While the Degreed partner ecosystem includes a wide range of innovators, eight stand out for how they bring a skills-first strategy to life. Each played a visible role as a Degreed LENS 2025 sponsor. And importantly, each addresses a distinct and urgent workforce challenge.

From labor market insights to learning infrastructure, these partners help us turn vision into execution. Collectively, they embody the power of an integrated ecosystem—accelerating impact, removing friction, and driving measurable outcomes for every Degreed client.

Pearson: Future-Proofing Learning with Market Intelligence

Pearson brings together the power of its Faethm workforce analytics and its Credly digital credentialing. Combined with Degreed, these tools help organizations move from insight to execution—pinpointing future skill needs, delivering targeted development, and validating results in measurable ways.

At LENS, the Pearson executive breakfast roundtable, the Pearson session Future-Proofing HR: The Impact of AI and Emerging Technology, and other discussions showed how organizations can align learning with business goals, predict and proactively solve for skill gaps, make workforce development an executive-level initiative, and more. And in conversation after conversation, Pearson demonstrated how our partnership benefits talent leaders looking to scale outcomes-driven strategies.

The upshot? Connecting predictive intelligence with learning programs and verified achievement is a roadmap for transformation backed by proof of impact.“We really do work in a ton of different ways, and also integrate in a ton of different ways, with the the talent ecosystem across the whole skilling journey, which really starts with, ‘How do you plan for the future and the talent that you want in your organization?’” Melissa Matlins, Global Head of Workforce Solutions at Pearson, told the LENS audience.

Workday: Empowering Smarter Skills Development

The bi-directional Workday integration with Degreed Skills+ turns static skill data into a dynamic asset. How? By providing a seamless way to exchange, enrich and act on skill data across systems. Skill profiles stay up to date automatically. Learning progress feeds directly into talent systems. And business leaders gain clearer visibility into workforce capabilities—without relying on disconnected reports.

For shared clients like Citi and BP, this interoperability supports faster talent mobility, smarter workforce planning, less manual work, and a more agile approach to managing change. For HR IT teams, the Workday-Degreed integration eliminates data silos and reduces manual upkeep—ensuring more accurate skill visibility across talent systems.

The joint mainstage LENS session Maximizing Impact Together, featuring Workday and SAP SuccessFactors, delivered a standout moment. Panelists encouraged attendees to focus on impactful skills, embrace open tech partnerships, experiment, and boldly take next steps with AI.

“Whatever problem it is you’re trying to solve, have a plan, put it in place, document it,” said Michael Goldberg, Principal Outbound Product Manager at Workday. “What are the outcomes? What are the metrics? How are you going to measure that value? … Make it very clear who owns what, who’s responsible for what, and who are ultimate decision makers.”

Michael Goldberg, Principal Outbound Product Manager at Workday (left), Josh Gosliner, VP Product Strategy at SAP SuccessFactors (middle), and Ashley Gammie, VP Partnerships at Degreed (right),on the Degreed LENS 2025 main stage

CredSpark: Embedding Assessments to Personalize Learning

CredSpark moves skill measurement beyond theory and into action. By embedding assessments directly into the Degreed platform, CredSpark enables learning teams to continuously measure skill growth, personalize learning based on real-time performance, and generate data that feeds seamlessly into BI tools and reporting systems.

Credspark came to LENS with a clear message: For business leaders tasked with demonstrating program effectiveness, the company delivers the skill-level data needed to prove impact and align learning with business goals. The LENS welcome reception Credspark co-hosted with Degreed Key Account Directors drove the message home—providing an energizing kickoff.

Lightcast: Grounding Strategy in Labor Market Data

Lightcast brings real-time labor market intelligence into the heart of workforce strategy. Through its integration with Degreed, Lightcast helps organizations understand which skills are emerging, which are in demand, and how internal capabilities stack up against fast-changing industry needs.

At LENS, one question in particular from Lightcast resonated: If nearly half your industry’s skill requirements are about to change, wouldn’t you want to know how?

Ethena: Reinventing Compliance With Engaging Content

Ethena is proving that compliance training doesn’t have to feel like a checkbox exercise. Built on behavioral science and designed for meaningful employee engagement, Ethena content helps companies drive lasting behavior change, not just completions. 

Fully integrated with Degreed, Ethena makes it easy to deliver mandatory training in a way that makes it relevant to broader learning goals. 

At LENS, Ethena Chief People Officer Melanie Naranjo joined leaders from Ericsson and Truist for a dynamic panel on The AI & Skills-Powered Shift: Redefining Leadership. 

People respond to learning that’s approachable, Naranjo said. “Make it something empowering instead of something terrifying.”

LearnUpon: Connecting Formal Learning to Growth

LearnUpon brings structure and scalability to learning—especially in industries where compliance, certification, and audit readiness are non-negotiable. Through the LearnUpon LMS integration with Degreed, organizations can manage formal training requirements while still supporting personalized development. 

For learning teams, the unified approach reduces administrative burden while improving visibility into both regulatory and strategic learning goals. The result? A smarter, more balanced approach to compliance—one that drives accountability and growth.

Learnexus: Scaling Learning With On-Demand Talent

Learnexus gives organizations fast and flexible access to learning expertise they need—without the typical hiring delays or resource constraints. Whether it’s instructional designers, learning consultants, or project managers, Learnexus connects companies with vetted talent on demand, so critical initiatives don’t stall due to internal bandwidth.

