Scaling Learning with Tech, Culture & Creativity at Mid Penn Bank

Find out how Mid Penn Bank is reimagining workforce development with Mid Penn University. University Director and VP Scott Bostjancic shares how a visionary leadership team, high-end tech, and a commitment to personalized, skills-based learning are transforming training—and empowering employees at every level to grow their careers.

Show Notes:

Scott Bostjancic, Vice President and Director of Mid Penn University at Mid Penn Bank shares these takeaways to build a successful skills-based training program.

• Secure Executive Champions Early: Get buy-in from leadership to elevate learning from a support function to a strategic priority. Mid Penn’s success starts with a CEO and executive team who believe in the value of education. Engage your leaders, align on a shared vision, and make learning part of the company’s growth strategy.
• Build a Scalable Learning Model with a Small, Focused Team: Create processes that empower a lean team to deliver high-volume, high-quality training.You don’t need a huge staff—Mid Penn’s six-person team runs 500+ instructor-led classes annually by partnering with internal experts and standardizing course creation and delivery.
•  Make Culture Part of Your Learning Strategy: Train not just for skills, but for values and behaviors that define your organization.Mid Penn embeds cultural training into its programs to reinforce what sets the bank apart. Develop courses that teach not only the “how” but also the “why” behind your company’s way of doing business.
• Use Technology to Eliminate Geographic Barriers: Invest in virtual tools and smart classrooms that support blended learning.Mid Penn leverages WebEx-enabled spaces, smart boards, and video content to train employees across regions. Design learning environments that feel just as engaging remotely as in person.
•  Leverage AI to Drive Personalized, Skills-Based Development: Implement an LMS with AI capabilities to recommend content and map career growth. Mid Penn’s LMS helps employees build skills through personalized recommendations and supports the shift to a skills-based organization. Use AI to streamline performance reviews, development plans, and upskilling.

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Transcript

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] Building a culture of learning starts with combining vision, technology and a focus on skills-based learning. 

Scott Bostjancic: We do your normal bank training where you know we'll do orientation, you'll do new hire systems, training and those things. And of course, we'll support people throughout their careers with the systems and the technical pieces.

But one of the big things that we focus on is culture. 

Susan Cort: That's. Scott Bostjancic, a L&D leader at Mid Penn Bank. Scott joins d’Vinci client Solutions consultant, Angeline Evans and me to talk about building Mid Penn University from the ground up and how his small but mighty team uses creativity, technology, and executive buy-in to scale learning across 700 employees.

Next on Powered by Learning. 

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci’s approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use [00:01:00] proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that empower learners to improve quality and boost performance.

Learn more at d’Vinci.com. 

Susan Cort: Joining me now are d’Vinci Client Solutions Donsultant Angeline Evans and our guest, Scott Bostjancic, Vice President, Director of Mid Penn University. Mid Penn University is an internal educational program within Mid Penn Bank in Pennsylvania and New Jersey offering training and development opportunities for its employees.

Hi Scott. Good to see you. 

Angeline Evans: Hi Scott.

Susan Cort: Thanks for joining us. 

Scott Bostjancic: My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Susan Cort: Scott, start out by giving us a little bit about your background and your role at Mid Penn Bank. 

Scott Bostjancic: Sure. Uh, I'm the accidental trainer. I was a hotel restaurant major in college. Uh, worked in restaurants, ended up in retail 'cause the hours were a little better.

Then one year a friend of mine was working for Commerce Bank here in Harrisburg and said, you really need to work here. And he kind of talked me into it. And then the first [00:02:00] day on the job, they had a corporate university as well. We did an onboarding session called Traditions, and I went, I know what I wanna do for my career.

And that was to, to do learning and development and training. So I ended up doing that, starting about, I've been in banking almost 20 years, so almost 18 years now. I, I started there as an instructor, became a senior instructor, and then moved onto Mid Penn Bank 10 years ago as a, basically a similar role and then took over as the director. Oh gosh. Wow. Seven years ago. It's gone by quickly. 

Angeline Evans: What a phenomenal geographic spread there to have to train and get all of those employees up to speed. So I'd love to hear can, and you gave us an overview of your career and um, your time at Mid Penn Bank, but tell us more about Mid Penn University. I'm really interested.

