Hatton National Bank ramps up employee training

DGM Islamic Banking and HNB Sports Club President Hisham Ally, HNB Chief Learning Officer Eomal Munasinha, HNB Head of Talent Development Roshantha Jayatunge, HNB Regional Business Head Northern Region Nishanthan Karunairaj, winning team Northern Warriors and digital partner M/s Creative eLearning (Pvt.) Ltd represented by AM Delivery Dilshan Weeraratne

Enhancing the capabilities of its employees through innovative virtual engagements, Sri Lanka’s most digitally-savvy bank HNB PLC completed its flagship development initiative, the HNB Learning Premier League (HNB LPL), recently. 

Modelled after the popular game of cricket, the HNB LPL is an industry-first learning experience that connects with staff on a virtual platform. The initiative aimed to gamify learning, enhance knowledge and cross-functional collaboration, increase digital adoption and encourage senior leadership to create a progressive learning culture within the organisation.  

“As a talent-led organisation, we take pride in creating new processes and systems for our employees to learn and grow professionally. Given that employee satisfaction translates to excellence in service, we were determined to establish a fun and creative learning and development platform. 

“We are proud to state that the initiative has been extremely successful, with 550 players participating in the matches this year. We are delighted to see many staff competing for the top titles,” HNB DGM/Chief Human Resource Officer/Chief Transformation Officer L. Chiranthi Cooray said.  

Sponsored by a member of the senior management, each team competed in matches in the form of digital quizzes and challenges, which tested the players’ technical knowledge of the bank’s products, operations, compliance, information security and bank lending. 

“We believe in making learning enjoyable. When the pandemic challenged the implementation of traditional learning methods, we wanted to innovate ways to continue learning and the HNB LPL was one of those. The response was overwhelming and the knowledge enhancement was clearly visible during the tournament. Forty-six teams, 506 players and over 3300 participants were involved where we saw the role-based certification completion move up significantly. Furthermore, the senior management involvement as sponsors have also set the foundation to creating the leadership inspired learning culture that we aim to create. This is just the start. We will continue to innovate ways to learn and grow.” HNB Chief Learning Officer Eomal Munasinha said.

The teams comprised of 11 players each, with each player contributing towards batting (answering questions) and bowling (selecting questions). The games were held in stages, namely knockout rounds, Super Eight, Final Four and Grand Finals, spread over the year.