I recently caught up with Dr. Becky Burke, VP Learning & Strategic Development at BankWest, Inc., to discuss her team’s challenges, her AI research, her award-winning L&D program, and her Learning Leadership Conference sessions:
Q: How did you get your start in learning and development?
A: When I began working at BankWest full time, I was in a management training program which rotated me through all the different departments of the bank. In 2006, I spent a year in training, and I just loved it. Eventually, I had to move on to different areas of the bank. In 2011, I worked in IT doing training for some new system rollouts, and again, found I really enjoyed developing and delivering training.
In late 2016 or early 2017, I was at a convention with some members of the organization, and they were talking about the things that needed to be fixed because of training issues. And even before the convention, I kept hearing that we had so many training issues. I wasn’t in training at the time, but I got tired of hearing about it, and I thought somebody needed to do something.
So, I proposed to management that we pull training out of HR and create a stand-alone department in order to focus on rebuilding our training program. We did that and, over time, turned it into a holistic L&D function.
Q: What are your current responsibilities in your role at BankWest?
A: I oversee the Learning and Development function, the strategic plan, and work with our CEO on charitable giving.
Within L&D, I work a lot with project management as initiatives such as introducing new technology or rolling out new products and services are being developed. This allows L&D to stay on top of any training needs throughout the project development process. I coordinate SME teams to design training programs and lead the L&D Committee. Together, we’ve built some amazing training programs. Other aspects to my job include managing our LMS system, the L&D budget, and supporting and coaching my team.
Within the strategic plan portion of my position, I follow up with those involved in each section of the plan to ensure they are keeping up with deadlines. I also schedule and lead quarterly check-in meetings, coordinate our strategic planning retreat, and provide a progress report to the board every quarter.
For charitable giving, the CEO and I review requests as they come in and determine whether they align with our company’s mission, vision, values, and goals. We also monitor our philanthropic commitments for the year to ensure we are aligned with our annual budget.
Q: What challenges is your team currently facing?
A: We’re currently experiencing a staff turnover and rebuilding period, as a couple of our staff members have left to pursue other opportunities. This has put added pressure on our current staff to maintain our current project load and to manage the new things coming in. It has also given us an opportunity to review our structure and processes to evaluate where we may create some efficiencies.
Outside of staffing shortages, we’ve spent a lot of time over the last several years making sure that L&D is relevant and at the table for discussions and planning, which has been a journey. The challenge we now face is the amount of time and resources required to make sure that we’re keeping up. Currently, we’re working to find a balance between supporting all of the organization’s needs while also delivering an exceptional training experience.
Q: What do you mean when you say, “make sure your L&D is relevant”?
A: The best way to make sure that L&D is relevant is to align our department objectives with the current needs, goals, and strategic objectives of the organization. For example, a current need within our organization is to create a framework for the use of AI. L&D will be helping to lead training for our upcoming launch of Microsoft Copilot with the goal of creating efficiencies within the organization through responsible use of this tool.
Our department has some experience with AI. We use AI in our animated video software to help us create engaging training videos. Our LMS system also uses AI to tailor learning experiences to each learner. Every day, the learner goes in and answers four or five questions. They mark if their confidence level is low, medium, or high. And then the AI learns based on those daily questions and through the courses that they take, what that learner needs to develop, and it sends them stuff that they need so that they can grow their knowledge and confidence in those certain areas. I’m a big fan of AI because it opens the door to so many possibilities.
Q: Your Learning Leadership Conference session is going to focus on your award-winning L&D program. What can you tell me about the program?
A: We have spent a lot of time over the years building a holistic L&D function. When I first started with the department, it was simply basic training. We did onboarding, teller training, and maybe some technical training here and there, but that was really it.
Now, we do a lot of retail-focused training for those in the banking world. We have new account opening training, which we break apart into separate weeks for personal accounts, business accounts, IRAs, and consumer lending.
We also have a 3 1/2-day new hire onboarding program during which we provide a history of the organization, explain their roles, and cover who we are and why we hired them. We introduce them to the entire organization through interactive presentations, meet-and-greets, and videos. We also give them technical skills, like how to log on to their computers.
We have a robust supervisor training program that includes a workshop for new supervisors, ongoing training, and an annual retreat for all supervisors. Additionally, we are in the process of launching a separate leadership development program.
One big thing that we have really shifted is to not do training, just to do training. We want to make sure that it’s relevant and it’s tied into the organization’s strategy and goals. So, if somebody says, “We need a training program for X,” We ask a series of questions: Is the training necessary? Is this a coaching issue or a training issue? How would the training support the company’s strategy, the company’s growth, the company’s goals? And so, we’ve started to align what we’re doing here in L&D to support the overall organization. In turn, the benefit is that we have been on the Training magazine’s Training MVP Awards list for the last five years. We are part of the 2024 ATD BEST Awards recipient list and a 2023 Chief Learning Officer Learning Elite Awards recipient. I think what these awards tell us is that we are doing things right. Through these awards programs, we also receive feedback regarding how we can improve, which we take to heart.
We’re a small organization. We can’t do everything that a national or global organization does, and that’s okay. What we have been able to do is identify areas for improvement, such as tying our training to the company’s goals and strategy, and that has helped us develop an even better program. We also send a lot of people to external training events. We encourage employees to participate in webinars, schools, and conferences. If somebody wants to get a license or certification, we’ll pay for that. It’s more than just training here; we take advantage of a wide range of employee development tools.
Q: Without giving too much of a spoiler, what can attendees expect from your Learning Leadership Conference session?
A: We’re going to talk about how you can build a training program without a lot of resources. There are many organizations where they don’t have the budget for L&D, or maybe it’s not seen as a priority, which is unfortunate. And so, the question becomes, how do we develop that impactful L&D program when we have that limited budget or limited staff?
The industry that I work in is community banking. We are fortunate to have collaborated one-on-one with other community banks in South Dakota. A lot of them are smaller than we are, so through collaborating with them and using our own experience, we’ve been able to find ways to create impactful learning experiences while being mindful that we have limited resources. So, I’m going to focus on how you can build those experiences even if you don’t have the people, the money, or the time.
Q: What perspective are you going to bring into your Leadership Insight Forum discussion at the Learning Leadership Conference?
A: The topic that we’re going to be talking about is integrating AI into your L&D strategy.
I just earned my Doctorate in Business Administration from Capella University, and my qualitative research was on how to implement AI in learning to boost employee engagement and human interaction. I have gained some great insights through my research that others will benefit from. Some things we’re going to be talking about are how we implement an AI technology, whether it adjusts the learning path, or if it’s generative AI, without compromising employee engagement and the human element?
One of the things I found in my research is that there are a lot of fears around AI because it’s so new, and there’s a lot of risk involved with it. Some of the fears around it are that it’s going to replace people. Organizations need to find a way to use AI productively while keeping employees engaged and supporting work processes rather than replacing the human element.
