10
THE FUTURE OF LEARNING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
THE FUTURE OF LEARNING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
2
1950 Turing Test1964: System/360
1990:System/390
Server/Host 1972:SAP19
77:PC
1969:ARPANET 1999:IOT, M2M
1999:Salesforce.com20
05:W
eb 2
020
06:A
WS
2008
:iPho
ne
1991
: Pu
blic
Inte
rnet
1994
:Am
azon
1997:Big D
ata
2007:IBM D
eep
Blue20
10:S
elf-d
rivin
g C
ar
2010:Sales of PC Peak
2014
, IDC
:4.4
Zel
taby
tes
of d
ata
Publ
ic C
loud
Main
strea
m
The entire financial services industry is rapidly approaching a tipping point. New digital technologies, demographic shifts, and new competition are combining to form a perfect storm of disruption. The final outcome of this storm is uncertain, but one thing is clear: when it’s over, this industry will be very different.
New technologies are at the heart of this change. Revolutionary new tools like artificial intelligence, the internet of things, extended reality, cloud computing, and quantum computing are sparking a step change in financial services. These technologies are progressing from inception to maturity in less than 10 years. They are pushing the world into a new industrial revolution, argues economist and World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, one characterized not only by massive change but by massive change at extraordinary speed.1
1950Time
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2030 2040Today
A MOMENT OF CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES
WE ARE SEEING AN ERA OF UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE DRIVEN BY TECHNOLOGY
“With technology accelerating at a breathtaking pace, companies need to upskill their people at greater speed and scale to avoid being disrupted by competitors. Accomplishing this requires creating a culture of continuous learning that empowers people to build new skills.”– Bhaskar Ghosh, Chief Executive of Accenture Technology Services
On their own, each of these new technologies would likely cause significant change to financial services. But, as the illustration below from Accenture Research demonstrates, they are not arriving in isolation.
As they hit the market in rapid succession, these “New Digital Age” technologies are compounding one another’s impact, creating combinatorial opportunities for innovation and disruption. The financial services industry is in the midst of a period of unprecedented change and innovation.
Mainframe
Client-Server and PCs
Web 1.0 eCommerce
Web 2.0, Cloud, Mobile
Big Data, Analytics, Visualization
IoT and Smart Machines
Artificial Intelligence
Quantum Computing
One of the most striking impacts of this change is that technology is not only automating repetitive tasks but also those that require cognitive thinking. Machines are rapidly acquiring the skills to perform routine tasks, putting some workers at risk of being left behind.
The industry cannot afford this. Five different generations are part of the workforce right now, but the OECD projects that between 2011 and 2029 no fewer than 78 million Baby Boomers will have retired. Relatively fewer people are in the pipeline to replace them.2
The need for the industry to rapidly reskill its workforce before technology renders their skills obsolete, can be thought of as a race. In fact this situation has often been described as the “race against the machine,”3 or a “race between education and technology.”4
And the stakes in this race are high. Economic analysis from Accenture shows that America could forgo $975 billion in economic growth in the next decade if it can’t meet the demand for new skills in the New Digital Age.5 For individual financial services firms, winning the race can unlock new revenue streams, business models, and talent sources. It can drive competitive advantage. Failing to keep up, on the other hand, can mean forfeiting market strength.
So how can financial services firms meet this challenge? Incremental changes to education and corporate learning systems won’t cut it. The time is now to build a culture of lifelong learning.
CULTIVATING LIFELONG LEARNING IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES WORKFORCELifelong learning empowers each member of the financial services workforce with the tools and encouragement they need to quickly master new skills “just in time”, at the speed of the future. Achieving it means constructing learning systems so that the workforce learns because it wants to, not because it has to —because the learning systems are so engaging and powerful that they pull learners in.
This is rapidly becoming a market necessity for financial services firms, as a workforce that can keep up with the pace of the New Digital Age may be the most important asset of all in this age of disruption. Yet cultivating lifelong learning, as with any major change in an organization’s culture, is a considerable challenge.
Bringing lifelong learning into your organization starts with understanding how the workforce learns. Modern neuroscience has revealed that the brain continues to make new connections throughout adulthood. The belief that older adults are unable to learn is unfounded.6 Research has shown that each learning experience creates new neurological pathways or configurations in our brain, and that the number of new pathways possible is limited only by the effort of the learner — not their age.7
3
4
This is not to say that learning for adults is the same as learning for developing minds. Any learning system for the workforce needs to account for the busy lives of its learners. The best way to do this is also a powerful learning technique in its own right: microlearning.
Microlearning entails breaking up large, complicated concepts into small chunks that easily fit into the schedule of a busy professional. While simple in theory, breaking down complicated material into small lessons without losing any crucial transmission of knowledge is a deep field of expertise in its own right. But done correctly, deep field microlearning is an indispensable part of cultivating lifelong learning in adults.
