First Bank leads with First Academy

In today’s ever competitive corporate space, access to skilled manpower remains a competitive advantage. In the Nigerian business environment recruiting the right kind of talent has been fraught with challenges especially as employers have long decried the increasing shortfall in talent fit for the workplace among the teeming products of the tertiary education system.

For business organisations that are not willing to compromise their human capital needs they go ahead taking proactive initiatives. One of such leading institutions is First Bank Nigeria PLC, Nigeria’s oldest bank.

Beyond its active promotion of strategic talent management techniques bordering on employee engagement, employee motivation, and leadership development across all strata of its employees, First Bank in 2012 unveiled the First Academy which is a strategic business academy that is designed to provide the bank with required human capital.

First Academy, an affiliate of Global Association of Corporate Universities & Academics (G – ACUA), and the World Institute of Action Learning (WIAL)  seeks to combine the tenets of corporate training with the intellectual discipline and rigour that underpin academic learning in the Bank.

The Academy is structured along four multi-level schools which include the Foundation School; Treasury, Operational and Credit Schools; Management School and Leadership School. In setting up the Academy, First Bank intended to achieve a suitable and workable framework for a structured competency-based learning and development system and a world-class curricula in areas that are congruent with the requirements to achieving the Bank’s strategic pillars. In addition, the Academy would hone banking skills, build domain expertise within the organisation, and equip staff to compete favourably with global contemporaries.

The First Academy is also expected to offer a formal and systematic mechanism for harvesting the process-specific knowledge and experiences embedded in and reflective of the rich heritage and DNA of First Bank and develop strategic alliances with world-class institutions for the delivery of education and training.

The First Academy has on an annual basis since inception in 2012 churned out graduates that have been properly exposed to universal banking best practices.

Ayodele Jaiyesimi, the bank’s Head of Human Capital Management & Development, in a recent comment about the Academy disclosed that it was birthed from the need for the current Learning & Development Unit in the Human Capital Management and Development department to be fully developed to support growth across the Bank’s businesses and comprehensively address the training needs of the Group.

Jaiyesimi opines that the ultimate focus of the Academy is the emergence of a learning structure built around behavioural standards or competencies required by staff to achieve the Bank’s strategic objectives and business priorities. According to her, “The idea of the academy was conceived as a result of the need to maintain a high-performance workforce that connects with the imperatives of the Bank’s vision and corporate strategies. ‘Talent development has been an integral part of the success of First Bank over the years, making the Bank a constellation of leading professionals in the sector’.

 Bisi Onasanya, Chief Executive Officer of First Bank Nigeria Plc, reiterates the strategic relevance of the Academy. To him “the Academy is committed to attracting and retaining the best human capital available in the banking market whilst a platform is also provided through the Academy to hone the skills, knowledge and capabilities of their workforce for competitive advantage”.

 Globally, corporate academies have long been a means of promoting enterprise learning, and creating functional skills for enterprise growth, shaping and sharing corporate work cultures and creating a talent pool for businesses. Its heightened resurgence in Nigeria’s corporate landscape points to a new strategic awareness of the competitive advantage that the right human capital provides in a competitive global economy, and the dwindling pool of skilled human resource emanating from the country’s education system.

IKENNA OBI and  KELECHI EWUZIE