A tailored program for Nordic Investment Bank brought together a diverse group of experts from bankers to lawyers.
Nordic Investment Bank, or NIB, is a specialist organization with some 200 employees from different countries and work experiences.
We pride ourselves in providing extensive professional development for the staff.”
“The staffs tend to stay with NIB for a long time - average length of service is 11,7 years. We pride ourselves in providing extensive professional development for the staff”, says Andreas Nyberg, HR Business Partner at Noedic Investment Bank.
Part of this professional development is Raising the Bar program, tailored to NIB by Aalto University Executive Education.
What was the primal objective for NIB when you started planning this program?
“As mentioned, NIB provides a wide range of professional development for its staff. Most of the courses arranged had been NIB focused, that is focus on our processes, market standards such as bank regulation, due diligence etc.”
“The objective for planning this program was that we wanted to change focus from being NIB oriented to put focus on our clients, what they need and how their business environment looks like that might influence their need for financing. In addition we wanted to plan the outline so that it would strengthen the team spirit and cross-departmental cooperation.”
How has the overall experience and co-operation with Aalto EE been?
“Aalto EE has always had professional and flexible approach to our needs. Executing the pilot program required a lot of detailed work, input from NIB stakeholders and professors. All of this was done in a swift, flexible and professional way.”
The participants really bonded, shared experiences and their challenges working in different functions of the bank.”
“In addition to the outside in perspective the program has has provided I think that the self-development module in connection to coaching gave the participants some insights into their own personal development.”
The focus of the program has been to better understand your clients and their needs, main goals to strengthen professional identity and raise participants' professional competence, and to broaden understanding about the business environment.
Have you achieved these goals?
“We had a very diverse group of participants with very different areas of expertise, some bankers, accountants, lawyers etc. This really tested the overall content for the program, we wanted everyone to get new insights out of it after participating. In my opinion we succeeded in this. A very good benefit that came out of the program one top of the new insights and skills provided by the professors was that the participants really bonded, shared experiences and their challenges working in different functions of the bank. I believe we succeeded in reaching our objectives.”
How has the program helped participants to better understand clients and the business environment?
“By providing the participants with a different angel, that is from the customers perspective, they were forced to think outside of their own fields of experiences. Basically they were challenges by having to think outside of the box. Also, since the modules were very different which meant that some of the participants were experts in some fields, this gave room for in-house experience to be shared openly with the group and thus helped some to put what was learnt in a NIB context.”
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