Stanbic Bank Ghana, as part of its Blue Innovation digital impact program, has partnered with GIMPA on a digital impact program for the youth. The first event in this program was a seminar with a focus on cultivating digital skills among students to improve their chances of employability post university. The panellists at the seminar were, Estelle Asare, Head of Digital Transformation, Akorfa Takal, Head of Learning and Development, Hendrix Glover, Manager, Digital Platforms and George Plange, Lead, Intelligence Automation and moderated by Dr. Joseph Budu of GIMPA.
Estelle Asare encouraged the students to take interest in digital skills because they are in high demand in today’s world of work. She also mentioned examples of young people who have leveraged the benefits of digitization to create employment and wealth. She shared various career options in digital with the students as well as certifications and internship options that can boost their employability after school. According to her, “When people hear digital, they think it’s all technical. However, there are digital skills such as content marketing, marketing user experience and user interface, data and business analytics and many others that anyone can learn and be proficient in”.
She further indicated that students can explore online educational platforms to build these digital skills to complement what they are learning in school. She also shared examples of many young people who have done this and are making a huge impact across Ghana and the world. She also cautioned students that the future of work, will require more than a university certificate and the time to start building these alternative capabilities to give them an advantage ahead of other graduates in gaining gainful employment or venture into entrepreneurship, is now.
On her part, Akorfa Takal highlighted the importance of reskilling and upskilling to remain relevant in the ever-changing digital landscape. She gave examples of the intentional effort by Stanbic to reskill and upskill staff to meet these global digital capabilities required for the bank. She said “At Stanbic when we started evolving, we realized that there were some critical things we needed to do. We began to think transformation and how we evolve to meet the changing demands of our work and our customers. We wanted to be more than a bank and be a one-stop-shop for all financial needs. It was, therefore, critical for our people to have the requisite skills to aid that transformation agenda. This is how we started reskilling and upgrading the skillsets of our people to make them more relevant.” She also shared that Stanbic Ghana has a future-ready curriculum of the bank that was targeted at developing its capabilities for the future of work. She also emphasized the importance of having a growth mindset saying “Having a growth mindset is critical when you want to set yourself apart from your peers. You must learn to open yourself up to new things, be ready to try new things be ready to fail and above all be ready for feedback. This is how you build a growth mindset.”
The Lead, Intelligence Automation at Stanbic Bank, George Plange, explained the importance of intelligent automation and cautioned students that any work that is manual, repetitive and simple to perform and will likely be taken over by automation. He also shared examples of types of jobs that had already started being automated and the impact of saving time and improving efficiencies. He tasked the students to add value to themselves to provide more value to employers as humans than to perform basic tasks which could then be easily replaced by robots.
Hendrix Glover tasked the students to make the seminar a starting point of a renewal of mind that makes them think about what they can do differently to make them develop professionally. He said “This seminar should kick start a process of mind renewal for you. I encourage you to begin thinking about what you can do differently and commit to doing those things. It is in doing this that you can develop. No one can do this for you but you. You must take a decision that you want to be different and work towards it.
In closing the seminar, Dr. Augustina Akonnor, PhD, Dean of Students and Head of International Programs thanked the Stanbic team and expressed her appreciation for the knowledge imparted to the students as well as time taken to coach them ahead of the final event, scheduled for the 14th of November with the presentation ceremony and awards ceremony.
The Stanbic partnership with GIMPA on digital upskilling is part of the bank’s Blue Innovation agenda to promote innovation and digital skills training. The Stanbic Hackathon is a platform that brings together software developers, experts, policymakers, academics, and industry players to discuss the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning and develop solutions to address identified problems in the areas of Agriculture, Financial Technology, Healthcare, eCommerce, Mobility, Internet of things, Education and Communication.