The Learnexus message at LENS was clear: When you need support at scale, access to expert talent shouldn’t be a barrier.Ideal for HR and learning leaders facing headcount or bandwidth limits, Learnexus offers rapid access to vetted talent—accelerating program launches and transformation initiatives.

SPA: Benchmarking Progress With a Skills-First Lens

SPA (the Skill Professionals Association) is helping organizations navigate the shift to a skills-first strategy with clarity and confidence. Its newly introduced skills-first maturity framework gives organizations a structured way to benchmark capabilities, identify gaps, and prioritize what comes next.

At LENS 2025, the SPA executive track session Setting a New Workforce Standard: How Skills-First Certification Can Drive Results and Competitive Advantage challenged attendees to lead change, not just react to it—and framed skills as a strategic advantage.

Collaboration is a catalyst for change.

The message from our Degreed LENS sponsors was clear:

Workforce transformation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It isn’t about one tool, one vendor, or one idea. It’s about an ecosystem.

At LENS, these eight partners stood shoulder to shoulder with Degreed—to help organizations everywhere turn the talent they have into the talent they need. We’re proud to work alongside them and excited for what’s ahead!

The post Why Everyone’s Talking About These 8 Degreed Partners appeared first on Degreed.

I’ve joined more than 100 roadmap sessions and talked with learning leaders in 28 cities.

No matter where I go, the same themes keep coming up: CEOs want to future-proof the business, COOs want automation, and CFOs are demanding bottom-line contributions.

People are moving faster than ever—and yet the pressure builds.

The Workforce Transformation Imperative

Five years ago, the World Economic Forum estimated 50% of the workforce would need to be upskilled by 2030. Fast forward five years, throw in a little bit of Gen AI magic, and now that number is closer to 60%.

I’m no data scientist, but even I can tell that’s more skills to build and half the time to do it.

Learning teams around the globe are working tirelessly. Why? A company today can’t just hire the skills it needs. The talent isn’t out there. That company has to build it. And business leaders are scared. They know that the people that they have—and the skills that they have—are not those that they require for success in the future.

It’s why many learning leaders have AI enablement as the highest CEO priority. And they should.

Companies today need people who understand new technologies and people who understand core of business fundamentals. They don’t just need people who know AI. They need people who know the business and how to apply AI within it.

This is the moment for which Degreed exists. We make learning anything accessible. We make corporate learning enjoyable. We make a system that builds engagement and helps an organization deliver a culture of curiosity.

What a profound shame it would be if, at this moment of dynamic change, we couldn’t figure out how to use that system to help our colleagues succeed in this dynamic world.

AI and Its Immense Potential

At Degreed, we wake up every day focused on helping organizations:

• Pinpoint needs
• Personalize development
• Measure change

We know we need to make it easier for companies to align what their employees love to do with the outcomes that will make them relevant in the future.

Imagine if learning teams could deliver incredible, business-relevant content free of cost. Imagine if they could take that content and personalize it. Not for a job or a role or a function, but for an individual employee.

Imagine if a learning organization could rebuild L&D from the ground up the way learning leaders think it should be.

A learning management system (LMS) is good for compliance. A talent marketplace only helps 5% to 10% of employees. 

Forward-thinking organizations need more. This is what Degreed is working on, and it’s where we continue to head.

Aligning People to Needs

In the past 12 years at Degreed, we’ve indexed nearly 40 million content objects. We’ve mapped over 250,000 skills.

We’ve supported more than 10 million Degreed users. And we’re seeing that impact in the real world. At State Street, over 70% of employees learn with Degreed every month. At Volkswagen, a skills-first strategy with Degreed has already saved €2 million.

And now, we’re embedding AI directly into the flow of learning. We recently made three big product announcements:

Degreed Maestro Studio

This powerful tool enables your business to create and deploy customized and AI-native learning experiences easily designed to fit your needs. Maestro is already being used to democratize leadership coaching, scale simulations for sales enablement, and personalize skill development and evaluation. With Degreed Maestro Studio, you can further tailor each AI interaction to your organization’s needs.

Degreed Open Library

This vast resource is now available to every Degreed customer at no additional cost, featuring 500 deeply curated pathways on the most in-demand learning topics. Using AI and in-house expertise, we’ll continuously refine to ensure your organization always has access to high-quality and relevant learning content.

Degreed Maestro Services

This suite of services helps your organization maximize AI’s impact on learning while reducing costs. These include AI-assisted pathway development that leverages Degreed expertise and AI to create structured, high-impact learning journeys. These also include a custom AI experience deployment service for designing, building, and implementing AI-powered coaches and simulations tailored to your organization’s unique priorities.

This is where we’re going:

• More speed. Develop people faster than ever using Maestro, Open Library, and more.
• Less cost. Save budget with hundreds of Open Library pathways and AI-powered deployments.
• Bigger impact. Link learning to business outcomes. Track skills. Prove ROI.

And While We’re Talking About Content

It bears repeating: AI is going to transform the content experience.

Great content pulls at the heartstrings. It understands people’s rhythms. It keeps employees coming back for more.

Organizations are probably going to have more of this high quality content in their libraries moving forward.

Why? Because they’re going to have the budget for it. What’s going away is the mediocre content in the middle.

