This episode features an interview with John Jordan, Head of The Academy at Bank of America. He has been with Bank of America for nearly 20 years. Under his leadership, The Academy has received over 100 awards including becoming the first JD Power Certified Career Development organization. In his current role, John is responsible for serving Bank of America’s over 200,000 employees. He oversees employee onboarding, global learning and skill development for the company. And in this episode, he’s sharing with us how journey mapping the employee experience sets candidates up for success, how to identify candidates who may have otherwise fallen through the cracks, and how they create a lifelong learning experience.
This episode features an interview with John Jordan, Head of The Academy at Bank of America. He has been with Bank of America for nearly 20 years. Under his leadership, The Academy has received over 100 awards including becoming the first JD Power Certified Career Development organization. In his current role, John is responsible for serving Bank of America’s over 200,000 employees. He oversees employee onboarding, global learning and skill development for the company. And in this episode, he’s sharing with us how journey mapping the employee experience sets candidates up for success, how to identify candidates who may have otherwise fallen through the cracks, and how they create a lifelong learning experience.
Quotes
*”A best practice is thinking about every process that you have as a company with real granularity, spending time journey mapping experiences that you want to have. That means onboarding through your training experience. If you're not spending the time journey mapping everything from the email that they get when they get there day one, to that coaching session, then it's probably not happening the way that you expect it to happen.”
*”We really show that we prioritize people's skills and that we are invested in a lifelong learning experience. We really want people to be here to feel like it's not just about where I got my degree or where I graduated from high school. That can be decades ago for some. We want them to feel like they're currently being invested in and learning new skills… So as an academy, we try to make sure that we're building world class programs, not just to check a box, but things that really are tangible and that matter, and that are making an impact… They feel like the company is actually making it possible and investing real, tangible assets to make their jobs better and to make their careers more successful.”
*”We've continued to invest more and more into our people because we see the return on that investment. And the long term impact that it makes on the flexibility of our company and on the careers that our people have.”
*”When people just aren't able to do this function and we've tried training them, we've tried a bunch of different things and it's just not working, sometimes taking a step back and looking at a different way of training that skill, using a different technology or using a different approach is how we solve that.”
*”The thing that's helped me to be successful in this job and in a lot of jobs is [to] create a vision. To really understand that if you want something to happen, it's not going to start with just little incremental steps… without a vision, you're going to stay the same. So I think that you have to challenge yourself and have the courage to not let your fears get in the way of that vision. Not let doubts get in the way of that vision, but really take aggressive steps to accomplish it.”
*”You think about great leaders, great coaches, or great teachers. Sometimes they're the ones who you really don't like at all in the moment, but they're the most honest with you. And so, as a leader, I've found it tremendously important to be very honest with people. And whether or not they like what I'm saying, I tell them the truth with dignity to make sure that they understand exactly what the expectation is, what it is that they're missing, so that they can get better. And I think that if you take the approach where you're going to treat people with dignity and you're going to invest in them with truth, but also to push them to be better at what they do.”
*”In today's world, it'd be easy for us to just look in the traditional sources for talent. And those are still great sources. But I would say that if you really build programs like The academy has that creates a skills-based learning plan and onboarding for anybody, then it opens doors to a lot of people who might have fallen through the cracks… And that gives us the ability to hire so much more broadly, and opens talent doors that we may never [have] found before.”
Time Stamps
*[4:04] The Flight Plan: Get to know The Academy at Bank of America
*[12:57] First Class: Best EX practices at The Academy at Bank of America
*[26:47] Turbulence: EX lessons learned
*[37:16] Advice for other EX leaders
Links
Check out The Academy at Bank of America
Thanks to our friends
This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io