition or retention. Most folks want to learn. So you'll look at employee scores and your trending. So it's not necessarily just the count of what we're doing, but also how we're seeing it progress and the outcomes we want to deliver.
Chun Schiros (28:29):
One more thing that can measure that is getting feedbacks from our associates on those training programs. And then engagement scores at the end of the day is really building the best team. And that effect will touch your stock price and you can eventually measure stock price.
Miriam Cross (28:49):
And looking forward, Kim, what are the skills of the future? What should people in this room be thinking about?
Kim Bozzella (28:57):
So I'm sure you haven't heard about this thing called AI. We should all be thinking about it. So I would say it's probably right now the most talked about, and I'll call it a skill, but a technology that is affecting and will be affecting everyone. I think you'll read, people say it's still going to eliminate jobs and it's not really going to eliminate, right? I tried to think of the right story for this audience. And the example I could find was, if you think about back in 1990s when ATMs became pro, it was all about, well, tellers are all going to lose their jobs now that ATMs are everywhere. And the study showed that initially you needed less tellers, but what happened then is the branches themselves became more cost effective, there were less tellers in there. So then the bank said, well, we can use that money and put out more branches.
(29:47)
So then branches spread smaller, more effective branches, which then needed more tellers. Now the tellers were doing much more complex work. So with the introduction of the technology, it shifted the jobs. I think that's where we are with AI. It will absolutely make us, it could make us in the work we do much more effective and productive. And so as leaders, we need to think through what are the activities in our organizations that AI can impact? And then think through, okay, so who will that impact and what are those adjacent skills that those folks can gain so they can do other work or they can expand what they're doing and have that role expand. And we should encourage our people to think about how can AI make what I do better faster and give me more time to do other things. So I think it is probably one of everyone wants to talk about it, chat pt. And it's important. And I think it's important we encourage our organizations to think about it and think how it helps in both the product development for our clients, but also just our own productivity as an organization.
Miriam Cross (30:58):
Short answer AI.
Kim Bozzella (30:59):
If I get to pick one, I'll say AI.
Miriam Cross (31:01):
Alright, that brings us to time. Thank you all so much. Thank you.