Companies are no longer going to have to buy an enterprise-wide library that gets 5% adoption just as an insurance policy, in case someone asks for executive presence training in a language that isn’t supported. This change will drive savings. And learning teams will be able to use those resources to invest in new, AI-native experiences. Things that are more engaging and more impactful. 

Employees will progress through learning content, and then when they have a question, they can grapple with that concept. They can engage with an AI mentor. They can test their skills and have much more impactful development experiences.

A Final Thought

Fifteen years ago, I asked a simple question: What will Fifth Avenue in New York City look like in the future?

Retail didn’t disappear. It evolved.

Like retail, work isn’t disappearing. It’s transforming. And that means people must transform too.

Find out more.

Check out our seven-part Degreed in Action webinar series to go even deeper on our innovations in AI and more.

The post More Speed, Less Cost, Bigger Impact: Learning in an AI World appeared first on Degreed.

“This concealment took a toll, creating a disconnect between who I was and who I felt I had to be,” said Stephen, Degreed Vice President of Global Professional Services. “When I finally embraced my identity, it was like stepping into the light after years in the shadows. This journey has taught me the importance of authenticity, and it’s a lesson I strive to impart to my daughters every day.

“Pride, for me, is about ensuring that my children see the value in being true to oneself.”

Working at an organization dedicated to the advancement of lifelong learning has some undeniable advantages. What’s one of the biggest? At Degreed, it’s a company culture that celebrates self-discovery and cherishes the life-affirming, life-changing positivity unleashed by personal growth. This ethos is baked into our products too; they’re intentionally designed to democratize learning so it’s easily accessible and inclusive.

At Degreed, these values become particularly salient in June during LGBTQ+ Pride Month. They give us reason to reflect and importantly provide us with the opportunity. 

As we reflect, we also recognize that big-picture challenges persist when only 45% of LGBT+ employees feel comfortable being out at work, according to a recent Deloitte survey across 13 countries including the United States. 

Join us as we share and celebrate perspectives on the meaning of Pride, what it means to be out at work, and what it means to be out at Degreed.

Hali Linn, Learning Strategy Consultant

The first time I came out at work, I scribbled down a nearly illegible identity on a sticky note at a work-sponsored Pride event where attendees were asked to participate in a survey. It was the first time I felt like I was being invited to claim my full self at work, and accepting that offer was a milestone for me.

I came to New York City drawn to the bold anonymity and adventurous spirit of this provocative place—qualities entirely disparate from the environment where I had grown up. On the streets of New York, no one has time to care what you’re wearing or how you identify, and many queer and questioning folks soon find, at worst, a swarm of busy indifference and, at best, a welcoming and vibrant queer community ready to embrace and love them.

My professional journey, however, did not quite align with the “out and proud” sentiment of the queer community that I cherished. Even in big cities, pockets of prejudice still exist, and I remained in the closet at company after company, sometimes due to hostile work cultures, and, if I’m being honest, sometimes because I wasn’t then ready to be fully out. (A reminder that not everyone is ready to “come out” in every space, and that’s okay!)

Pride events were a beacon of hope and acceptance before I was fully out at work; I witnessed other members of the LBGTQ+ community seamlessly integrate their personal and professional lives, claiming their identities with pride and confidence. If these queer elders and peers could be out, then so too could I!

I still wasn’t fully out at work, however, until I got to Degreed. Much like my arrival in New York, when I came to Degreed I felt welcomed, embraced, and included. I was not merely tolerated and passively celebrated during the month of June. On the contrary, I was invited to bring my whole self to every conversation. 

I’m not just a participant, but a leader, and I work for an organization that embraces my unique experience as an LGBTQ+ individual. Here, my identity is seen as an asset, enriching our workplace with diverse perspectives and fostering a culture of genuine inclusivity. At Degreed, I found the courage to be openly myself, knowing that I am valued for who I am every single day, and this has made a huge difference in my professional and personal life.

Pride, to me, means having the courage to take those first small steps toward self-acceptance and authenticity, even in environments where it feels challenging. Now I embrace the ability I have to be fully out, and I hope I can be a meaningful example to others. Pride means finding and building communities that support and celebrate who you are, inside the walls at work and outside of them as well. Most importantly, Pride is about recognizing and honoring the bravery it takes to live openly and authentically, at the workplace company and beyond!

Ryan Niehaus, Marketing Automation Manager

I have been with Degreed for almost four years. I live in Denver, Colorado, with my husband and rescue pup, Summit.

I came out as bisexual toward the end of 2016 and got married to the love of my life in 2022. My coming out story could not be any blander.

When I approached my friends and family about my sexuality, I was greeted with nothing but love, acceptance, and a “so what” attitude. Because not everyone shares that same experience, I have spent as much time as I can dedicate to educating myself about human rights-related issues and reading about other’s coming out experiences. I have developed a stronger personal appreciation for the importance of making Pride Month more inclusive and celebrating both the bland and anything-but-bland stories, struggles, and successes of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. 

All too often, the word “pride” is associated with notions of excessive love of oneself, vanity, or hubris. But that is not and has never been a foundation of Pride Month. Pride means living a life that is authentic to who I am—without shame, fear, or guilt. 

