KLx, a subsidiary of the Crédit Agricole Group, recently launched the K-Tech Community, focused on technological themes, which brings employees together to debate several topics and promote the sharing of knowledge and expertise among all teams. Apart from seeking to increase the operational efficiency, this initiative fosters team spirit and disseminates a common purpose among the employees, promoting a sense of community. These actions are fundamental to creating an organisational culture of learning and innovation, crucial elements for IT organisations to remain competitive in today's technological context in permanent change.

The K-Techs are an internal KLx project, giving the opportunity to those who are experts in certain topics to share their know-how, thus creating organisational synergy. On the other hand, the other employees have the chance to learn and broaden their areas of knowledge, participating in the initiatives and events of the communities as an audience.

The name of the project – K-Tech Community – points to what these communities are: "K" for KLx and "Knowledge", since knowledge is promoted; "Tech" for being the organisation's area of excellence and; "Community" for being the main objective of this initiative.

Behind the development of this initiative is KLx's commitment to increasing the value for the KLxians - its workers – and, also, for the customers of the Crédit Agricole Group, taking into account their current and future needs. In addition, the company aims to specialise its teams in the best reference technologies and methodologies worldwide, promoting more career opportunities internally.

There are currently five active communities focused on Agile, DevOps, ELK Stack, Java, and Testing. These take form through the organisation of initiatives such as K-Talks, which bring employees from all hierarchical levels together for interactive learning moments in person. Another example is the K-Flirts, organised weekly, which consist of informal brainstorming moments of a restricted group of KLxians, usually oriented towards solving a problem. Each event lasts about an hour and can assume different formats – presentations, debates, workshops, etc - always having a practical component.

Through the K-Tech communities, we promote knowledge sharing internally and foster an organisational culture of collaboration. Sharing ideas and best practices helps us to create a stronger team and position ourselves as an increasingly strategic IT partner for the Crédit Agricole Group. In addition, any employee can suggest and promote a new community on a new topic. For this reason, if today we have five communities, our expectation is that this number increases, bringing more and more value to our people and clients., says Yannick Labbé, Chief of Partnerships, Operations Coordination and Sourcing at KLx.

Training and continuous development of employees has always been a priority for KLx, becoming one of the organisation's main investments and strategies to attract and retain talent. In addition to the K-Tech Community, the company also offers conversion trainings, skill development paths, and language classes. In 2023, KLx saw a 130% increase in the budget dedicated to training and is investing around five times more than the average national IT company in this area.