Transcript — Banking on Skills: Cara Collective and BMO Bank Partner for Change

The following transcript comes from our webinar, “Banking on Skills: Cara Collective and BMO Bank Partner for Change.” For more information, including video, audio, speaker bios, and additional resources, click here.

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Dee Wallace  00:05

Hello and welcome. I’m Dee Wallace, a senior fellow with the Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute. We are so happy you’re here to join us today for our webinar called Banking on Skills: Cara Collective and BMO Bank Partner for Change. Our conversation today is part of the Workforce Leadership Academy Network, which brings together leaders of local workforce development ecosystems to learn and work together to advance economic opportunity. Before we get started, some tech. All attendees are muted. Please use the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen to submit questions and up vote questions, and please use the chat throughout our time together to share resources, ideas, experiences related to today’s topic. We encourage you to post about this conversation on the social media platform of your choice, and you can find us on all platforms @AspenEOP If you have any technical issues during the webinar, please message us in the chat or email us at eop.program@aspeninstitute.org This event is being recorded and it will be posted on our website and sent out via email, and finally, closed captions are available for your use. Click the CC button at the bottom of your screen to activate them. So let’s get started. So the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program has long recognized the power of cross sector leadership to advance change and our Workforce Leadership Academy supported cohorts of fellows in 20 communities across the country to learn and share together across the for profit, nonprofit and public institutions that make up our workforce ecosystems. These leaders work at the intersection of personal leadership, organizational practice, equity and inclusion and systems change in order to open doors to economic opportunity. Skills-based, talent development holds promise to open more doors to good jobs and build ladders for good careers. Skills-based or skills first approaches broaden the ways in which talent supply meets business demand by expanding sourcing of candidates, defining jobs qualifications in terms of specific skills and meaningful skills, and supporting employees that are in ongoing development and skill building to advance economic mobility. Today, we are so pleased to welcome a wonderful panel of leaders to share their experiences advancing these skills based practices. I’m so excited to welcome Liana Bran, Senior Director of Community and employment strategies at Cara Collective. Paris Roney of BMO Bank, and LaKeita Burns of BMO Bank. We’re also very grateful to have Liana Bran moderating this event. Liana is a Senior Director at Cara Collective, which is a workforce development agency and social enterprise that works to break the cycle of poverty through the power and purpose of work in Chicago. Liana is focused on building sustainable employment partnerships to promote skills based talent ecosystems to increase access to opportunity for these individuals, and she’s also an alumni of the Chicagoland Workforce Leadership Academy. So thank you all for being here to share these experiences. We’re so excited for the conversation. Over to you Liana.

Liana Bran  03:59

Thanks, Dee, and I just have to say, I am such a proud alumna of this fellowship network I have for those fellow fellows out there. I have sat where you sat, and I’m so excited by this opportunity to share a little bit about the work. So first, when it comes to skills based hiring or skills based practices, I think one of the biggest questions I hear from people is, how do you make it real? And when I say, how do you make it real, it’s both, what are those specific practices? What are the specific processes you need to change in an organization to have it take hold? But beyond that, you know, we’ve all heard about the best practice of removing degree requirements when it comes to skills based hiring, but how does that actually change to real outcomes? When do we start to see organizations hiring differently, seeing different hiring outcomes? So it’s for all of those reasons. I’m very excited to host this conversation. With two incredible people, and to highlight the work of an incredible partner, BMO Bank, who’s figured out how to bring this to life. So I also want to share, before we get started, just for a little bit of perspective, Cara has also a really unique vantage point in the story, because our team, Cara Plus, works every day with employers to think about their practices, to think about how they have an impact and ability to reach untapped talent. And as a workforce organization, we get to see what happens when those organizations make practice changes, when they change their practices. And so at this point, working with BMO, not only have we seen those skills based practices taking hold. We’ve also seen the results we’ve seen, and worked with BMO to hire more than 50 people from our talent pool. So again, this story really plays out with all of us here and with our incredible alumna, LaKeita Burns, who’s going to be able to share this story from all of our perspectives. So with that, Paris, I’m going to start with you, and I just want to ask this, this, this question of, where did this story begin? At BMO, right? So we have this excellent case study that we co-produced together, which we’ll be sharing in the chat later in the program, and it highlights this new associate banker role that you created and how you eliminated requirements as a barrier to banking and to entering this industry. So tell us a little bit about how BMO was able to embrace skills based hiring, and tell us a little bit again about where this story started. Sure.

