Empowering Workforce Transformation

The bank’s increasing presence and goal to stay ahead of the technology curve mandated continually finding ways to improve its tech processes. The bank sought scalable solutions to upskill its existing tech workforce in India. Additionally, it wanted a tool to identify the precise reskilling needs for each employee and build a development plan to achieve the digital transformation of its tech workforce.

While the bank had clarity on its tech workforce upskilling goals, translating them into actionable strategies was challenging. Thus, the bank required a strategic partner to understand and execute its objective into a holistic upskilling plan across multiple tech roles. The bank needed assessments for specific tech domains and competencies. The assessments had to match global standards to determine the extent to which the employees needed to be developed further.

Therefore, an active strategic partner that could employ innovation to deal with its challenges was essential. The challenges included:

• A tool to identify training needs

The most significant concern was not possessing the right tool that could help identify role-centric training needs in the organization. The company did not have the ideal methodology to deal with them. The company wanted to focus on evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of its employees to nurture and strengthen them holistically. The idea was to create training and development plans that could help empower every individual in the organization.

• Remote scalable solution

The bank was based out of the UK. Therefore, it wanted to execute its digital transformation operating remotely. Thus, it wanted to identify the necessary technology platform to scale its development initiatives. Besides, the assessments needed to match the global standards and recommend courses for upskilling of each employee.

Mercer | Mettl gained detailed insights into the bank’s tech development strategies and devised a scalable upskilling plan that was to be executed remotely. Mercer| Mettl approached the problem statement with two objectives.

Assessment frameworks designed by subject matter experts

The first objective was to understand the tech roles that the bank was targeting to upskill. After gaining insights into the requirement, Mercer| Mettl’s team of subject matter experts defined every sub-competency required for each of these roles and designed assessments considering the levels for which they were being administered. These role-specific tech assessments combined application and knowledge-based problems that needed to be solved in real-time.

Here’s how Mercer | Mettl helped the bank in building holistic assessments for each of these roles:

Mercer | Mettl offered a two-layered innovative solution, including MCQ-based questions combined with real-world coding problems to be solved in Mercer | Mettl’s Front-end Simulator and Back-end Simulator (Codelysis).

Multiple choice questions-based assessments evaluated domain knowledge

Mercer | Mettl’s coding assessment platform offered an extensive programming test library, replete with 100,000+ technical questions for 300+ skills, enabling the bank to devise impactful assessments.

• A user-friendly and well-defined test interface helped the managers set up the applicants’ exams using multiple question types instantaneously.
• The diversity of the questions helped the bank gauge the employees’ technical concepts in every dimension, along with their future thinking.
• The score-based reports determined the ideal courses to be taken by each employee.

A suite of coding simulators assessed the application-based skills of employees

The following simulators empowered the bank to test real-world coding skills and identify the skill gaps of the workforce.

• Codelysis Simulator

Codelysis is a robust coding simulator to evaluate the hands-on experience and the ability to code in the desired programming language. It comes with a pre-build question library with 900+ questions on 25+ topics, available in 20+ languages. The highlight of the simulator is the Code Playback feature, which shares the full video of code recorded at each keystroke. This allows managers to gain a holistic understanding of the employees’ thought processes.

Click here to learn more about Codelysis.

• Frontend Simulator

The Frontend Simulator evaluated the candidates’ ability to implement web designs and solve problems using frontend technologies. The simulator is infused with a minimalistic interface with frames corresponding to editable HTML, JS and CSS fields. It also offers better debugging by highlighting JavaScript errors in a console.

Click here to learn more about Front-end Simulator.

Employed Mercer | Mettl’s Skill Gap Analysis tool to identify development areas

The second objective was to conduct a skills gap analysis at an individual level. A gap in performance and the need to upskill was measured. This critical exercise ensured that the current competencies of the tech workforce were broken down at a team, job-role, and individual level and then matched to the company’s future goals – this forward-looking approach intended to help employees acquire the right skills to reach their full potential.

Fully auto-graded detailed reports gave insight into the current competency levels

The bank could evaluate employees in detail, using the custom scoring logic for both assessment and simulation tests.

• The auto-graded simulator instantaneously evaluated employees on several parameters, such as code correctness, difficulty level, time and space complexities and other vital parameters.
• The accurate test reports offered in-depth analytics of code and programming standards, enabling the decision-makers to predict the employees’ real-life skills at scale.
• A thorough evaluation of the coding potential was free from bias and backed the managers’ decisions with optimum reliability and validity of coders’ actual potential.

Each assessment was backed by proctoring and authentication features to maintain report credibility

A remarkable set of online remote proctoring features added to the value and credibility of the assessment in the remote online setting. A stellar candidate authentication system followed by AI-based proctoring and easy access to recording and reviewing the assessment ensured the plausibility of the test.

• Mercer | Mettl’s facial recognition technology and a 3-point candidate authentication system ensured that the right employee took the assessment.
• Mercer | Mettl’s Secure Exam Browser sanitized the environment by disabling additional browsers, tabs, search engines, ports, etc.
• Mercer | Mettl’s AI-powered suite of proctoring tools ensured maximum cheating prevention, using record and review proctoring on its coding assessment platform.

A strategic approach to assessing and bridging the gaps in the employees’ current skills ensured personal and professional growth. Mercer | Mettl’s transparent, bias-free and time-saving package fully digitized the bank’s technical upskilling and development process. A combination of MCQ-based and simulator coding assessments measured the existing skill competencies. Mercer | Mettl’s detailed reports offered deep insights into the employees’ strengths, weaknesses and development areas, aiding in a lucid reskilling program.

• The bank could reskill 1500+ employees remotely, using efficiently designed coding assessments.
• This highly accelerated reskilling program enabled by Mercer | Mettl’s suite of assessments and skills gap-enabled tools helped the bank set itself on a path of rapid digital transformation.
• The accurate report scores allowed the bank to identify precise reskilling needs and recommend courses to individual employees.