Senior Manager Learning & Development

July 2016 – Euromoney magazine gave ING an award for Western Europe’s Best Digital Bank. “Unlike some banks, ING’s investments in digital banking are yielding very real results,” the magazine said. This is an accolade for the bank’s transformation towards consumer-centricity. An important enabler of this transformation is employee and leadership development.

About ING

The bank offers retail and wholesale banking services to customers in over forty countries. Two years ago, CEO Ralph Hamers announced the Think Forward strategy, which puts customer-centric innovation at the core of the business. With this plan, ING addresses significant changes impacting the banking industry; from changing customer expectations to regulatory requirements and digitalization. As acknowledged by Euromoney magazine, this strategy-led transformation is currently in full swing. ING is turning into the next generation digital bank, with a differentiating customer experience enabled by a streamlined organization, operational excellence and an enhanced performance culture. This transformation is propelled by employee development through tailored training programs.

The Talent & Development Community of Expertise

ING employs over 52,000 people worldwide. To keep its transformation on track, all employees are offered relevant training and development programs. Its targets are the adoption of new skills as well as development of a new mindset and cultural change. The training curriculum is defined at a global level by the Talent & Development Community of Expertise (CoE), based at the ING HQ in Amsterdam. This CoE is led by Rob Robertson, who joined ING in December 2014 from Citi, and reports directly into Global Head of Talent & Learning Maaike Westerhof.

Evidence-based learning

Robertson: “In terms of Learning, the organization has seen a lot of changes over the last couple of years. One thing that is consistent across business lines and geographical areas is the fact that the commitment to L&D remains very high. Over the next 18 months, we will work hard to focus our efforts to increase the influence of L&D on the business.” ING’s approach is strictly evidence-based. “Believing what the industry says about learning is not good enough. We want to change what the industry says.” This means that the effectiveness and efficiency of programs and training material will be evaluated across several levels. Robertson is closely involved in defining the programs as well as the framework for measuring effectiveness. In order to roll out a global strategy for Learning & Development, Robertson is attracting a new member to the CoE: a Senior Manager Learning & Development.

About the vacancy: Senior Manager Learning & Development

The Senior Manager Learning & Development will be taking the lead in the design, development, delivery and optimization of ING’s key strategic learning initiatives for around 7000 executives in 42 countries. There are a number of aspects the Senior Manager Learning & Development will focus on in order to achieve tangible results:

1. Identifying needs – in light of the Think Forward strategy, the Senior Manager will identify, analyze and align business requirements and learning needs of ING executives the world over. The research and alignment phase will be in close cooperation with the global HR community and HR leaders across all countries.
2. Developing the Learning & Development organization – based on previous experience and evidence-based approaches, the Senior Manager will contribute to the design of a world-class Learning & Development framework that fits in with the bank’s needs. They will present recommendations to the board and, once approved, play a crucial role in building the organization from scratch.
3. Program development – while building said framework, the Senior Manager will also be in the lead when it comes to defining the training curriculum for 7000 executives around the world and conceptualizing global programs for this target audience in line with the Think Forward strategy and business needs.
4. Program execution – the Senior Manager takes the lead in running large global programs such as the Think Forward Leadership Program.
5. Stakeholder management – a major part of execution will be bringing national organizations on board with the new centralized leadership programs, which will replace existing local initiatives. Needless to say, people skills are crucial.
6. Marketing & communication – the Senior Manager will communicate program objectives, content and planning to the HR community. Moreover, they will enthuse business management and users, in order to create commitment to and understanding of learning programs and objectives.
7. Evaluation – A crucial step in creating a future-proof Learning & Development organization is to evaluate the progress of implementation, establishing the effectiveness of learning programs and using gained insights to optimize the program.