At work, it means I do not have to behave or act in a certain way because of the threat of being exposed, humiliated, belittled, or rejected. It means I am not ashamed to mention my husband when asked in a meeting what my plans are this upcoming weekend. It means I have the freedom to express my preferred pronouns on my company Slack profile. Lastly, it means I am not afraid of being held back from advancement opportunities because of the person I married. 

What many people don’t know is that we don’t just come out once at work. A constant conversation occurs when meeting new colleagues and introducing ourselves in meetings. And because of that, I am lucky to work for a company as open-minded as Degreed.

I am able to be my authentic self each and every day at work. This allows our Business Resource Group (OUT@Degreed) to spend our time educating, celebrating, and reflecting on the people who put their lives at risk to stand up and demand equality, instead of fighting stereotypes and bigotry internally. And for that, we’re lucky and proud to celebrate Pride Month with Degreed.

Stephen Elrod, Vice President of Global Professional Services

Pride holds a special place in my heart, not just as a celebration but as a profound expression of who I am as a queer dad to two amazing daughters. For me, Pride is about authenticity—showing up as my true self both at work and at home. This authenticity is not just a personal choice but a crucial part of the example I want to set for my children.

In a world that can sometimes feel daunting and unaccepting, I want my daughters to know that they can always be who they are without fear. By living authentically, I hope to show them that self-acceptance is not only possible but also empowering. I want them to understand that being true to oneself is not a privilege but a fundamental right.

At work, bringing my whole self means being open about my identity and experiences. It’s about creating an environment where diversity is not just accepted but celebrated. This authenticity fosters a culture of inclusivity, where everyone feels valued for who they are. When we bring our whole selves to work, we contribute to a healthier, more innovative, and more compassionate workplace. It encourages others to do the same, building a community where authenticity is the norm, not the exception.

At home, being my true self means showing my daughters that it’s okay to be different. It means sharing my journey with them, including the struggles and the triumphs. I want them to see that authenticity is a strength, not a weakness. By being open about who I am, I hope to give them the confidence to embrace their own identities, whatever they may be.

Pride is a reminder that being authentic at work and at home is essential for a healthy, balanced life. It’s about showing my children that it’s possible to be successful and happy without compromising who you are. This balance is vital as a parent because our children learn more from our actions than our words. When they see us living authentically, they learn to value honesty, courage, and self-love.

In conclusion, Pride is more than just a celebration; it’s a testament to the power of authenticity. As a queer dad, I embrace Pride as a time to reflect on my journey and reaffirm my commitment to living truthfully. We can create a world that is more accepting, more loving, and more true to every one of us.

The post Pride at Degreed: Reflecting on the Power of Authenticity appeared first on Degreed.

With this same enthusiasm, we’re welcoming Max Wessel, our new Degreed President. With his appointment, announced today, we’re a leader wiser and a big step closer to jailbreaking the college degree, our mission since day one. 

We’ve been getting to know Max, and we recently sat down with some questions in hand so you can start to get to know him too. The result? An enlightening Q&A on the future of L&D and technology in skill building, what’s next for Degreed, and his personal passion. (Spoiler alert: it’s delicious barbecue.)

Welcome, Max! Let’s get right into some questions. What drew you to Degreed?

Max: Thank you. I think there are only a handful of companies today that have the ability to help companies realize the value of a skills-based organization, and I feel passionately about that transition. When someone’s career spans 60 years following their graduation from university, there’s simply no way companies can rely on the engine for education and training that existed through the 20th century to carry them forward into the 21st century.

That’s something that I believed before I came to Degreed. It’s something that drove me while I was running the SAP Learning business. I’ve seen the positive outcomes. People have more opportunities when you can credential them. People have faster career growth when you can ensure that the learnings they need are at their fingertips. People pick themselves up by their bootstraps when they have bootstraps.

When I look at the market, Degreed is the best platform for giving people access to the training materials and the skill signaling that accelerates career growth. And that was what got me excited. I wanted to come to an organization that already transformed corporate learning and help further transform the world of career mobility and training. There’s no more important mission. There’s no more exciting mission.

You’ve had a significant career in the B2B SaaS learning world. What unique perspectives do you bring to the Degreed mission? What excites you most about this space and the company’s potential impact?

Max: If Degreed is going to be successful in its mission to jailbreak the degree, Degreed is going to have to have broad-scale adoption. It’s going to have to have set the standard for how skill signaling and credential equivalency happen.

Dave Blake [Degreed CEO] has an inspiring vision about this future. When we got to know each other, we hit it off quickly—in part because the things Degreed needed to learn were those lessons that I’d learned across my years in later-stage SaaS. And the things that will drive the market forward are those where Dave and Degreed have a unique perspective on the market. I see my job as helping to make sure that we can capture more hearts and minds across the world’s largest enterprises.

The game for Degreed right now is to translate the company’s vision into the steps that make it easier for our customers to deploy, that make it easier for learners to transact, and that make it easier for our systems to talk to other systems in the enterprise. Helping the team accomplish the task is what gets me excited.

Amid all the enthusiasm for skills-based organizations today, what do you see happening in L&D over the next three to five years?

Max: From 2010 to 2020, companies democratized learning content. From 2020 on, they’re going to have to reform how they use that content, how they target and personalize training, and how they keep people up to speed.