Effective learning in adults also requires the right learning approach: experiential learning.
Experiential learning is active, immersive, and based on real-world experiences. It encourages learners to experiment and incorporates teamwork and other social interactions. Familiar examples include apprenticeships, design thinking workshops, simulation tools, virtual reality, and on-the-job training. Experiential learning has been shown to be remarkably effective for teaching adult learners.
For instance, in a recent study conducted by Accenture and MIT, a standard training video was shown to 99 Accenture employees. The employees were divided into four groups. One group simply watched the video. Another watched it and had a spontaneous, unstructured discussion afterwards.
The other two groups were subjected to experiential learning interventions. One group watched it and afterwards had a structured discussion guided by an instructor. The final group were given test questions throughout the video. In follow-up memory tests, the structured discussion group scored 25 percent higher than the first two groups. The interpolated question group scored 26 percent higher.8 Another key insight being applied to learning is Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s idea of “flow”— the intense experiential involvement of a learner in the moment-to-moment learning activity. The human brain learns most efficiently when in a state of “flow,” researchers have found. Learners in a state of flow are completely immersed in the task at hand, functioning at their fullest capacity with fully invested attention.9
4
WHAT IS FLOW?
5
“…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University10
With the right platform, financial services firms can deliver similar results in empowering the workforce to reskill itself. SO, WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO DELIVER EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN THE NEW DIGITAL AGE? Key attributes of a cutting-edge platform include:
• Delivers content in “byte sized” chunks of microlearning that can be deployed “just in time” and consumed quickly.
• Accessible at any time, anywhere, on any platform.
• Social, so learners can share progress and make recommendations for peers.
• Context-sensitive and adaptive to the needs of individual learners.
• Curated by subject matter experts to leverage the best available knowledge.
• Gamified, to encourage a sense of fun, achievement, and friendly competition.
• Delivering just the right levels of challenge and engagement to create a sense of “flow” in learners.
What does this look like in practice?
6
In 2015, Accenture found itself in a situation that will be familiar to financial services leaders today. New Digital Age technologies were rapidly redefining the nature of work and accelerating the pace of social and institutional change. What the workforce needed from Accenture and what Accenture needed from its workforce were both quickly shifting. Technology was developing faster than our talent models could adapt.
The race to keep up with the machine was starting. We realized we were at risk of falling behind. It was easy to imagine cutting-edge technology and demographic shifts transforming from opportunities for growth into headwinds that would undermine our ability to compete. In response, we sat down to design and build a learning tool that would prepare our workforce for the 4th Industrial Revolution. We called the new learning experience platform the Future Talent Platform (FTP).
“Our interactive, customized learning platform tailors curricula to the specific needs of each company or individual. We crafted a scalable, cost-effective approach for a new era of learning that puts the spotlight on ‘learning anytime, anywhere’ through digital technologies.” Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership and Human Resources Officer, Accenture
A FAMILIAR SITUATION. A POWERFUL SOLUTION.
We began by defining our key success factors. From an organizational perspective, we knew our new learning experience platform had to be:
• Focused on creating business value. Learning for its own sake is a wonderful thing, but as a publicly-traded company, Accenture needed to make sure that its learning investments were generating maximum returns.
• Easy to update and change. Our learning platform needed to help us keep pace with the speed of digital, not slow us down. Updating the platform with new material had to be fast and straightforward.
• Tailored, targeted, and time-efficient. We knew that a “one size fits all” learning approach would not work for our diverse workforce. Our platform had to reach each learner on their channel of choice, in a way that drove engagement and made good use of their time.
• Adaptive. We needed a platform that would improve itself over time as learning requirements continued to evolve.
• Continuous. We wanted learning to permeate every part of the workforce’s routine — not be a one-off event. Learners needed to be able to learn what they need to know, right before they need it — even if that’s in the middle of the work day.
6
7
We also wanted to combine the latest insights from learning and neuroscience research with the power of New Digital Age technology. For individual learners, we wanted to create an experience that was:
• Highly engaging, to increase uptake and help adult learners experience “flow” while learning.
• Personalized by artificial intelligence for each learner based on their preferences and learning history.
• Powerful, with content curated by leading subject matter experts.
• Structured to fit into the schedule of a busy professional and enable microlearning to make the lessons stick.
• Easy to access at the time and place of the learner’s choosing, whether that was in the office right before a meeting, while traveling or commuting, or at home on the weekend.
• Made transparent through social tools and gamification, with badges and certifications for learners to display on their public profiles.
• Endorsed and promoted by leadership.
• Driven by the latest technologies like cloud computing.
39%
63%of employees have received certification in the technologies of the New Digital Age
of employees have certification for “rotated to the new”
Pursuit of a system that ticked all these boxes eventually lead to the creation of the Future Talent Platform, which has become the most popular way to learn at Accenture.
• 63 percent of all employees (290,000) have completed training through the FTP and received certification for being New IT conversant in the technologies of the New Digital Age.
