FROM ANXIETY TO OPERATIONAL CONFIDENCE: A REFLEXIVE THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF BANK EMPLOYEES’ LIVED EXPERIENCE OF DIGITAL RESKILLING IN SOUTH-EAST NIGERIA

Abstract

The literature on digital reskilling in banking is dominated by studies of outcomes and by measurement of the attitudes and behaviours that reskilling is supposed to produce. Less understood is how bank employees actually experience the shift from analogue to digital work, and how the affective texture of that shift shapes what reskilling can and cannot achieve. Affective texture, as used here, refers to the fabric of feeling, body posture, and anticipated judgement that accompanies the use of new systems in front of customers and colleagues. This paper draws on 24 semi-structured interviews with employees from eight commercial banks in Abia, Anambra, and Imo States, all of whom had participated in at least one of their institutions’ digital reskilling programmes in the preceding three years. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis in the tradition set out by Braun and Clarke, with coding managed in NVivo 14. Four themes were developed: fear of visible error during the first encounter with new systems; the relevance of training as the condition for trust in reskilling; the specific quality of managerial presence that participants treat as support; and the trajectory from initial reluctance to settled operational confidence. The paper argues that reskilling in this setting involves emotional labour alongside cognitive learning, and that the analytical vocabulary of adaptability needs room for the affective dimension if it is to describe accurately what happens when banking work is remade around digital systems. The main practical implication for banks is that supervisory presence during the first weeks of system use, paired with peer accompaniment, is a cheap and effective addition to any reskilling programme.