In a skills-based organization, it’s a lot easier to target individuals with relevant content and keep them up to speed than to ask them to learn everything the average person in their role needs. Today, we’re basically saying, “You’re the median of people with your title, so here are all the average requirements and contents for you.” That’s not how people should learn in a world that moves as fast as the one we’re in. You want the things that push your strengths or accommodate your gaps. You want to avoid being forced to click through trainings of things you already know. You want learning to help you accelerate. Delivering skills-first learning, powered by the types of AI now available in the world, unlocks that type of personalization.

By the way, that type of personalization and speed is what every CEO wants out of their learning investment. An organization that is wasting time in its skilling effort isn’t building the strength it needs in areas that are moving fast today like Gen AI, Sustainability, or Cloud. 

The flip side of all this is that there’s a lot of enthusiasm around SBOs. Maybe too much from a more academic perspective. For L&D professionals, for CHROs, and for CEOs who are trying to drive a transformation, doing everything at once won’t work. You can change your recruiting processes. You can change your internal mobility processes. You can deliver personalized learning at every stage of the equation. But the reality is that changing your entire people function all at once will never be successful. So the better way to start is to think, “For a critical role or a critical skill, how do I cascade knowledge into my organization and,  one step at a time, start to realize a faster, more dynamic workforce change?”

You’ve described a process. It’s not a one-and-done, and it’s not a quick fix. What role do you see technology playing in the future of skills-based learning? What role will Degreed and Degreed technology play?

Max: If you’re sitting in a CEO’s chair, you want to set priorities and identify risks. You want to be able to say, “We need to know how to deploy generative AI to drive business efficiency across our finance, HR, and support functions.” It’s that simple. The CEO wants to establish direction and identify risks for CHROs and CLOs.

At Degreed, we want to make it simple for those CHROs and CLOs tasked with the change to identify those skills and take action. We want to deliver some-part-experience, some-part-intelligence, and some-part-workflow that makes it simple to drive improvement quarter after quarter. If you have the right software, your system should be able to help you answer where you have the right talent and where you have gaps, where you need deep reskilling programs, and which programs you deploy are the most effective in driving skill progression.

That is a big data problem that can’t be overcome with spreadsheet-driven experiences. The unique power Degreed has is an integrated view of skills and learning activity. We have skill signals on every employee in an organization. We have the learning content in our platform that we can present and prioritize based on needs. With experience, innovation, intelligence, and workflow, we can make the process of delivering what the C-suite needs much easier.

How will you help ensure that the Degreed mission stays core to what we’re doing as a company as we continue to grow and evolve?

Max: The great thing about the mission that we have is it’s very much in line with our customers’ needs. Take a growing skills gap in the workforce—for instance, a need for more technologists. Even if we graduate high-quality professionals out of every undergraduate and graduate technical program in the world, there’s no way to use the traditional process to address the current problem.

Organizations have to come up with new ways of creating skilled individuals that can be hired into these roles. The overlap with our mission is actually quite powerful. It means if we can do the right thing to assess skills to create credential equivalencies, our customers will embrace that and use it to fill gaps.

I’m excited to sit down to get to know and work deeply with our clients on their transformation agendas. We succeed in jailbreaking the degree when we can successfully help our clients and customers not only deliver against their everyday learning needs but also drive deep upskilling and re-skilling. My focus is entirely on how we can help them be successful in that journey. And the only way to get there is together.

Who’s your favorite non-work-related expert?

Max: Jeremy Yoder at Mad Scientist BBQ. First, I need to say that I love barbecue. Jeremy Yoder is a YouTuber who is excellent at teaching how to barbecue. I find it amazing that what is a very physical, sensory filled, process is something that he can deliver content about via video exclusively.

Are you currently building expertise in barbecue, or do you just admire it from afar?

Max: We have four wood fire barbecues—and I still have a lot of learning to do! I’m always in pursuit of getting better.

What would you consider yourself an expert in? Professionally and also personally?

Max: Professionally, I came up on the product management side of the world, so Product and UX. That’s where I started as an expert. And I think it’s really important for people to be T-shaped. You have to be deep somewhere before you can go broad to really understand a function. Product UX is the function that I understood, and I used that to learn more about the business and then get broader over time. 

Cooking really is my passion outside of work. Barbecue or otherwise. Cooking is my artistic expression.

The post L&D in the Age of Intelligence: A Conversation with Max Wessel, New Degreed President appeared first on Degreed.

There are hundreds of learning technology vendors. And every year, hundreds more pop up to challenge the incumbents. L&D, Talent and HR teams have more options than ever. But there are never enough L&D, Talent and HR teams to buy it all.

That means you get to sort through dozens of unoriginal products with copycat features and messaging — all trying to “win” by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Everyone says they can do what Degreed does. That’s our problem, not yours.

So what can you do when everyone is trying so hard to look, sound and be the same? Focus on what’s different.

Here are three questions to ask yourself to find some new perspective…

1. What’s Your Purpose and Priorities?

What the data says:

Only 11% of HR technology leaders think their latest implementation delivered the expected improvement in employee experience, according to The Josh Bersin Company.

Why it matters: 

Every HR solution promises to transform people and their experiences at work. But mostly they just standardize and automate HR processes. Are you investing in HR or your workforce?

You’re investing in this technology for a reason, right? So first, zoom out beyond features and focus on your purpose and priorities. What do you really need to accomplish? How do you want to do it?

Planes, trains and cars all have engines, wheels, steering and seats, right? Features. But you wouldn’t buy a plane or a train to take your kids to school every day. Because that’s not what they were designed to do. That’s what cars are for.