Paris Roney  06:42

So this story really kind of started, and BMore really started as like a back of the napkin idea, something that one of my wonderful colleagues thought about because he had had experience within the workforce development world. So it was really BMO’s opportunity to think differently about how we impact the communities we serve, and how we can combine our business objectives with our social goals, and simultaneously do that through a new approach in hiring. We knew that by leveraging community partnerships, we could develop a really strong pipeline of talent based on the work that they do every single day, then we were able to bring the idea to some of our executive leaders, and that really started to get things done and put it in place, because we needed the support of our or, you know, our executive leaders in order to make this work and in order to make it move forward. They saw the value in creating access to better paying jobs and high road careers through these community organizations, and that was able to spark some sustainable community impact. We also knew that for something like this to be successful, we would need to challenge the perspective of a lot of the stakeholders that are involved in the hiring process. So, you know, bank managers, some of our hiring specialists, we needed to make sure that they understood, you know, what can these skills really look like? What does transferable skills look like at its core, and how do we morph them and understand them in a way where we can make people successful in these roles? And that’s kind of where we started. We looked at our entry level roles, so our associate banker. So I think someone is going to pull up a slide, and we’ll kind of take a look at what we did from a skill perspective. So with Cara, we took a look at the role descriptions. We wanted to make sure that they were accessible to everyone. If you could look at the job description, sometimes they’re really intimidating. I’ve looked at job descriptions and they’re really intimidating. So we wanted to make sure that we outlined this so that it made sense and that people could see themselves in these roles. And by doing this with Cara, we were able to make sure that they understood the core competencies that we were looking for for these roles, and then being able to outline what type of skills they were going to look for in their program participants. This was kind of the result of that. So what you’re seeing is we looked at three really core areas of how we assess skills, the existing skills that people have from either prior job experience or life experience, the ability to learn with our training and support, and the openness and adaptability to change, because we all know that everything changes all the time. So how were these individuals going to continue that process?

Liana Bran  09:36

Yeah, and Paris, you know, something that I I so appreciate because this is now kind of a legend at Cara in terms of how this process unfolded, because people had already done the work right for that job posting, the before state you all had already made the decision that you were thinking about skills differently and thinking about what was most important in terms of the talent you wanted to hire. Works. And then, as the story goes, from what I’ve heard at Cara, we were able to bring that original job posting to some of our participants who we knew would be successful. We knew they had those skills. And we said, hey, you read this job posting, what do you see? Right? And they said, well, there’s these words, like attestations in the job posting, and I don’t really know what that means, and I don’t know if I would apply for a job like this. And so it was through some of that partnership that we’ve really seen not only the power of the skills based practice and the internal decision to hire differently, but then how do you translate that into a job posting, right? And so what I so appreciate about that after state of that job posting is, as an organization, you make so clear not only what people need coming into the organization, but that you’re willing to help people and are going to invest in building their skills over time, so that for us, is just really exciting to see our feedback come to life and what you’re all doing in BMO.  And LaKeita, I’m going to go to you in just a moment, but Paris, I want to stay for just another second and just double click on your call out about the work that had to be done internally to build support for change. So tell me a little bit more about that process, because we know that the story starts in one place. There’s all this interest and desire to make a change, but then it has to flow through different levels of leadership and the folks on the ground that are making it happen. So tell us a little bit more about how that unfolded, and how are you able to get some support for those changes?

Paris Roney  11:38

Yeah, so when this idea was brought forth to our executive leadership. It wasn’t fully baked out. It was literally just an idea, how do we hire differently? How do we leverage community partnerships? Because we did that intentionally to make sure that we could get broad perspectives on how we can make this work. Because for something like this to really take hold and plant roots within our organization, we needed stakeholders within different lines of businesses, within, you know, different realms of thought in order to push this forward. So that’s really how it started. You know, BMore is something that continues to evolve. We continue to seek, you know, opinions and thoughts from not only our community partners, but our stakeholders. And you know, one of the biggest pieces that you know, something I will continue to reiterate throughout this conversation, is multi layers, whether it’s support, whether it’s ideas, whether it’s collaboration, this can’t come from one source. It has to come from multiple leaders. And the way that it’s continued to evolve over the last five years is that we’ve kept all of those individuals, those initial stakeholders, involved, and then we’ve been able to bring in more. And you know, again, it’s across multiple lines of businesses. So we have executive leadership, we have our retail branches, we have community giving, we have legal we have communications, PR, I mean, there’s really not a line of business that BMore doesn’t have someone being able to voice their opinion and their thoughts for us to make, you know, real progress and real change.

Liana Bran  13:08

Yeah, absolutely. Paris, and we will come back to this theme about all these different layers that reinforce this work, right? Because it’s not just about where you started, how you sustain those changes. LaKeita, I want to go over to you because we’ve heard from the employer side of the equation in terms of how they were thinking about bringing more people into the banking industry. But I want to hear about your own journey to get to BMO. So tell us a little bit about what were some of your career prospects or aspirations before you started at BMO and what were some of the biggest barriers, or things that maybe were preventing you from getting into an industry like banking before?