Scott Bostjancic: We're really lucky. Uh, we have a CEO Rory Ritrievi [00:03:00] that strongly believes in learning and development, and it's kind of one of his pillars to our success and growth and something he believes in an executive team and board that supports him with it. So we're a, we're a corporate university and we do our best to run like a university, so not necessarily a traditional learning and development shop.

So we try and borrow the best from all worlds. So whether it's college. Through professional learning and development. Wherever we can get good ideas, we're happy to get them. So we're a team of six myself. And then I have a learning consultant and a group of in four instructors. And we really cover the gamut.

Uh, we do your normal bank training where you know, we'll do orientation, we'll do new hire systems training, and. Those things. And of course we'll support people throughout their careers with the systems and the technical pieces. But one of the big things that we focus on is culture. So we do a lot of training around our culture because that's critically important 'cause everybody has a free checking account and everybody on the call probably [00:04:00] doesn't, everybody listening.

So what makes a bank different from another? And it's the people and the culture. So the customers really want to engage and interact with that financial institution. So we spend a lot of time on that. I have a leadership academy that we're working on enhancing right now and adjusting to meet the demands of a geographically dispersed workforce.

We do internal certifications for different job roles, so from being a supervisor, right, making sure that you have that HR and leadership piece to business development so you have the right sales skills and do it the right way to, um, I'm a teller. I need to be certified. 'cause it's a really challenging job with a lot of responsibilities and a lot of knowledge necessary.

We have those programs. We have well over a hundred internally developed courses, whether that be instructor-led or e-learning or video content that we build ourselves. We do a lot of it through technology. I mean, it's critical. You [00:05:00] mentioned the geographic spread. You know, we can't be everywhere to train.

We're too small of a team. We can't pull people in for a one-hour classroom three hours away. So we rely on technology to have live instructor-led classes at our university. We can lead them from there, and then people can join in wherever they are through WebEx and we can hold remote classes that way.

And it's blended so we can have people join us in person and have them online as well. 

Angeline Evans: You are a very small but mighty team for doing all of this content creation and instruction for 700 employees. 

Scott Bostjancic: We like to be busy. We, uh, we, uh, just looked at April's numbers as we're trying to get into the data sphere and, and figure out what we're doing, where we're spending time, and we had the most classes, instructor-led classes ever in April.

Now that's partially because we were doing merger training and helping the team get up to speed. For that, but also we had the most number of people come through classes in a month of April. In the seven years we've been tracking those types of numbers and we're on pace for about a 10% increase in both, and that [00:06:00] that'll put us over 500 instructor-led classes this year being taught.

Susan Cort: Scott, talk a little bit about your physical space, because some of your classes are in person and, and I've I've been to the university. It's very impressive. Uh, talk a little bit about, about what people find inside. 

Scott Bostjancic: Sure. I think, I think one of the things that might surprise people when they walk into the university is that it doesn't look like a bank.

Uh, it looks more like we're a tech startup. It's a lot of open spaces for collaboration, and we have four main classrooms. We have a classroom dedicated to our teller training. Again, it would, and they have a week that they spend with us because it, it's so important. It's where they're the frontline. They can help prevent fraud, you know, and which is on the rise.

We just had a CFO panel yesterday of community banks and they all talked about how check fraud is on the rise again. Mm-hmm. Because we're getting better at about information security. But now, okay, well they're forgetting about, so were they though, right? So they moved to where nobody's paying attention, which is back to stealing checks out a mail book mailboxes. We have that room. We [00:07:00] have a computer room that has 12 seats and 12 computers that we can do any kind of technical training in that we require systems. We have another room that seats about 20 people that we do for our non-technical training, and we do a lot of our leadership classes and culture classes in there 'cause we can make the tables and different positions and shapes and be creative. And then we have a multipurpose room that holds up to a hundred people that we can have larger events in. But what's really important for us is that they're all embedded with Cisco hardware. So that when we host a WebEx, we have cameras that can focus on the class that track in.

So if you're talking, it'll move to you and focus on you. So the people who are remote can see who's speaking in the room. We have wireless mics in the ceilings and you know, the, the, uh. We even have in almost all on three of the four, we have the WebEx whiteboards, the smartboards, so we can annotate slides or screenshots or do whatever we need to do.