Similar features often differ in significant ways even if they look alike, because the systems they’re designed and engineered for have different purposes.

Software has a purpose (the main thing it’s built to do). It even has opinions (the how). That purpose and those opinions matter because different tools help users do similar things (like learn) in particular ways. And that shapes the benefits they unlock.

Lots of LXPs, LMSs, HCMs, content solutions, talent systems and collaboration tools can help people find learning content. But there are a lot of ways to learn; not just by consuming content. And different systems all have their own purpose and opinions.

Degreed is designed to help everyone, not just L&D teams, understand, build and flex the skills they need. That is the purpose of Degreed. We study how the workforce learns. In fact, we wrote the book on it (well, one of them, anyway). Those are our opinions.

Degreed makes the emerging work of L&D teams — like integrating and curating — more agile and efficient. So you can create more value for your workforce and your businesses by enabling faster onboarding, more scalable skill building and better retention.

But that’s us. Different kinds of software create different paths to value. And the clues are usually in the names.

HCM systems are for managing critical human capital processes and data. They generate value through cost reductions from standardizing routine HR tasks, like running payroll, enrolling in or managing benefits, doing performance reviews and requesting time-off. But learning delivers less than 3% of the value in most HCM systems. It’s just not their purpose.

LMSs are for managing content, events, compliance and learning records. So they generate value mainly by streamlining administrative and compliance tasks for L&D teams, like managing sessions and enrollment, automating assignments and running reports.

Likewise, most LXPs exist to help people access learning content more easily. So they measure value through engagement. And productivity tools are built to communicate, collaborate and get things done. So their value comes from saving workers time on high-frequency tasks.

More value for the workforce, not just for HR. That’s one way we think Degreed is different.

2. What Kind of Learning Experience Do You Want?

What the data says: 

Technology can provide at least 30 kinds of functionality to enable learning experiences. However, 60% of learning systems only do a few things really well, according to RedThread Research. 

Why it matters: 

More open and empowered learning experiences mean more flexibility, deeper engagement, new skills and better insights. Do you value efficiency over diversity?

Be specific about how you want learning to work. Everyone wants more engaging experiences. Everyone wants a more positive culture. But everyone and every app, system or platform also has different opinions about how to make those things happen.

Courses or resources? For performance support or for future development? Creating, curating or crowdsourcing? Managed by L&D and HR or owned by teams and managers? Technology can enable at least 30 kinds of functionality across the learning experience.

There’s a lot to balance. No one system can do it all well.

Building features is not that hard. What’s hard is doing it thoughtfully and putting them together in a fluid experience that’s valuable for someone. Which is one big reason why 80% of the features in a typical software product are rarely or never used.

Yes, lots of LXPs, LMSs, HCMs, content solutions, talent systems and collaboration tools can help you understand skills and integrate content, arrange it in a grid, or recommend stuff. But the magic is really in what’s behind the user interface “cards” (and who can do what with them). Here’s why…

The definition of “learning experience” is any interaction in which learning takes place. Any interaction. Not just consuming content on a screen. LX is more than UI. Because learning also happens across screens as well as on your own and with other people, in real life.

All in all, there are at least 60 different ways people learn.

So when they say they’re “open” or “empowering” (or whatever), ask yourself what they mean. Be specific.

Does “open” mean you can add your company’s content to courses they’ve curated for you in their system (but you’ll wait months and spend thousands on consultants to integrate anything else)? Or do you have the flexibility to mix and match the content, people and opportunities that matter to your workforce — all kinds of resources from all kinds of sources?

Who cares? Your team and your workforce will. Experiences are often measured by emotions and feelings. Our customers say “Degreed inspired change and new thinking because it felt more like a playground than a running track.” Our users say it “gives us the power and flexibility to learn in our own way.”

Degreed feels different. It feels more inspiring, more flexible and more dynamic.

Are they just “empowering” people to consume content anywhere, anytime? Does “in the flow of work” only mean recommending content inside apps people use to get tasks done? Or can anyone contribute, collaborate and connect around the work that matters to your business, too?

The value of empowering everyone is to scale the impact of learning, isn’t it?

Degreed is different because Degreed empowers everyone to make development part of their job (not just L&D’s or HR’s job). It enables work groups and teams to generate “hundreds of custom learning paths” around their own urgent and specific needs. And that empowers “the L&D team to see what topics are trending and what new skills people want.”

More flexibility,  deeper engagement, new skills and better insights. Those are some other ways we think Degreed is different.

3. What Kind of Customer Experience Do You Need?

What the data says: 

Implementing, operating and innovating can add up to as much as 75% of the total cost and work of owning a learning system over three years, according to Forrester Consulting.

Why it matters: 

A more value focused and collaborative (and less transactional) approach to solutions means more successful customers. Do you need a vendor or a partner?

Think hard about what happens after you sign the deal. There’s a big difference between what you pay for software and what it takes to make it work. What kind of customer experience do you really need to succeed?

Remember earlier, when we pointed out that most software features rarely or never get used? Or that most HR technology doesn’t end up delivering the benefits buyers expect? That’s because software doesn’t get adopted or deliver benefits by itself. It takes work.

Planning. Organizing. Implementing processes. Integrating systems. Configuring settings. Decommissioning old systems. Getting buy-in. Managing changes. Getting actual people to use it. Squashing bugs. Solving problems. Building habits. Winning support.