LaKeita Burns  13:50

Yeah, sure. So some issues that I had, like, well, I say issue, a perceived barrier, so I had taken some time off from, you know, the marketplace, to focus on raising my family, raising my children at the time. And I, as admirable as that was, I didn’t realize how much of a challenge I would have going back into the marketplace when I was ready, right? So I applied for the jobs I had on my Excel sheet – it was quite extensive. And when I did get, you know, call that it, I just wasn’t getting the return on my investment that I thought I should considering how much I have, how much time and effort I have put into it. So through just some non traditional methods. I came across Cara, and I was like, you know, maybe I should consider it. But then I saw that they did karaoke there, and it really was a major turn off. So a month later, it came back around again. I was like, You know what? Let me consider. Uh, Kara, I think this may be the right space for me, considering all this work that I’m putting into it and not getting much in return back, and I am so glad I did, because I wasn’t having that success on my own. But Cara really helped connect the dots for me when I went through the cohort, they helped me realize, and, you know, relate that things that I was already naturally good at help fine to some things that were there, but just probably, you know, needed some work on, and allowed me to see that I was already naturally good at finances, numbers, I already ran my household, like to a team the well oiled machine. And these are some transferable skills that I can use, not only in the marketplace, but in a career in banking, and which is something I did not consider. I didn’t think about banking at all, but after some, you know, coaching and you know, some conversations, I really understood that this could be a good career move for me. And also, I have some background from, you know, running my own small business, and I use those skills all the time in helping my customers out on a regular business on a regular basis here at BMO.

Liana Bran  16:14

Thank you so much for sharing the start of your journey into banking. For everyone who’s not familiar with Cara, when LaKeita talks about karaoke at Cara, which actually sounds like an event we should do, we have a tradition at Cara called motivations, which is about celebration and building confidence. So we challenge our participants to literally be at the center of a circle, answer a topic of the day and lead the group in song, and that builds a number of skills, including public speaking and building confidence and being able to command a room. And so speaking of our more morning motivations, LaKeita, can you share about your morning motivations experience that was part of your hiring journey at BMO. And yeah, just fill us in on how BMO also participated at the back half of your hiring experience and saw some of those skills on display.

LaKeita Burns  17:12

Yes, so you know, I could only avoid getting in the circle of motivations for so long. Well, lo and behold, the time that I had to get in the circle, BMO was actually in the room with us. So they were able to see me, my whole just me, in hope, like the holistic version of LaKeita, not just me, just showing up as a representative. They were able to see the real me. So I was able to showcase my public speaking skills and just be myself. I they were able to see areas of me that you wouldn’t necessarily, necessarily see on a resume you wouldn’t see, and possibly in a one on one conversation, because Cara just has this special sauce about it that it just it brings it really, you guys have a great curriculum there, because it really just fine tunes and kind of dig out those things that whether you you may want to hide them and think there may not be something people want to see. And so when you’re in the circle, I was in for the motivations, and I’m telling my story, I answered the question of the day they were able to see things. I mean, they probably would have never seen. And it worked out because our market president for females, where I’m currently employed at now, was there, and at that moment, she told me, after she was like, You know what? I knew I wanted to hire you. I knew you had to come on board with us during motivation, she was like, we’re just doing this because, you know, we have to right? but I already knew you were on the team. This was during the interview, and I was really stumped. I was like, wow, really taken aback, but in the best way possible, because the one thing I was running from is the very thing that solidified my seat here against all of the other competition.

Liana Bran  18:58

LaKeita, I love that. And so a couple of things I want to point out from from the stories you shared, and both sides of the story, you know, Paris, in terms of BMO, what I’m hearing was the start of this journey was really just an openness and curiosity to really examine the skills required to be successful in banking, right, like so we talked about this, this role. Some of what it might look like is a lot of cash handling, but in reality, some of those skills can be taught on the job. So what are we looking for? And then on the other side of the story, LaKeita, you showed all of those skills, and BMO could recognize them when they were full when they were on full display in that motivation circle, right? So it’s both the ability and the openness for a company to consider different skills and what’s needed to be successful, but then also a space for a candidate like yourself to be able to demonstrate those skills. So. It’s exciting to see a little bit about a little bit of that play out on both sides. So this conversation on skills based often starts in hiring, but we don’t always pull it through to just what happens beyond someone coming into an organization coming in the door. So Paris, I want to go back to you to tell us a little bit about beyond the hiring process. How is BMO thinking about helping new hires be successful, to continue to belong? What are some of the shifts you’ve also made in terms of thinking about what comes next after hiring?