So we're running some pretty high end tech. It's really fun and it, and it helps us reach, you know, everyone across our [00:08:00] footprint. 

Angeline Evans: Yeah, I mean that, that sort of technology plays a huge role in just connecting remote employees. I mean that you don't wanna have a Charlie Brown scenario when some folks are at home.

They're on the other side. Right. So it sounds like the university has really just evolved over the years. What inspired Mid Penn Bank to create the university and have it really run like a university versus a typical talent management or training and development division? 

Scott Bostjancic: Uh, that was the direction from our CEO.

Angeline Evans: Yeah. 

Scott Bostjancic: Uh, so when I, when I moved into the position, he's like, I really want it to run like a university. Uh, our chief operating at the operating officer at the time, Justin Webb, who's our CFO now had the same things like this is our vision. Make it happen. 

Angeline Evans: Yeah. 

Scott Bostjancic: So we really did our best to meet that. 

Angeline Evans: I imagine it creates more of a culture of learning than the traditional perspective you would have on a training department and education in an organization.

Right. Like do you feel it does that? It sounds more thoughtful and intentional. Right. And the energy that would be in the physical [00:09:00] space too. It just sounds, it 

Scott Bostjancic: is. And I think the biggest thing, and this is, you know, probably no surprise to anybody in the corporate learning and development space, the key was winning over the executive team.

Mm-hmm. To that, because, you know, uh, in financial institutions, the training team is typically looked at as training retail, and that's it. And, you know, we've built really strong relationships by proving our value to our executives for all the different business lines so that they'll call and say, I need this.

I'm like, great, we'll help you and find a way to deliver that. And to the point where we even have them kind of running some of their own sessions and workshops, you know, we just can sit back and administer it and be there to help them with logistics and TRA sign in and administration. So I think that's a big piece of why we do so much.

We are a small, mighty team, but we have a lot of partners across the bank who are subject matter experts that we help work with to develop materials, and then they teach their own classes. 

Angeline Evans: That's great. So [00:10:00] stepping back and just considering 700 employees, um, you have five generations of learners across the bank.

How do you tailor training to meet, you know, very learning preferences and, you know, I know there's commonalities in how folks like to consume content, but what do you consider just from, from that training and instructional design approach? 

Scott Bostjancic: It is really challenging, there's no doubt. Uh. And, and I actually did a, I,  actually wrote a class that I host a couple times a year on generational diversity because five generations in the workforce is a boiling over cocktail at times of just misunderstanding.

Right? And, and I, I was reading, uh, a couple, you know, the number of the books on it and I was like, oh my gosh. That's why my daughter and I don't always connect. I am not seeing the world the way she sees it. So it was, I was like, I wish I'd read this 10 years ago. So it's not easy from an instructional design perspective.

So we really try and have multiple modalities and I think that's really the key thing you can do. And [00:11:00] by that meaning yes, we do a ton of instructor led. We believe that the banking culturally is best done in person and building relationships with people. So we build relationships with our, our fellow employees.

By going to where they are, you know, we like to train out in markets and visit people and do that. So we do a lot of that. So instructor LED's really great because it is a way that everybody's comfortable with and knows, but we do a lot of eLearning and if we can, we try and make it short and concise, but not always easy.

You know, we're heavily regulated. Uh, we just worked on a couple compliance courses around the USA Patriot Act, and there's no way to make that short and concise because it has so much that impacts a financial institution. But video has been huge, where we can get video. And I think one of our biggest success stories is we were doing a, um, a bank secrecy act related training that was recommended that we do.

And instead of going, okay, well here's the act and here are your responsibilities, we approached it as well, what departments in the bank, whether [00:12:00] customer facing or behind the scenes, does this impact this specific piece of the legislation? And we got people from each of those departments. To speak on behalf of what their team needs and why it's important to them.

And so it was a seven-minute video that you heard from about seven different people and seven different impacts to making sure customer information is accurate. And it was really eye opening for a lot of people. So, you know, that's the fun thing we get to do. And you can be a little creative with it too.

