Our People

Learning and development

We remain committed to investing in the development of our colleagues so that they can deliver great customer service and results. Our learning and development focuses on the capability and skills needed for current roles as well as those we will need to be successful in the future.

Our line managers play a critical role in creating a positive learning environment, managing and supporting our colleagues to maximise development opportunities and embed learning to drive results. Developing and strengthening management capabilities remains a priority, along with personal learning plans built around the specific learning and future needs of our colleagues. Our business-focused learning programmes include critical business capabilities such as financial, risk and relationship management which enable us to support our customers effectively.

Corporate University

We have one of the largest corporate universities in Europe, which delivers a range of business-focused learning programmes. In addition to internally developed content, the university continues to work with best-practice suppliers to develop and deliver learning. The availability of programmes carrying relevant external certification provides colleagues with performance benchmarks and portable qualifications. We also support a range of business focused and developmental professional qualifications.

A range of delivery media is used including highly successful on-line modules and face-to-face workshops to support skills development. In 2008 the university website, which is accessible from both the corporate intranet and Internet, received over 4.2 million visits (33 per cent increase on 2007) and over 780,000 on-line assessments were completed. The learning environment in our Group Learning Centre has also been upgraded to further enhance our ability to meet the changing development needs of our leaders and managers.

We now deliver an average of 2.9 days formal learning per full time equivalent (FTE), an increase of 26 per cent on 2007.

Training days