Paris Roney  20:38

Sure. So many of the individuals that we welcome through the BMore program have never previously considered a career in banking. I’ve actually talked to a lot of leaders across the organization, and we all kind of consider ourselves accidental bankers, because we kind of just ended up here based on some of the skills we had, myself included. So you know, you begin this journey with some hesitation and some limited confidence around interacting with more tenured colleagues and trying to figure out where you fit and how you utilize those skills that you’re coming in with. And so from the outset, we really see that individual’s first day as the starting point. Yes, we want to hire people, but we want to retain people. It. You know, it’s the beginning of a much longer journey in order for us to create lasting change. You know, through Be More our goal was not to simply just fill positions, but to really, you know, invest in people who could, you know, help meet future organizational needs through growing in their career. You know, in the retail leadership and branch environment, you know that that’s the foundation of where all of this starts. So for us, and you know, for you know, the BMore program management piece, it’s important to make sure we’re engaging those leaders before that first day. Because we are not just giving support to our Be More colleagues. We’re giving our support to the leaders that are getting ready to take in the talent, to make sure that they understand, you know, the training that these individuals went through, the time that they put in, because it is important for them to recognize that these individuals are coming in with, you know, additional skills based on the community partner that they came that they came from. And you know, this dual focus approach really allows us to have stronger relationships with the managers, but also with the employees. And it also builds like that, mutual groundwork and understanding of these individuals, where they’re coming from. And then this is my favorite part. So after about 90 days, we started BMore Bound, which is very, you know, structured post employment programming that you know, they’re very small groups, basically 10 individuals. And this allows for us to learn more about them, their skills, their strengths, their weaknesses. It allows us to help teach them how to act and plan, and then also gives them a bigger view about what’s available at BMO from a career standpoint, that’s how, actually, how I met with ??? was through leading a BMoreBound group. And you know, this program I take a lot of pride in, and every time I have one of these sessions with these individuals, I walk away with a new understanding or a new appreciation for my job, and then also everything that these individuals have had to go through, whether you’re coming through a traditional channel, or whether you’re coming through BMore everybody’s got stuff with them, but how do we use it and how do we bring it forth in the work? So between BMore Bound and then making sure that we’re working closely with our leaders. That’s two parts of it, right? The other piece is continued involvement with the community partner. So every time we take on a new partner, or we expand into a new footprint, we are asking these partners to stay engaged with the individuals for at least 12 months, because it allows us to make sure that the retention piece is top of mind. You never know what’s going on in somebody’s life, and sometimes you just need somebody else’s voice, potentially an external voice, to help put things back on track. An example is, if somebody is having some issues with attendance or tardiness, we’re able to reach out to the community partner and say, Hey, based off your relationship, can you reach out and see what’s going on so we can better support the individual. We’ve seen this happen time and time again, and being able to rely on that community partner allows for both internal and external support for each one of these individuals. And I think it is appreciated by everybody coming through the BMore program like, Hey, I’m not on this island by myself. No career is built by yourself. You know, using your external and internal resources are important for everybody’s growth. So we continue to monitor and align with our BMore bound process, but also everything that goes into those. The first few months that first year, we’re very focused on because we want to keep each one of these individuals that we’re bringing into the organization.

Liana Bran  25:09

Thanks, Paris, you know, when we were talking about this, you know something that I realized, that you know, from an employer business perspective, a lot of what you shared in terms of what that leads to is retention, which is so top of mind for employers. So you know, you can bring that lens to all the different pieces of being. More is focused on hiring and then supporting retention, if you layer on this kind of skills based strategy that we had all been talking about, or kind of how we started this conversation, what seems so important, or kind of core to what makes retention happen, is you’re investing in the skill building of the individuals coming through the program, right? So not just helping with the cash handling or the other technical aspects of the role, but you’re helping people build skills to navigate their own careers, to advocate for themselves. So that’s happening on one hand. And then I also heard you talk about how you’re building leadership skills and management skills of those in the branches as well, right, helping them understand what it takes to be a leader and to support talent in all that means. So I really appreciate it. I appreciate you sharing that. LaKeita, now I want to go and hear from your perspective. Since you started at BMO, how have you seen your own skills evolve, and how has BMO been helpful in that process? What resources and support have helped you be successful in banking.

LaKeita Burns  26:44

Okay, I’ll keep it short.

Liana Bran  26:46

You don’t know we want to hear it.

LaKeita Burns  26:49

So BMO, I work in the largest branch in our market here. It’s a Lake Shore market within BMO, and the level of traffic that we see on a day to day basis can be overwhelming at the, that’s an understatement.  So being that I get to it, I see the blessing in that, right? Because since I work in the largest branch, there’s never a dull day. It’s always something that is new, exciting, fun. And then in that, I get to reach a very large population of people that I probably would have never been able to even have a conversation to or nothing at that personal level. And I get to fine tune those relation, relationship building skills that I already have. But each customer, I get to reset so someone else comes in front of me, if maybe I, you know, felt I’m mentally thinking, like, how could I’ve made that interaction better? And if something comes to mind for the next person, I’m actively working on that with the next customer. And considering we’re in a large branch, I don’t have time to sit in, like, wallow in that, that, Oh, I made a mistake, or this thing goes so well, it’s happening real time, real fast after reset, and it just yes, it can be overwhelming, it can be a lot, but it’s also fine tuning, what I already have to make it something that’s good to great, and I’m really thankful for that opportunity, because there aren’t a lot of branches that have the level of traffic that we have. So I get real time and feedback multiple times in the day to see how I’m progressing, not just for the things that can be measured, you know, on my scorecard like, you know, it’s the quantitative and qualitative. I get both of those on a regular basis, daily.

Liana Bran  28:42

Yeah, it sounds overwhelming. I mean me. I know if I were trying to count and handle money while people are talking, that’s not me. I don’t know if I could be a successful or accidental banker. You know, one thing you shared with me, LaKeita, you talked a little bit about your experience and BMore Bound, and how that was a safe landing space to kind of digest some of what was happening. And maybe without having that space, you or others may not have persisted. You may have said, Okay, I tried banking. We’re done. So I’m curious if you can tell me a little bit more about how BMore Bound. Those, those sessions together. How did that help you be successful in your role and help you have that support?

