At the Saudi Investment Bank, we’ve taken a clear approach to address our skill set needs through a strategic process. We start with our competitive advantage - what are we providing to our clients? What value are we creating? Then we work backward to identify the skill sets needed to deliver that value.
Our promised value is that we are fast and dynamic. Speed is mostly achieved through technology and empowering decision-making, among other factors. At the Saudi Investment Bank, we know that the future is unclear…we do know that the challenges we face may not be the same as those we’ve encountered before. So, we always try to equip ourselves to become an agile workforce.
Agility is translated differently across each department. Agility in risk management is different from agility in credit underwriting and operations. We take that approach and then look at our employees' values, which are also our cultural values.
First, we believe we have to be detail-oriented. That means any decision we make should be based on a solid understanding of the information. I always say to our colleagues, we don’t cruise at 40,000 feet without knowing what’s happening on the ground. Detail orientation is very important to us.
Second, is collaboration. In order to become dynamic and flexible, we have to collaborate. We cannot operate in silos. Training comes in terms of team building, the ability to build bridges, and problem-solving. All of these are important to increase collaboration between different areas in the bank.
Third, would be transparency. This means being clear about your abilities — what you’re good at and where you need development — so that we don’t start something without having the proper skill set or the means to deliver what we’ve promised to our clients.
This is how we approach our training: we take a step back and reverse-engineer it. What do we promise our clients? What does that entail? And what skill sets are we missing? Then, we go ahead and build the necessary training. And there are other examples in the bank, such as building different, separate programmes for each area.
