At MDA Training, we specialise in experiential tailored training solutions designed to help organisations improve their financial and operational performance.

We spend time to gain a thorough understanding of your company and your organisational needs to ensure we create training programmes that will benefit your employees, and help you achieve your specific goals with immediate and measurable results.

Our creative in-house team have years of experience creating training solutions that are set in the context of our clients’ work environments.

Our learning solutions are carefully designed to ensure they build on an employees’ existing skillset and create a sustainable learning environment.

One of the sectors we have extensive experience with is the banking sector. As a fast-moving industry that is highly regulated and highly competitive, the benefits of well-designed, up-to-date and focused training and development interventions is key to staying ahead of the competition in terms of recruitment and retention of talent.

Leveraging your on-boarding programme to help attract talent

A company's employees are often the greatest asset of the business. Which is why the recruitment process often takes considerable time, especially with future talent initiatives such as early careers.

Investment into attracting and recruiting suitable candidates is becoming more and more competitive especially in the early careers market as banks seek out the best talent, from a widening range of sources, not just the top universities.

Offering a comprehensive and exciting development programme at the start of a banking career for an aspiring young professional can often be the difference between choosing one bank over another.

Alongside the benefits of utilising a well-designed early careers programme to support the recruitment process, studies have shown that companies who actively develop their employees see improved company performance compared to companies who do not.

Training your staff demonstrates a dedication that is paid back by employees who are more engaged, more efficient, and competitive.

With 93% of employees choosing to stay longer in companies that invest in development, you can also expect to see 41% fewer absentees and a 17% higher productivity in actively engaged employees.

This echoes the importance of a comprehensive, well-designed early careers programme to help in the engagement and retention of young talent in your bank.

Higher retention and lower turnover rates

With investment banking jobs having one of the highest turnover rates in all industries, retaining staff within this area of the financial services industry can be challenging.

However, training has shown to counteract this, with career development opportunities offering a sense of loyalty and a sense of worth within their positions, resulting in a 59% lower turnover rate.

Training future leaders

Providing new hires with the skills to lead in the future is essential for the continued growth of a bank. Interpersonal skills development should get as much focus as the technical skills set, and likewise they should not be delivered in isolation and instead interwoven into the learning content and delivery throughout.

For example, to deliver a customer centric service to clients requires both technical knowledge and expertise in banking products as well as interpersonal skills to listen, question and respond in the right way.

Developing these skills is essential in the on-boarding and induction process of an early careers programme, and should be further developed in a well-structured Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme that builds the right mix of skills as employees grow in experience and take on more responsibilities.

Increase in workplace engagement

Quite often, early careers positions provide the opportunity for new hires to rotate across a number of business areas and projects gaining different insights and understanding of the bank.

The variety often helps increase workplace engagement, and supported with a robust CPD programme that new hires can access on-demand, can help bolster employee engagement, empowerment and retention.

Young talent can bring a fresh solution to a business situation or challenge, and so supporting them as their careers grow can yield greater workplace engagement and results.

How we work

With early careers on-boarding and inductions being one of our specialisms, we can help you attract and develop new talent with our expansive range of engaging and unique simulations, activities, workshops and digital experiences.

Attraction and recruitment of diverse young talent

You can simply utilise on our simulations to help enhance a recruitment event. Or working in partnership with you, we can design a bespoke recruitment event to support your drive to attract new hires from a diverse mix of backgrounds, utilising a number of our solutions.

Our expertise includes insight and recruitment events for BAME, LGBTQ+, Women in banking and young talent from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Early careers on-boarding, inductions and development

Early careers on-boarding is a key initiative in the year and often takes months to organise and plan. We have considerable expertise in early careers on-boarding, inductions and development - including school leaver programmes, apprentice programmes, intern programmes and graduate programmes.

We bring a fresh approach to early careers training and offer a highly interactive and experiential learning experience for new hires.

Just like our recruitment events - you can choose to simply blend one of our solutions into your existing programme to help enhance a specific area of your programme.

Or, in partnership, we would be happy to work with you to tailor an early careers solution to your needs that draws on a range of our simulations, activities and digital experiences.

One of our more popular banking simulations is our Run the Bank Simulation. This simulation can be tailored to reflect your bank including your business areas, products, values and leadership behaviours offering a really practical, relevant and engaging learning experience for new hires joining your bank - one that gets them networking right from the start.

And depending on your needs, our Run the Bank Simulation, along with all of our other solutions, can be run virtually, in-person or hybrid - providing peace of mind should your plans need to change.

What to expect from our on-boarding programmes

Our on-boarding programmes consistently receive outstanding feedback from clients and their new hires. We have an innovative approach to creating onboarding programmes that focus on learning by doing - getting new hires engaged in the learning right from the start.

Our specialist team is highly experienced in designing early careers programmes, especially at scale and rolled-out across multiple countries and time zones seamlessly.

Contact us here to explore how we can help you with your early careers recruitment and development needs.