LaKeita Burns  29:31

Well, I am truly thankful for the Be More program. I highly recommend every employer, company, not for profit. However, you are to please emulate something of that sort, because that was a home away from home within my workplace. So we had parents. Was there we she had also a co host, and other men and women who were sharing a similar position due to BMO, who that we can just come and just be ourselves, right? However, that looked in that moment, if you were having a bad day, if you had something Paris mentioned earlier, like if certain things outside of work that were really negatively impacting you, what’s going on? Let’s talk about it. Okay. Now, how can we do, what can we do to ensure that this isn’t affecting your worth, or how can we best support you? And that is priceless, because you don’t get that in a lot of different places. You just kind of just have to suck it up buttercup, and, you know, show up and perform, and you’re almost like a puppet, right? And people don’t get the whole authentic you. They get your representative at that moment, right? But I cannot form like, it’s difficult to show up and be my best self when I don’t feel my best self. But I had a place where I can like, I’m not feeling great, guys, this is what’s going on. Here’s why. And then I had a whole team that was able to pour back into me to make sure that when I was back customer facing or with my colleagues or management, LaKeita, was able to present her best self. And for that, it’s amazing. It’s awesome. It’s great. I have, I don’t think I have enough additives to explain how amazing.

Liana Bran  31:22

Yeah, and that’s that’s so real, because, you know, in this particular role, you have, like, a really unique opportunity where you’re getting live feedback every day. I heard you say, like, yeah, you’re refining, refining, because you get immediate feedback from dozens of people every day, and in the kind of spirit of, kind of developing skills, building skills, sometimes you have this kind of, maybe soundtrack in your head, if it was just you getting that feedback and figuring out what to do with that, that’s that’s challenging. But having this space really seems like it was, it was an opportunity to process and kind of reinforce maybe some of that skill building that was happening. So just awesome to hear about that.

LaKeita Burns  32:10

Yes, if I had to coin a term for it, I would probably say productive therapy.

Liana Bran  32:15

I think we could all use a little bit more of that productive therapy. Sign me up. I had one more question though here, because you know something else like I heard from you, LaKeita, in terms of what has been helpful in your in your career, in banking and BMO, is the support that reinforcement, and then also exposure to different career pathways and to being encouraged to talk to your leadership about your interest. So tell us a little bit more about what that has looked like and what impact you’ve seen that have on yourself, but also it sounds like maybe that’s impacted other colleagues or managers.

LaKeita Burns  32:58

Absolutely. So yes, BMore was amazing. Well, it’s amazing to have those real conversations when we need it most. But it also shined a light on where we what’s next. Like, okay, this is where we are, but where do we want to go and how do we get there? Here’s the path. So in that we did skills well, strength training, strength Well, skills assessment, yeah, I can’t even think of it. Please forgive me, strength finder. Thank you. There we go. So we did that. We did just to figure out, maybe uncover some things that you had and maybe you weren’t aware of, or maybe some things that you thought you had that you really aren’t that strong in. And let’s focus on the things that can get you where you need to be. And in that process, I learned where there were two paths I wanted to go. Like, okay, so how, which, where can I get to? Like, the fastest, right? Which? Which works best for me. Paris is really instrumental in ensuring that I stayed on task. And she’s like, All right, come on, let it out now, this is what we’re going to do. Here’s especially whatever you want to do. I’ll support you. Like, okay, I hear, I hear her in my self talk, also includes my ear with that, right? And in that, I found that, yes, I have some skills like retail, maybe the route that I need to stay in, and how and where do I want to be in retail, and how do I get there? How long is that going to take? Because when you’re going through these day to day, you know, challenges, it’s easy to just get lost in it and not realize that we have a bigger picture at stake here, right? So just shake it off for just a day, just one day at a time. You know, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, same, same thing, right? So if we’re gonna juggle, of course, right? But in doing so I figured out the career path that I wanted, so I brought it to my managers, and they were just blown away. They were taken aback. Or like, you know, LaKeita, no one else is having these conversations. And no one else is talking to us about what the next steps are. We have several, well, colleagues of mine that have been in the same role for several years, and they did not even consider something else. They were just completely comfortable where they were. And yet, you have me. I’m only in there a few months, and I’m talking about what my you know, short term, you know, mid, mid term, and then long term goals and where, exactly where I wanted to be. And they really didn’t know where to take it. They’re like, Okay, well, give us some we’ll get back to you. Give us a few days. We’ll circle back. And it prompted a conversation with my market president. She got involved. She was really excited, because she was able to connect me with some people and within the company that’s actually in those roles, I can get real time information like, Okay, what’s good, you know? What works out? Great. How did I get to where you are, and how do I get to where I want to be? Right? Finding out how to do whatever works for me, because their path may not be my path, but they gave me some different options. And in doing so, I’ve made some real great connections with other people who aren’t in my branch. So I have a dish. It’s just, you know, the branches of like people I could reach out to and have access to, really broaden. And in doing that, I’m now hearing conversations from my colleagues about where they want to go. They want to they’ve heard about, no one was speaking about the program, about, you know, that that I brought from the BMore, you know, community, and now they’re signing up for the same things that I’ve inquired about, that, you know, that I’ve had conversations with my managers. No one was doing that now, everyone’s doing it now. So I hear and I see that, of course, I just keep it to myself, but I’m like, okay, making some positive change here. And that definitely is because of the Be More program.

