What are the FCA’s guidelines around training staff?
The rules and guidance set out in the FCA’s training and competence regime states that firms must review employee competence and training needs regularly and must also look at the skills, expertise, technical knowledge and behaviour of their employees in practice.
A diverse and inclusive training program can be an instrumental way of creating a welcoming environment at work. It’s also a way to improve employee satisfaction, retention and productivity.
“We recognise that the financial sector has taken steps forward on diversity and inclusion. But there is much more that needs to be done to create truly diverse and inclusive organisations that meet the diverse needs of those we serve.”
Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) should feature highly on your corporate agenda but before you can truly endorse this, you need to ensure it’s embedded into your learning and development strategy too. Why?
D&I helps to shape your business, and employee training is no exception. Inclusive learning means that all employees get EQUAL opportunities in developing their skills and growing within the organisation.
People have a variety of needs and perspectives. And that’s why our Digital Academies are perfect. A Digital Academy allows you as a business to offer equal training opportunities to all.
Our modern learning management system and training platforms have features that help to build this type of inclusive learning.
“Good practice in qualifications and training looks like this:
– Having a training plan for the forthcoming year, with time scheduled in advance for training events.
– Encouraging advisers to obtain higher qualifications and improve their knowledge and skills.
– Discussing complex cases in recorded training events.
– Using a variety of training and assessment methods for developing competence, such as: sitting a relevant mock exam, product and market training, and practical training, such as mock sales interviews
– Ensuring appropriate examinations get taken and passed within a reasonable timescale.
– Regularly evaluating the effectiveness of training.”
The FCA have clear guidelines in regard to training and have said “We want to ensure that any training is meaningful, not seen as a ‘tick box’ exercise and leads to change” [Source: DP21/2: Diversity and inclusion in the financial sector – working together to drive change (fca.org.uk)]
Our Digital Academy package offers self-paced learning to fit individual schedules and learning preferences. With various content types such as:
Your candidates have access to the flexibility and support they need to develop and grow within your business.
You will also have access to MI reporting tools so that you can measure progress and measure the return on your investment. Firms that are focused on diversity and inclusion as a talent retention strategy could translate the results of their investment on staff retention into cost savings.
A quality training programme can help to maintain an inclusive workplace by ensuring your employees have access to the best learning encompassing a range of methods such as e-Learning, articles and quizzes, exam style question practice as well as on-line training sessions.
Combined with more individually tailored methods, such as study plans and student focussed forums.
Our Academy content is both broad and deep. Providing knowledge, exam technique and skills-based training that focuses on soft skills such as communicating and listening, essential skills for any would-be adviser!
We are celebrating the success of one of our Academy cohorts who all sat and passed R04 first time round!
A combination of all their hard work and effort, plus the BTS R04 materials and support. We could not be more delighted for them.
We will work alongside you to identify training programmes beneficial for your organisation, identifying the learning needs that align with the your D&I strategy by conducting an initial scoping exercise.
From here we can establish the aims of the learning, what’s driving the need, who the intended audience are and what the key learning points to be achieved are.
Our aim is to ensure that training – whether mandatory or not – is not seen as merely a tick box exercise, limiting the impact of the training, but that it’s as immersive and as enjoyable as possible!
Curiosity about what BTS do and how we do it is always appreciated, and it gives us a chance to showcase our amazing resources and support!
Email us with some times and dates that you, and anyone on your team who’d like to join, are available and once we have that information, we can arrange a calendar invite. Alternatively, if you would like to have a free 7-day trial access to our LMS system we can arrange that too 😊
Read our Testimonials page to see how we have supported our candidates reach their goals.
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