Coaching, Mentoring and Training
MIFL pays strong attention to its employees and invests significantly in coaching and mentoring. We consider coaching and mentoring two distinctive phases of the development of an employee. Coaching tends to be task oriented, it is usually performance driven and it covers a short term strategy. While mentoring is mainly relationship oriented, it is development driven and it requires a long term strategy. Our senior managers are deeply involved with their own staff in order to develop such skills. In particular for training, we consider three different areas:
- Technical training
- Managerial training
- Communications
In the first case, we operate a program of support for employees pursuing relevant professional qualifications through study and examinations e.g. Accountancy (ACCA) and Investment (CFA) qualifications.
In the second case, we create and support various initiatives such as those on innovation, leadership and team building using both well established proprietary methodologies and some novel tools. These can be in-company or public participation depending on the goal in each case.
MIFL utilizes the latest technologies to maintain day to day contact with various parties with whom it interacts frequently. This provides employees with efficient and secure platforms to conduct business across markets. MIFL also invests time in regular cross departmental team briefing sessions i.e. MIFL Uncovered sessions which are run on a regular basis and enable employees to share their knowledge horizontally across functions so as to improve the understanding of the processes and procedures at all levels within the company. MIFL also encourages collaboration among the different people in the organisation.
It is important to create an environment in which people are encouraged to collaborate and they receive a reward based on the feedback provided by their colleagues. For this purpose, MIFL has created a mechanism of reward - MedCredit - for the employees that contribute to creating a collaborative environment.
The MIFL Human Resources department also collaborates with other institutions. MIFL has joined forces with other leading financial service companies in Ireland to promote the Diploma in Financial Services Innovation at University College Dublin which commenced in January 2013. The course work for this initiative addresses the barriers to creativity and innovation including identifying which barriers threaten new ideas, and how to plan to reduce project risks. Participants will learn how technology is just a part of innovation and it needs to be applied appropriately and in the context of our business. They will learn techniques for balancing human, business and technical needs, on how to put multi-disciplinary teams in place with the right mix of people, and how to use creativity techniques, systems and structures.