So. I do a little bit of the video, but I have a, one of my team does video, that's his thing, e-learning development and, and video. He's really came on not knowing how to do it and has kind of just taken the wool by the horns and has really dove into it, and he gets to really flex his creativity with it.

And you can do some fun, cool things with the video. And, and it does, it reaches people really well, and then they're like, oh, good. I don't have to sit here and click through this and take this quiz that I'm gonna fail and have to take over and I lose an hour. It's, Hey, I'm getting really digestible information quickly.

Then we can turn around [00:13:00] and just do another one a couple months later if we need to. Because again, we're not pulling people away from work for very long. We just signed, uh, with our LMS vendor offers an immense library of different e-learning courses. So we signed on for one of their packages. And that's great because now we can leverage those around a lot of different skills.

But they also do the really long form, like if you wanna spend an hour in a video on something technical. Or do you want a small little series? It's only only two or three tidbits about professionalism at work. So I think it's really trying to find all those different ways that you can reach people. And our goal is to push training.

Uh, our, our LMS has some AI tools built in that you, you wanna skill, you wanna learn something, it'll start feeding things to you that you can do there, or you can sign up so that we're not constantly pulling people away from work. And, and pulling them out of the office. 

Angeline Evans: Yeah. So tell us more about your, the experience rolling out this new LMS.

I know when you and I had talked, um, prior to this call, you [00:14:00] had mentioned about the AI capabilities, and I'd love, I think our listeners would really love to hear more about that and just, you know, pushing content out. 

Scott Bostjancic: Sure. Uh, we had it now going on, geez, it's gonna be two years and we've not rolled out everything yet because there's so much to it.

But we bought a learning and performance package. Uh, and it can do more, but right now it's, it's getting our hands around. This has been really interesting. Uh, one of our keys was we need a really robust instructor led training. LMS. And that was the key driver because when you're hosting 400 plus classes a year, you have to have a robust system to track it, to schedule it for people to self-serve, to sign up and register in all those pieces so that it took care of that.

But what's really neat about it is that you put every learning object in the system, whether it's a class, an E-learning, a video, or a PDF or a Word document, or PowerPoint slides. You can keyword them and you can assign them subjects. 

Angeline Evans: Hmm. Okay. 

Scott Bostjancic: So what [00:15:00] happens is when we move into the performance piece, as we're building out our own content, now we're bringing in the vendor's content, which is fortunately already tagged and ready to go.

It has that AI engine in it that if I, we have a skills profile that we're building for every position in the company. So, Director of the University. My skills profile has things like instructional design and strategic planning and organizational development, talent development. So, if I click on talent development as a skill 

Angeline Evans: mm-hmm.

Scott Bostjancic: The AI goes, oh, talent development. Well now I'm going to search through a catalog of over 10,000 learning objects and start recommending items to you based on subjects and keywords, and it'll just give you a constant feed. It's basically Netflix's algorithm if you think about it. So what's nice is we can fill the gaps on the bank technical side as we build out our curriculum and our content for that.

And then for those people looking to do more, or they're in it and they're like, well, I don't need to learn how to be a teller. Ah, but you need [00:16:00] sql, or you need Apache, or you need something. Well, we have courses that'll help you with that. And so as they build out their skills. That'll take care of it. 

Angeline Evans: So you're on a journey towards becoming a skills-based organization, so this LMS is playing a big role in that.

Tell me more about other steps you're taking as an organization to do this. 

Scott Bostjancic: Sure. It's, it's a lot of things that I didn't think I'd find myself involved in, but uh, uh, it's read, reading, job descriptions and pulling out of job descriptions, skills that people can demonstrate, and I think that's interesting.

Job descriptions are really important. A little bit by design, right? They're a little generic. They're kind of more broad based. And we're like, well, if we wanna be skills, and I, if I'm in position A and I wanna move to position B, if I have the same skills, well how much better do I need to be at them? And also, what other skills do I need to learn in order to be ready, to be moved to move to that next position?

So that's really the approach we're taking and we're partnering with. Those business line leaders to work [00:17:00] through that, you know, we'll do that heavy lifting first. Hey, we've gone through your job AI job descriptions. We've teased out a bunch of skills here. Let's sit down and talk about it. Which ones are most important do you see for performance?

