Workplace training is always essential to improve their skills and abilities and ensure that you’re offering your customers the optimum service and best representation of your business.
Whether your candidates are graduates or have been in the banking sector for some time, it is important for employers in the banking sector to understand the skills which are absolutely vital and should be identified during any recruitment practices alongside on an ongoing basis.
Excellent communication skills
This should be a given, as with any customer facing role, communication skills are an essential skill which comes in useful when dealing with colleagues and customers, alongside any further stakeholders. The ability to convert complex information into a jargon-free manner whilst remaining professional is key to offering a tailored and exceptional customer experience.
With employees forming the front line of communication between business and customer, they must effectively convey the company ethos and messaging whilst ensuring that the customer can clearly understand the information that has been given to them. Ensuring that the customer leaves the bank or hangs up the phone happy and content with the resolution to their query is critical to maintaining a positive brand association and keeping customers engaged.
Should your employees struggle to communicate easily, whether this is through written or verbal communication, a periodic retail banking workplace training course tailored to your companies requirement, could help to improve their skills.
Problem-solving skills
In an industry such as banking, skills training to better tackle problems solving is crucial to ensuring that employees can look at a situation and decide upon an appropriate solution, often utilising their experiences as a basis for what will be successful or through other channels such as experiential training. Business simulations can offer employees the chance to experience scenarios which may not have presented themselves in the workplace yet, but still, understand the situation and work within the situation to establish the best way to resolve the issue.
When deciphering if a new candidate is equipped with problem-solving skills, managers can ask for examples of when the candidate has taken responsibility for a situation, what the issue was and how they solved it. This will help to demonstrate their thought process and understand how they work under pressure.
Commercial awareness
Commercial awareness is highly important in every industry, although some might argue that in banking it is slightly more crucial. Retail banking training can aim to support employees in better understanding the business and what makes it successful, build and develop a knowledge of the whole marketplace and evaluate the stakeholders and their influence. It can also allow them to pick apart competitor performance and understand the companies business performance in line with rivals.
As a key skill in the industry, retail banking commercial awareness training can help to make the overall business more knowledgeable and build a team of people who can show their in-depth knowledge of the market landscape whilst offering a people focused service.
Time management
Organisation and time management is critical to success in the banking industry. If your employees are struggling to meet deadlines or reaching the goals set, it could be because they struggle with time management. For some this comes completely organically, for others they may need certain software implemented or further training in order to understand how to best manage their time.
Prioritising tasks may not be immediately obvious to some, however, a training programme may be able to help employees understand the importance of a particular task within retail banking. Applying timescales and understanding what activities are time sensitive can support banking employees in better managing their time and becoming more productive.