The impact of educational technology on training and development in banks : a case study on Nedbank.

Abstract

Recent sustainability and training and development reports show that our banks are increasingly investing in training and development. Nedbank, in 2010 invested 244 million on training, which equated to 39 hours of training per person. Absa Bank increased its spending on training and development from 526 million in 2011 to 606 million in 2012. Standard Bank invested over 358 million in 2011, and 423 million on training in 2012. Their strategy going forward is to focus on other training interventions like e learning in order to decrease classroom based training dependencies (Banking Association of South Africa, 2012). Most banks are already utilising different forms of e learning for certain types of training interventions and also for employee assessment (Banking Association of South Africa, 2012). But the focus going forward is to reinvent training within the organisation by making it more efficient, convenient, accessible and fun with educational technology (Quinn, 2013). The objective of this study was to explore and investigate the impact that educational technology has on concepts like training and development downtime, accessibility with regards to different learning platforms, return on investment (ROI) and organisational culture and learning within an environment like a Bank. In order to answer the research questions of this study, a research strategy was necessary. A quantitative approach was selected and two surveys were manually administered at Nedbank in the greater Durban area. The statistical analysis of the data collected revealed that Nedbank has a strong organisational culture, and educational technology at Nedbank show positive results with regards to cutting downtime, seeing increased ROI, allowing for multiple learner platforms thus increasing training and development accessibility.