Everyone says they’re committed to customer success. But talk is cheap. Total cost of ownership calculations often miss things like change management, ongoing maintenance of integrations, and new people or skill profiles required for operations.

Customer experience matters more than you might think.

As one competitor’s customer found, “a cutting-edge learning platform is not enough to create a sustainable learning habit.” That takes more than just software. It requires deeper solutions and a flexible, creative partner because it’s rarely as smooth or easy as you want.

Plans and priorities always shift. Things go differently than you expect. Some problems turn out to be harder than you thought. And people come and go. It happens to everyone. Around 80% of all HR technology implementations go over their timelines and budgets.

Degreed has helped customers work through 400+ implementations and thousands of integrations. It rarely goes as smooth or easy as we want, either. But our Client Experience team averages 13 years of experience in the L&D industry. We’ve learned what works.

Building more scalable L&D operations and more positive learning cultures takes more than software and content. It takes trusted advisors who listen to your problems, stretch your thinking, anticipate roadblocks, and find flexible, creative solutions.

Anyone can say they do those things, though. So when they say this, ask yourself what exactly you expect when you hear words like “solutions” or “partners” (or whatever). Then pay attention to how they make you feel. Do the people you’re relying on share your values and beliefs?

The Degreed customer experience is different because these are not just things we say. Unlike most of our competitors, we help with everything from building business cases and skills strategies to integrations, curation, adoption and problem-solving.

Unlike most of our competitors, we offer original insights, expert advice, professional services, useful tools like engagement campaigns and an inspiring community. Not just software and a network of systems integrators.

These are the things that enable award-winning implementations, accelerate time-to-value and amplify impact. This is what makes the difference between getting 700,000 people to adopt your browser extension (like us) or just 5,000 people (like them).

Degreed customers feel the difference. They feel “how aligned it is with business and individual goals.” It feels easier to integrate and deploy, and better at service and support. “It is not just a client-vendor partnership. We really feel a degree of co-creation.”

A better aligned, easier, more collaborative and more impactful customer experience. Even more ways we think Degreed is different.

See and Feel for Yourself

Differentiating Degreed is hard to do in just a few simple words.

The real answer to “hey, how is Degreed different than…?” is “It depends.” 

It depends on your purpose and priorities. It depends on the learning experiences you want to create. And it depends on the customer experience you need to succeed.

Everyone says they can do what Degreed does. So don’t listen. Instead, see and feel for yourself. Or let us show you, reach out today.

The post What’s the Difference Between Degreed and ____? appeared first on Degreed.

That’s the sentiment shared by the most excited and satisfied Degreed clients. Yes, they’ve purchased a technology platform. But they also get so much more . . . 

There’s no mistaking the selling power of our award-winning LXP. It’s an open ecosystem designed to grow with your organization — providing a single, easily searchable front door to an AI-powered personalized and social learning experience that’s available to your people anytime, anywhere — all while flexibly integrating with your existing IT at the top of your learning tech stack.

But when you buy Degreed, you get more than an intuitive solution.

You get a partner. A whole team of partners, actually.

Decades of industry knowledge. Patient, go-live support. Genuine care and active participation in the ongoing, long-term success of your deployment.

These are just a few data points from the volumes of feedback we’ve received from discerning clients explaining why they chose the Degreed team over the competition. It’s a culture of care backed by serious, venture-backed financial firepower that’s enabling us to continue innovating across the learning technology marketplace.

Degreed has more than 600 employees in 40 U.S. states and 16 countries. More importantly, “they’re all here for exactly and precisely one reason,” Degreed CEO Dan Levin said. “It’s the same reason I’m here: to make all of you, all of our clients, into heroes. To make you successful. To enable your learning journey and your learning transformation.”  

For customers like Ibotta, that means creating an experience in which people can learn skills relevant to their current roles as well as roles they aspire to, said Ryan Arpin, Senior L&D Manager. “We needed to connect people in realtime to new opportunities like mentoring — with our guidance, and by empowering people with tools that help them on their own.”

On Open Ecosystem Borne by Innovation

We’re particularly proud of how our platform is consistently embraced by the audience it’s designed to benefit the most — end users. During the past 24 months, workers across our customer base have given Degreed an average net promoter (NPS) score of 40, exceeding NPS scores received by close competitors including EdCast and Cornerstone OnDemand.

We don’t see that changing. Why? We have a clear roadmap.

“We have a simple mission and strategy,” Levin said. “We will always build an open platform. We will integrate with every other piece of technology, every content provider, every piece of enabling capability in your ecosystem we possibly can. That is fundamental to our mission.

“We will never try to lock you in. We will never try to constrain your choices. Even when we offer a capability that is native to our platform, in reporting for example, we will always support your ability to choose an alternative… And we will always be focused on delivering an amazing end-user experience.”

The Degreed strategy includes:

• Giving you better insights into the skills your workforce has and needs.
• Making it easier for people to build the skills they want and need through relevant content and on-the-job experiences.
• Delivering more seamless ways to access core LMS functionality.
• Reducing the time to value of new learning initiatives.
• Expanding the footprint of L&D across your workforce.

Relationships Built on Client Success

How are we fueling our clients with such innovation? We’re doing it with an entire team of knowledgeable and passionate people dedicated to delivering value.

