How to close the skills gap, and to be ready for future needs

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What does your enterprise need to do in order to transform into an enterprise of tomorrow? Which tasks and roles will be obsolete, and which will be created? And, how will you handle the growing skills gap between your current employees and your future needs? These questions are faced by enterprises of all sizes, including yours. Watch the IBM webinar to discover how KBC has responded to these challenges.

The situation at KBC

KBC is one of the leading financial groups in Europe with 42,000 employees, including over 15,000 people in Belgium. Thanks to the average of 19 years of seniority, KBC Belgium’s employees have a lot of knowledge about the company that is difficult to replicate.
However, when faced with realities of digital transformation, KBC quickly realised that 1,400 jobs would become obsolete in the next few years, freeing up 1,400 employees for newly created jobs which they don’t yet have the skills to do.

KBC and IBM: the right approach

While some enterprises might decide that the easiest solution is to only retain employees that have the skills needed for the jobs available and hire new talent to fill any gaps, this doesn’t fit with KBC’s company culture. Instead, KBC partnered with IBM to find a new way to overcome this future skills gap.

IBM’S Digital Talent Platform

The collaboration started by standardising current and future job roles and the skills required for each, including the skill levels. This data was then used to form the core of KBC’s new Digital Talent Platform. It is hosted on IBM’s public cloud, the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business which is supported by the experiences gathered from the more than 300,000 people who already use the same solution.

The platform uses AI to empower KBC employees to develop their skills autonomously via customised learnings that are continuously updated based on the rapidly changing contexts. Employee progress is also monitored and can be steered based on what KBC’s different business lines require, ensuring the right skills are available when needed and nobody is left behind. Furthermore, the platform is completely integrated with KBC’s existing systems for ease of use.

KBC’s opinion

“In a dynamic organisation such as ours, we are constantly creating new assignments, while other employees see their tasks change or even disappear. That is why we continue to invest heavily in the training and skills of our employees. For us, the challenge is to guide our employees in this rapidly changing environment and to link their interests, skills and knowledge to match with the needs of the future. KBC found the right partner in IBM to help develop an AI-driven learning and talent platform that will enable employees to map and compare their current functional and personal skills with the needs of the future and, with KBC’s support, to take the necessary steps and follow the necessary training in time to sharpen their future-proof skills.” Kris De Nul, KBC General Manager HR Human Progression and Portfolio Management.

“Fantastic cooperation with IBM definitely doesn’t feel like a customer-supplier relationship, but like a real partnership. Going far beyond the implementation of a software package, IBM really thinks along with our needs and tries to tailor their product accordingly. At the same time, they also bring in external insights and their own vision, so that they challenge KBC to break through the status quo. In combination with an incredibly rapid evolution in software, this partnership allows us to make leaps forward.” Dimitri Broeckx, KBC’s Project Manager

Want to learn more?

Discover more details about KBC’s experience, including how employees experience the platform and what the next steps are, by watching the IBM webinar “How KBC is addressing the skills challenge”.