Liana Bran  36:53

That’s so exciting to hear Lakeita. And something that I’m noticing is it’s like, it’s this growth, right? It’s how big changes within organizations happen, right? First, it starts with an individual impact, but then other people start to feel it and see it, and it grows. So with that, Paris, I want to go back to you to talk about where BMO is now, because there’s been a I don’t want to steal your thunder, but there’s been some growth. And before you answer, I also just want to mention that we’re in such a different moment than where we were when the BMost the BMore program started right now. Every day I hear someone talking about AI, how I need to use it more, which, you know, that’s a whole other story. But of course, we’re in a very different economic and political context. So tell us a little bit more about not only where the program is at, but how you and your team have really thought about what to grow, what to change, and how you’ve been able to persist, or why you’ve persisted given everything that has happened around us,

Paris Roney  38:04

Absolutely, you know, I am really lucky to work for an organization that embraced this idea and continued to push it forward. That hasn’t changed. The support hasn’t lessened, for BMore, if anything is grown, just like the program itself. So we started in Chicago. We’re now in Milwaukee, Madison, Denver, Indianapolis, Fremont, California, Phoenix and Los Angeles. I had to think about all the cities, because there’s so many. And we are launching in one of our final retail regions within the next couple of weeks. And then, notably, last year, we hit our highest retention in the program yet, so 74% which is extremely strong for one year retention when we’re talking about creating pipelines through our community partners. And I think you know, a lot of what LaKeita said about being more bound is that we try to make sure we continue to stay engaged. Because I think where we start to lose people is when we lose connection with individuals, especially within those small groups. People start to feel a little bit lost because BMO is so big. So we continue to see the evolution of retention and growth. We’ve had multiple promotions of people being put into development pathways. We’ve seen retail relationship bankers happen, virtual connect, also a wealth analyst, all from this program. And you know, while the world is always changing, we are always going to need to hire talent. Acquisition is not something that’s going away. It’s something that we need to continue to get better at meeting the needs of our communities and all of these applicants and all of the candidates. And the way that we do that is we continue to evolve. The world is changing. Talent Acquisition is not and we need to make sure that we’re continuing to meet people you know where they are and you know. Now, I have to boast about the organization that I work for, because we have this mission statement boldly to grow the good in business, in life, and to me, the BMore program does that in every single way. We’re not just, you know, it’s not necessarily about what we’re getting from a return on investment standpoint. It’s about, what are we doing to impact the communities we serve, and how are we ensuring that the branches and customers that we serve are reflected in our colleagues? People want to go into a branch where they see themselves. People want to go into a branch where they feel like they can have conversations with individuals with similar backgrounds with them. And I think BMore is one of those really key ways of doing that. And so the work will continue. The investment is there because I have a job, and I love my job. I get to lead programs like this and continue to make sure that we continue to put the impact in our communities side by side with our business objectives, and continue to, you know, grow the good.

Liana Bran  41:02

Yeah, Paris, it’s so powerful because I remember, you know, we’re when we were talking about where the story began. You know, sometimes new business or talent strategies come from a really clear business need. And in what you described, there was just this commitment to thinking about your engagement and community. And now I see where we are here and how the program has grown, and I see two things. I see that continued investment and just the clear business value, right? So now we’re looking at the like you said, the in the good and say it again for me, Paris, say it again for all of us, what is BMO’s motto?

Paris Roney  41:45

Growing the good in business and in life. We’ve hired over 200 individuals through this program. I can’t believe I didn’t mention that number, but over 200 individuals across our retail footprint.

Liana Bran  41:58

Absolutely so it is not only a community engagement strategy, but also talent acquisition and as we heard retention mobility strategy for BMO. So that’s so exciting to hear. For those of you who have been following along in the chat, we’ve been dropping in some resources. So I’ll invite you to keep an eye on that, because you’ll see a couple of different opportunities and articles that are going to give you the double click on this BMO story, not only in terms of where it where it started, but again, this incredible growth. So just keep an eye on the chat for that. And with that, I’m going to ask my panelists one more question, and then we’ll go to questions from the audience. LaKeita, simple question, what advice do you have for people in the audience, knowing that there are other educators, training providers, practitioners, what advice do you have for them in terms of helping their job seekers pursue new careers or growth in new industries, just like you had it in your experience with with BMO and Cara.

LaKeita Burns  43:09

Well, I will, I will highly recommend for them to look for ways that will reflect those individuals in ways that best support the company, but you can’t really find through your AI search engine, right those keywords or what’s on their resume, or whoever it was that referred them. There’s so much more to a person that makes them who they are like me, like the BMore program allows me to show up as me in my most holistic way, in my most authentic way. And I believe other companies, they can implement something like that, or work with people who implement something like that, like Cara, because that was the first, you know, for me, they helped. They started the fine tuning process right, and just having the open mind for looking for different things that may not be as traditional, to help support their things, that you might find some of your best talent right there.