I. So that ties in. So that skills profile helps feed learning, and then it provides us information on gaps. So, okay, where don't we have learning that we may need to work and consult with a team to help? Do you have learning? Great, well let's help us get it in a system where you can track it more so that people know they're being trained because it's a learning object in a system instead of just, I sat with, I sat with Sally, and Sally taught me this, and then three weeks later, I don't remember that I did that.

And that goes into, there's a piece of it that's development plans that we're gonna build out. As we start the skills, we'll start development plans. Well, what does that employee's first year look like? What university training should they do? What should they do with our talent development team? What should they do culturally?

Should they should volunteer for an event. They should attend a state of the company meeting. They should. All these different pieces, they should listen to the bank's podcast, [00:18:00] right? All those pieces. So we're trying to really map out kind of that journey of that first year to 18 months with skills and then back to the AI inside of the system.

On the performance module that we're just starting to play with the vendors just starting to release to us to test is it's got generative ai so that we want everybody under a certain corporate title has to have an IDP goal, an individual development plan. Well, sometimes those are really hard to write.

Like, well, I kind of wanna do this, but I don't know what to write. Well, the generative AI is built in to help people write their goals. 

Angeline Evans: That's awesome. You took the words outta my mouth. So I was gonna ask you how this all feeds into individual development and career pathways, how they're looking at the skills that they would need to go to the next level.

That's really interesting that it has that generative AI component. 

Scott Bostjancic: It does, and what's neat too is that we can do performance check-ins in the system where we could sit down. You know, I do this with my team really frequently, more than recommended, but [00:19:00] I think it's really helpful 'cause we are so busy.

Uh, we can make notes inside a performance check-in and the AI is now gonna come in and be able to summarize that. So I could have a year's worth of check-in notes on my person's performance that I've put in, that they've put in. And then the AI will summarize it for me. And now I almost have their performance review written and it's accurate.

And I don't have to go back and think, what did they do the first half of the year? I don't even remember yesterday. 

Angeline Evans: And the hours that some leaders can spend doing those performance reviews every year, which 'cause they're meaningful and you wanna make sure you're helping your staff grow. But to have that.

Assistant, um, but still, you know, being impactful and personable. That's huge. 

Scott Bostjancic: Yeah. Yeah. It's really exciting stuff and it's great to have a vendor on the really trying to always update their system and get this, and then a, a company that's willing to say, yeah, let's spend the money on it, and okay, go figure it out and get it out there.

Angeline Evans: Um, so my last question really is, what advice would you give to other L&D leaders who are trying to scale learning across large [00:20:00] and distributed and regulated workforce like banking? Right. So, you've been with Mid Pen Bank for so long and doing this for, for quite a while, what advice do you have for folks that might be in a similar position?

Scott Bostjancic: First thing, I'd think, and some of this will sound familiar, right? 'cause you always say get corp, get executive buy-in. Absolutely. And that's kind of baked into this, but I think it's really understand what the expectations are from your, your executive team. And work with them to, to build a plan for it.

You know, we, we couldn't have achieved the success we've had without really tightening up and being very strong and having really good people do retail training. I've got three people who are excellent at it that can jump in and do any retail class at any time, can respond to any need, anything that flares up, they can take care of it.

Which then as we've grown, our team allows us to start to expand and as the leader. Has primarily been, okay. Who else needs help? And I've got a, I've got a [00:21:00] great boss, Maggie, who was our chief administrative officer. Who could feed me things and say, Hey, this team needs this help here. I told them you'd call.

So having that advocate to help you get in front of people where they probably wouldn't have talked to you before has led to a lot of the things that that we do. And a lot of the couple big projects we have coming up second half of the year that, uh, for a bank our size and probably even double our size, I don't think anybody else is doing.

So it's fun stuff. 

Angeline Evans: Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really nice to have a sneak peek behind what you're doing at Mid Penn University. 

Susan Cort: Yes, it was inspirational. Thank you, Scott. 

Scott Bostjancic: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Susan Cort: My thanks to d’Vinci client Solutions consultant Angeline Evans and our guest, Scott Bostjancic from Mid Penn Bank, for being with us today.

If you have suggestions for future guests and topics, please reach out to me at info@poweredbylearning.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning [00:22:00] wherever you listen to your podcasts.