Nghiên cứu điển hình
Ngành kinh doanh/công nghiệp
Financial Services
Trụ sở chính công ty
Johannesburg, South Africa
Số lượng nhân viên
46,000+
Vị trí văn phòng
Africa, North America, Europe, Asia
Absa Group Upskills a Future-Ready Workforce Across Africa with Udemy Business
Udemy thúc đẩy kết quả kinh doanh
Chi tiết nghiên cứu điển hình
Absa Group is a pan-African bank that focuses on the story behind the numbers. Every financial decision – whether it’s opening an account or taking out a loan – has a story behind it, and the bank is dedicated to supporting each customer on that individual journey.
This “Your Story Matters” ethos extends to Absa’s employees, too. Its learning and development strategy is centered around building a hub for African talent, and providing people with the tools they need to explore new skills.
Udemy Business has become a central component of this approach. It enables Group Leadership Lead, Nadia ten Cate, and her team to cater to the diverse needs of employees in different roles and markets – all through a user-friendly platform of curated learning pathways. Since 2021, Absa’s Udemy Business licenses have delivered an ROI of more than $20 million, including nearly $13 million in savings on certification prep.
Becoming a pan-African hub for talent
From its headquarters in Johannesburg, South African bank Absa Group has expanded to serve 11 other African countries and launched operations in China, North America, and Europe. With tens of thousands of employees in roles ranging from tellers to tech support, Absa’s learning and development demands are exceptionally diverse.
Historically, most of Absa’s training programs were delivered through in-person sessions. They focused on the functional requirements of roles, generally guiding people toward achieving certifications or teaching them how to use core systems. But in-person training was expensive, time-consuming, and limited participation across the bank’s broad employee base – especially for leadership skills. And with so many different trainers required to reach employees in every country, there was no consistency.
“This approach to training really felt perfunctory – something you had to do for your role,” explains Nadia ten Cate, Group Leadership Lead at Absa Group. “We wanted an approach that was dynamic and democratized.”
The learning and development team at Absa has transformed the bank’s strategy, refocusing on skills development for all employees over rigidly structured training programs that only reach a small percentage of the workforce. Udemy Business now forms a cornerstone of this approach, unlocking curated, flexible learning pathways for all employees.
Group Leadership Lead, Absa Group
Embedding Learning Opportunities in the Flow of Work
Udemy Business was initially chosen as a faster way to get the tech team up to speed for key certifications, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), but it soon proved itself as a quick, on-demand platform for curated learning.
“The success of our pilot with the tech team really helped build the business case for an organization-wide implementation,” says ten Cate. “Udemy provides learning opportunities that fit within the flow of work. It supports a multimodal approach to development where our people can pick up small pieces of knowledge as well as working through full courses.”
Creating a learning and development approach that supports all roles
Udemy Business is now available for all employees, providing the same high-quality, easy-access learning whether they’re at the headquarters in South Africa or a regional branch in Mozambique. Absa has also recently added a group of Udemy Business Pro licenses to its learner ecosystem, unlocking hands-on training features including labs and assessments.
“We really loved the Udemy model because it’s so broad,” says ten Cate. “We knew it could cater to all of Absa’s diverse needs, from our technical people on the IT and digital side to our people in customer service.”
Roles within Absa are organized into “job families” that include Leadership and management, IT, Sales and Service, and Risk Management. Each is represented in a Critical Capabilities Framework designed to help guide learning across the company. Using the Skills Mapping feature in Udemy Business, ten Cate and her team can create skills trees that provide a clear roadmap for each job family. The Udemy AI Assistant then automatically pulls in the relevant sections of different courses to support development.
“Udemy isn’t just a library of courses. It’s a true learning solution; it takes you end to end, from developing the smallest skills to achieving a certification,” says ten Cate.