Liana Bran  44:10

Love that. Paris, what? What advice would you have for the audience, knowing that they’re both employers themselves, but also maybe, uh, nonprofits or other groups trying to connect with employers?

Paris Roney  44:22

I think it’s important to know that this is not a short term goal. It can’t be one thing. It has to continuously evolved, and, you know, making sure that there is some accountability to not only the individuals that are going through the program, but to our partners and to our internal stakeholders, we need to make sure that we’re looking at this on a regular basis to figure out how we evaluate and how we continue to push everything forward. You know, BMO embraced this idea because it made sense, because it aligned with what we wanted to do from a social and community aspect, and that’s what we’ve continued. What do you do as we find new partners? As we continue to move forward, we’re having regular conversations with our BMore participants, with our community partners, with our leaders, to figure out, what more do we need to do in order to take this from programs to practice? That’s always been my goal as I got into this role. How do we make sure that our community partners are seen as, hey, they have a pipeline full of talent that’s ready to go for us? We have more information about these individuals because we know where they’re coming from, and I think that has continued to shift for us. That’s what we’re able to tell managers like, hey, this individual went through eight weeks of training specifically around, you know, financial and banking. How much do we know about traditional candidates that are coming through our pipeline? Not as much. So it gives us an opportunity to say, we trust our partner. We trust the work that they’ve done, and that trust has to continue to build, which means there’s ongoing collaboration. And one of the things I will continue to mention is multi-layered. You have to look at things from multiple perspectives. You have to gain multiple multiple perspectives all at once in order to get the results and then also continue to make the impact.

Liana Bran  46:20

Thanks, Paris, I think this is the point in our program. We get to open it up to the audience. So Dee, what questions are bubbling to the surface?

Dee Wallace  46:29

So I think we’ve been keeping an eye on the questions, and this is one for you to start with. I think Liana, a big question broadly about skills based strategies. I know you’ve worked with a number of industries, and the question is, how do you see the criticism that skills based strategies might devalue traditional degrees and traditional credentials? How do you see that working in the field?

Liana Bran  47:03

Oh, it is such a good question, and something that comes up a lot, I would say, from, from my perspective, number one, I think it’s important to have, as Paris just talked about different perspectives, different people in the room, really talking about what we mean by skills based hiring, right? So, kind of how I’ve understood it, and how I talk about it is, we’re really focused on skills, no matter where they come from, and being able to more equally value that someone may have gotten skills from, you know, a four year institution. They may have gotten those skills from work experience. They may have gotten those skills from life experience. And so how can we work with employers to really focus on skills and understanding and assessing the skills themselves versus where they got them? And if you come at it from that approach, then it’s really again, seeing that universities, colleges, all kinds of institutions, are important partners in building skills, right? There are certain pathways, careers that are going to require that level of education, and those partners are best positioned to provide it. So it’s really, we’re all in this together. It’s just trying to figure out the different ways, as LaKeita said, how do we figure out what skills someone has outside of how they’re showing up on a piece of paper, or how AI is able to process that information, right? So that’s kind of how I’ve, I’ve come at it, and how I understand that.

Dee Wallace  48:41

You and one question that’s just really fundamental is, how can organizations get started with skills based hiring and skills based strategies, both culturally and technically. What advice would you have?

Liana Bran  48:57

Great question, Paris, I wonder if you might start us off with that question?

Paris Roney  49:03

Yeah, if I think about where BMore started it again. It was just an idea. It wasn’t fully baked yet. So I think in order to really start something like this, it’s organ organizational change, so it’s not something that’s just going to impact one aspect of our business, it’s multiple aspects you have to be able to take this idea or this thought and gain other perspectives in order to move it forward, because then you’re going to have the buy in of every individual that you sought advice from or thoughts from, in order to move it forward and in order to make it work for your organization, what we do at BMO is incredible. And you know, not every organization is the exact same, but something like this, focusing on the individuals and the skills they’re bringing to the table is important. And multiple people within, you know, the world of banking, myself included, I could have very easily been a. More participants. I didn’t come from my financial banking background. I, you know, was on the lower income side of things. Sometimes, you know, you just need help getting to that next place. And a lot of the time, we talk about BMore. We talk about it as the village that kind of helps get you there. They’re the link to, you know, for LaKeita, Kara was the link to BMO in order for us to get her and you know, making sure that you have trust with your community partners is another piece of that make sure you trust the curriculum and what they do with their participants, and then also focusing beyond that first day. How do we continue to keep these individuals engaged and keep them retained, and then help them grow.

