Boubyan Bank adopts innovative approaches to foster staff creativity
KUWAIT: Adel Al-Hammad, the General Manager of Boubyan Bank’s Human Resources Group stressed the bank’s keenness on supporting and developing its human resources and adopting the latest international development plans to improve talents among its staff as the bank and its board of directors strongly believe they are the cornerstone of any development or growth.
In a press release issued by the bank, Al-Hammad added: “During the recent years, the bank has come ahead of both local banks and private sector companies in terms of implementing major initiatives aiming at developing the skills of its staff, which contributed to instilling more loyalty in our staff towards the bank belong to.” Al-Hammad’s statement came in a comment on the trip organized by Boubyan Bank for a number of the bank’s staff to San Francisco, the US, in cooperation with Plug and Play International, where they had the chance to enjoy an immersive hands-on experience by exploring the world’s best innovation tycoons, attending interactive seminars, seeing FinTechs in action and going through the full cycle of pitching to venture capital.
The Silicon Valley
The program gave Boubyan Bank’s employees the opportunity to attend the Plug and Play International’s event hosted at the Silicon Valley during the period from
September 30th to October 5th 2019. Furthermore, Boubyan Bank’s delegation visited mega technology companies and inspected innovation and creativity activities firsthand at Google, SAP and TESLA.
Al-Hammad went on to add: “Talent management methods are constantly changing and, as a bank, we have to adopt a flexible approach. Organizing the Hackathon at Boubyan is the first step towards renovating and stimulating our staff’s creativity potentials. We will continue to exert all possible efforts to provide our staff with creativity development opportunities and what we have done so far is nothing but a start.”
Al-Hammad also pointed out that several of such development plans would follow, and that the bank is fully committed to acquainting its talents with leading creativity and innovation practices and visiting international companies to enrich their talents’ development and equip the bank’s leaders with the skills needed to lead future banking services.
Boubyan Bank had organized the firstof-its-kind Hackathon in Kuwait for its staff in collaboration with the Plug and Play International, with the aim of enhancing their innovation and creativity skills. This comes as a part of the keenness of the bank’s management on upskilling the bank’s employees which will positively reflect on the level of services and products provided by the bank to its customers.
The Hackathon involved attempts to solve a certain problem or to invent a new or special solution within a specific timeframe. It also gives the opportunity to people with different skills and from different backgrounds to join efforts to come up with solutions within a short period. Then, a panel evaluates the outcome of their cooperation.
Plug and Play Tech Center is a network startup accelerator and corporate innovation platform headquartered in Sunnyvale, California in the Silicon Valley.
It is considered the largest Innovation accelerator in the world. It has over 220 corporate partners and 200 venture capitalists. Silicon Valley Business Journal recently named it the “Most Active Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firm”. Plug and Play was one of the first investors in Google, PayPal, Dropbox and other ventures.