A collaborative approach to engaging the community
To drive adoption and show Absa’s people the value of using Udemy, ten Cate and her team collaborated with our Customer Success team to launch an initiative called the “Udemy Forum”. “Every month, we get together with the learning community to showcase best practices and encourage people from each region to share stories about what they’ve achieved with Udemy,” explains ten Cate. “And when there are new additions to the platform, like the AI Learning Paths, the Udemy team can introduce them to the community.”
This initiative, alongside other campaigns (including a holiday-themed course selection that includes fun family activities), has led to a huge uptake across Absa. It’s now one of Udemy’s most highly engaged user communities, showing how important it is to embed learning in the fabric of an organization’s culture.
Absa’s ongoing partnership with Udemy’s Professional Services and Learning Architecture teams is further extending the impact of Udemy Business. The Absa Leadership Academy runs monthly learning sessions centered around themes ranging from mentorship to digital transformation. ten Cate’s team identifies the theme for each month and is now experimenting with matching the masterclasses to relevant pathways and courses in Udemy Business, so there’s always an opportunity to learn more.
Group Leadership Lead, Absa Group
A Learning and Development Solution for Every Stage of Your Career
Udemy Business is now woven throughout daily work and ongoing development plans for Absa’s employees.
At every career stage, there’s an opportunity to learn through Udemy. For example, Absa supplements its graduate learnerships – a type of mandated internship in South Africa – with Udemy courses that help new grads get up to speed with the financial sector. Targeted pathways for roles such as tellers and analysts help graduate learners build the skills they need to contribute from the very start.
As a result, Absa’s learnerships have a significantly higher rate of continued employment compared to national averages, creating a sustainable, large-scale talent pipeline – while reducing recruitment costs and effort. And for those at the end of their Absa career, an extended Udemy license which provides access even after their last day of work helps them upskill for what’s next.
Across the eight Critical Capabilities identified by Absa, learning leaders have seen a massive impact with 30,000 employees completing more than 7,200 courses. Leadership and management learning, for example, has ranked among the top performing domains, with 500 to 800 employees consistently and actively learning during steady-state business cycles and more than 1,200 engaging during strategic development phases—driving gains in emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, resilience, adaptability, and more.
As finance technology becomes more complex and AI plays an increasingly instrumental role in the sector, Udemy Business is also helping Absa’s employees develop the critical skills they need to be part of tomorrow’s workforce. “The financial services industry is changing exponentially,” says ten Cate. “Udemy Business helps us evolve with the times, ensuring our people are future ready with the skills they need to use AI effectively.”
Demonstrating the value of flexible, curated learning
Proving ROI is vital for any business initiative. The reporting feature in Udemy Business gives ten Cate and her team key insights into both the financial and practical impact of its courses, while benchmarks help contextualize Absa’s data against similar organizations.
“Udemy’s reporting feature is so important for understanding which skills people are prioritizing, whether they’re technical, business, or personal,” explains ten Cate.
The Group Leadership team produces monthly reports on the top categories and programs in Udemy; that data then feeds back into Absa’s critical skills agenda. “It shows we’re moving in the right direction,” ten Cate says.
This data also demonstrates the savings Absa has achieved with its licenses. With 84% adoption across the company, Absa has saved over $20 million in individual training costs since 2021, with almost $13 million saved through certification prep alone.
Group Leadership Lead, Absa Group
A Constantly Evolving Partnership
“Udemy’s major differentiator is the fact that it’s constantly developing, updating, and improving,” says ten Cate. “The team is constantly working to make learning more effective and engaging – like the new badging programs, for example. There’s always a new feature to explore.”
As the demands of the sector evolve, Udemy will partner alongside Absa to ensure its people have access to the training and skills they need – and ten Cate’s team is laser-focused on what’s next.
“The leadership program proof of concept that I’m working on with the Professional Services team will become the perfect template for testing capabilities in any skill across the business,” says ten Cate. “Udemy Business is going to continue to be instrumental in helping us achieve our skills agenda.”
Group Leadership Lead, Absa Group
Group Leadership Lead, Absa Group
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