Liana Bran  50:44

I think one thing I would add is with skills based practices. I think Paris, I think you call this out, there’s kind of like two parts of this. There’s the technical challenges, but I think more often when we’re starting, it’s the people, it’s the getting the buy in, right? That’s where I see time and time again, people often get caught up the most when they’re starting skills based strategies. If it’s less technical and just figuring out how to get people on board and do things pretty differently, right? Hiring managers will say, Well, my best candidates are the ones that might have X, Y and Z degrees if I’m trying to fill a role, and our, you know, productivity, business outcomes are on the line, and I have a million other things. How many get? How am I going to get that hiring manager to do something different, right? Do something differently, and kind of with that in mind, I would say, start small, start with one role and have really deep and genuine conversations. You know, what are the skills that we think someone needs to be successful in this role? Do they have to have those skills when they come in? Can we play a role like BMO did, and help to build those skills and provide the training? And if you need to start that process with one role, I think it’s helping to build that organizational muscle and just then holding yourselves accountable, right? You can have all those great hiring practices, updating the job descriptions, and if it doesn’t flow through, all the way through the hiring process and engaging with hiring managers, you’re just not going to see the outcome. So starting small is probably my biggest tip. 

Dee Wallace  52:22

Great.  Another question, and related to something that you brought up, is the question about the partnership between BMO and Cara. And the question is, what was BMO looking for in a community partner that led them to Cara as we, as we look at?

Liana Bran  52:51

Sorry, I have my own ideas of why you might like to partner with an organization like Cara, but Paris would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Paris Roney  53:03

We knew the level of investment that care took with each one of their participants. We knew that there was an in depth learning about each one of these individuals, and that, again, that engagement passed day one, and that engagement, you know, as long as the care participant wanted to be engaged, they were there. I’ve heard multiple stories about Cara, about, you know, how individuals can walk in and feel cared for and feel seen and feel heard, and I think for us, you know, selecting and working with Cara as our flagship partner made the most sense. We knew the impact to not only the community, but the individuals that were going through the program, they were able to be open and and, you know, were willing to hear us out, and then also being able to work and collaborate with, you know, the job descriptions, what we were kind of looking for. And they continue to do that to this day. We continuously have conversations with Cara and with all of our partners about, how do we help support you? And then how do they help support us? And because there’s been such an open line of communication and collaboration since the onset, you know, we chose the right partner first, and it’s really helped us lay the groundwork and how we continue to choose partners as we move forward.

Dee Wallace  54:22

Before we close out, Liana, I’ll leave it to you if you have any any, any closing comments with LaKeita or Paris

Liana Bran  54:30

Yeah, I think the last thing I’ll share, because I’ve really had this opportunity to care, plus have had this opportunity to kind of sit between employer partners and practitioners and training providers. And I think it’s exactly Paris, what you said. It’s being able to have those conversations and for both sides to understand the needs. I think as you know Workforce Development Practitioner. One of the things that have served us best is just really building that relationship and understanding how we can provide value. So I think that starts with having a good relationship and having good communication. And as LaKeita has said over and over again, like we’re just so grateful for BMO as well, for just that willingness to engage. I think it takes a special organization to do that as well.

Dee Wallace  55:27

In our conversations leading up to this time, I was telling LaKeita, I was just writing down beautiful snippets of the kind of advice that she had for organizations and companies to increase opportunity and ladders for folks. LaKeita, is there anything that you would say to close out your comments?

LaKeita Burns  55:47

Well, I would just say, you know, culture is major. Culture is key. And I would strongly encourage those who are in a position of hiring to really focus on that, because people feel it immediately. You can, you can give all the, you know, accolades and the warm welcomes and things of that nature. But when you can walk into a room and you can feel the tension, or you can feel the love, you can feel the teamwork, you can feel whatever it is, positive, negative, you can feel it. And it’s also one of the hardest things to change culture is really difficult to explain, it’s really difficult to write down, it’s really difficult to change, but it’s really easy to fulfill, right? So I really believe if companies focus as much on retention as they do with hiring, you can invest into your employees that way, and then create those safe spaces like the BMore program, it goes so much more beyond just an affinity group or employee resource group. It really hones into that holistic person, right, that whole person, and gives them those safe spaces. So if they’re having a bad day, especially in industries that have high turnover, you know, you really want to focus on your key players that you already have there. It costs so much to hire. It takes so much energy, resources, and time to bring on new talent, which is good to have new talent, but if you also just pour in to the ones you already have, you may not have to expend so much of those dollars on bringing in new people.

Dee Wallace  57:18

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your advice, and thank you all for joining us today, and thank you to our amazing panel for so generously giving of your experience and insights and your time with us. If you want to learn more about BMO’s skills based hiring strategy and skills based mobility strategies, you can access a case study that was jointly produced by Cara Plus and BMO, and we’re putting that in the chat. We’ll also be providing some additional resources of the follow up to this recording. We are so grateful to the team at the Economic Opportunities Program for this event, including Haley Glover, the head of upskill America, and a key leader in the skills based movement who helped shape today’s event. Big thanks, as always, to our wonderful comms team, Frances, Nora, and Tony, and to Architex for production of today’s event. We hope you will join us for our next event coming up on Thursday, October 9, for our Job Quality in Practice webinar, “Big Impact, Big Challenges: Lessons from Collaborating with Large Businesses To Improve Job Quality.”  Certainly relevant to today’s conversation, where we’ve been talking about opening doors and building ladders to continue this conversation about raising the floor of jobs that can advance economic mobility. Thank you again, LaKeita, Paris, Liana, and we hope to see you again soon.

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