• 39 percent of employees (180,000) have certifications for “rotated to the new”.
• The latest quarterly trends show that over the last year the number of employees who have become conversant in New IT has grown from 175,000 to almost 300,000, while those who have rotated to the new has grown from 110,000 to 180,000.
• Most importantly, usage trends from the last year also indicate significant and growing adoption of the platform.
At a strategic level, the rapid and wide-ranging reskilling that the FTP has enabled played an important role in Accenture’s agile pivot and strategic shift to high-growth, high-margin lines of business. Further, our people are now positioned to succeed in the race against the machine, and our learning platform plays a significant role in that. We also now offer the FTP to our clients, so they can foster learning cultures in their own organizations and rise to the challenges of the New Digital Age.
The FTP helps Accenture track the impact of its talent strategies at every level. Learners, leaders, and talent decision-makers can all access analytic dashboards and automatically visualize key learning data at a glance, so they can track KPIs easily. These features make it easier for Accenture to make smart choices about talent interventions.
8
After designing and building the FTP, Accenture is now offering the Platform to financial services clients to help them build intelligent, agile businesses.
The FTP helps workforces move away from traditional training and reinforces a culture of lifelong learning, where each learner owns their individual development, and pursues it with passion.
It helps FS clients reimagine both the learning experience and their overall workforce transformation strategy. It is a scalable, cost-effective approach for a new era of learning that makes learning possible anywhere, anytime, and offers a proven, easy-to-implement path to success in the development of the workforce of the future.
In the New Digital Age, financial services firms will need to change, or they will be changed. The Future Talent Platform will help you transform your workforce and control your own destiny.
The transparency of the platform also encourages each learner to make time for learning and to “own” and direct their learning by making the return on investment clear to them. When there is no confusion about the value of a new skill and how it will impact a learner’s career, the learner is more likely to engage with the learning system.
The FTP plays an irreplaceable role in Accenture’s business and its long-term strategy. It helps us to think differently about talent. We can identify upcoming skill shortages earlier than before and figure out how to address them before they impact our performance.
THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE TALENT PLATFORM
ACCENTURE’S FUTURE TALENT PLATFORM OFFERS FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS AN ENGAGING DIGITAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
PERSONALIZATION
COLLABORATION
Personalized learning powered by AI
Social engagement and collaborative learning
CURATIONContent curation from a range of sources
ON-DEMAND
INSIGHTS
Anytime, anywhere, any- device learning
Progress tracking to enable change
9
ABOUT THE AUTHORBridie Fanning is a business transformation HR executive operating in both senior consulting and CHRO roles with a 30-year track record of revitalizing companies to accelerate profitability and growth. Her expertise lies at the intersection of digital and talent that drives improved business outcomes, aligns organization culture to strategy and brings organizations into the digital age. Clients worldwide engage Bridie to increase the effectiveness of their people capabilities by creating differentiated talent strategies, strengthening their strategic HR capability and transforming global operating models leveraging innovative technology and improving service delivery. Bridie is a frequent speaker globally on the changing nature of work and building talent capabilities to achieve superior performance. Bridie has a MA in Management, MSc in Strategic Personnel & Development, M.Ed. and Ed.D. in Corporate Education. Bridie completed her doctoral dissertation “How Companies are Adapting Learning for the New Digital Age” at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education co-designed and developed with the Wharton Business School. Bridie recently served on the board of the Milwaukee Public Museum and was Chair of the Human Resources Committee. She also volunteers for medical missions with One World Surgery at the NPH International orphanage in Honduras.
CONTACT THE AUTHORDr. Bridie FanningManaging Director, Talent & Organization Practice Lead, Financial Services, North America [email protected]
9
REFERENCES1. https://www.weforum.org/about/the-fourth-
industrial-revolution-by-klaus-schwab
2. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/age-ageing-and-skills_5jm0q1n38lvc-en
3. Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2011). Race against the machine: How the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Lexington, MA: Digital Frontier Press.
4. Goldin, C. D., & Katz, L. F. (2009). The race between education and technology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
5. https://www.accenture.com/ca-en/insights/future-workforce/transforming-learning
6. King, K. P. (2017). Technology and innovation in adult learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
7. Luo, L., & Craik, F. (2008). Aging and memory: A cognitive approach. Canadian Review of Psychiatry, 53(6), 346–353.
8. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206250
9. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. New York, NY: Springer.
10. “Go with the Flow,” John Geirland, Wired, September 1, 1996. Retrieved from: https://www.wired.com/1996/09/czik/
Copyright © 2019 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. This document is produced by consultants at Accenture as general guidance. It is not intended to provide specific advice on your circumstances. If you require advice or further details on any matters referred to, please contact your Accenture representative.
ABOUT ACCENTUREAccenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 459,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com
JOIN THE CONVERSATIONRead our blog