Our team creates a partnership with each and every one of our clients. It’s a relationship that begins during the sales process and focuses on supporting long-term achievement as well as building community, so our clients can share success stories and insights.

We help our clients adopt our platform. We help them optimize our platform to meet their specific needs.  And in doing so, we help them use our platform to take their learning programs in entirely new and wildly engaging directions. 

This doesn’t mean we accommodate all custom requests. And there are many! Instead, we listen and advocate for the biggest needs in response to the most painful pain points we encounter. Along the way, we give a voice to our clients that influences our product roadmap.

Our Client Experience (CX) team members collectively average more than 13 years of L&D industry experience. Moreover, the internal Degreed culture of collaboration and cross-functional partnership enables our CX team to strategically guide clients with tremendous value. And, of course, the CX team is active on Degreed. Its top developing skills are “Consulting” and “Problem Solving.”

In addition to our world-class CX team, we also have a team of experts in learning experience design and skills strategy ready to accelerate your value with Degreed. Through strategic consulting and thought leadership — on challenges from creating highly-custom strategies to building out individual learning journeys — our Professional Services team challenges our clients to innovate, inspire and embed cultures of learning within their teams and organizations. We’re here to help you get it done faster and better.

Our product is not always perfect, so when something goes wrong our entire team is mobilized to minimize the impact on our clients. Along with our Success and Engagement teams, our Global Technical Support team provides 24/7 support (with live support provided in eight languages). Last year, our Support customer satisfaction (CSAT) score once again exceeded 85%, reflecting our ongoing efforts to go above and beyond expectations. 

Want To Learn More?

Curious about our client experience? Chat with a Degreed representative today.

Be sure to download our research report How the Workforce Learns for 15 actions you can take to transform learning at your organization.

The post Flexibility, Support, Value: That’s the Degreed Client Experience appeared first on Degreed.

That timeless take is reflected in Degreed’s history, and perhaps even more so when we’ve got big news — like the $153 million in Series D funding we announced today, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. The investment will be used to fuel innovation and generate value for our clients by accelerating product development, enhancing data infrastructure, and continuing our global expansion as we pursue new, strategic acquisitions.

That’s not all, though. Dan Levin, former COO of Box, will succeed Chris McCarthy as CEO of Degreed. Chris is stepping back after almost eight years here to address a chronic back issue, but he’ll remain in a strategic advisory capacity and sit on the Degreed Board of Directors. It was a very difficult decision for Chris to make, and he was heavily involved in the months-long succession process to ensure this transition is smooth and successful. 

We’ve always worked to plant new seeds — for our own growth and our customers’ success — from our scrappy start nearly a decade ago, through every strategic evolution, and continuing today.

To understand where we’re going with this new resourcing and leadership, we always remember where we’ve been.

The Beginning: A Fresh Look at Learning

Degreed was created on a simple premise: Education is too important to stay the way it is.

Co-founders David Blake and Eric Sharp set out to jailbreak the college degree. “It should be our skills, irrespective of how or where we develop them, that should be what determines our opportunities, and I wanted to be part of the solution,” Blake said.

The Early Years: Culture and Momentum

McCarthy, who joined Degreed as COO in 2013 and succeeded Blake as CEO in 2018, frequently slept at the office and cold called learning leaders to get product feedback. “We’ve built something brick by brick,” he said.

At first, Degreed was a business-to-consumer (B2C) platform, satisfying consumer demand for a portal that connects people with lifelong learning from a wide range of aggregated sources. But there was more to come.

Evolution and Expansion  

A key product evolution came in 2015 with a shift from B2C to a predominantly business-to-business (B2B) strategy. The goal was to build something scalable, secure, and most importantly, impactful — an experience laser-focused on the needs of workers.

This led to new features that are still core to our product today: Pathways and Groups. The product we pioneered became known as a learning experience platform (LXP) — a reflection of our initial focus on integrating learning resources from a variety of systems and apps. As we added more sophisticated capabilities, we evolved into an intuitive workforce upskilling platform, broadening our customer base from learning leaders to talent, HR, and technology leaders, too. 

Our 2016 acquisition of Gibbon brought depth to our content curation and product design. And our 2018 acquisition of Pathgather made Degreed more social while adding admin functionality.

Today, Degreed has expanded to three core products: Learning Experience, Career Mobility, and Skill Analytics. We help business leaders understand the supply and demand for skills across their organizations and connect people’s skills to internal opportunities like projects, stretch assignments, and gig work, creating value for both the business and your people.

Explosive Growth: Funding, People, Customers 

Including today’s announcement, Degreed has received more than $335 million in total funding, enabling us to expand significantly.

More than 570 employees across 13 countries work at Degreed, and we expect to employ more than 600 people by the end of this year. Drawn to Degreed by its mission and culture, people like it here and tend to stick around. 

In 2019, we acquired Adepto to help our customers identify skills that are in demand and bridge skills gaps by intelligently matching internal and external workers to new work opportunities. In another important milestone, we partnered with LearnUpon in early 2020. Now our customers can easily access the LMS features they need along with our learning experience platform in a single investment. Since then, we’ve gained additional partners, such as TED and Pluralsight, among others.

Along the way, we’ve consistently expanded our customer base domestically and internationally. Today, we serve hundreds of the world’s most innovative organizations in over 27 countries. Owing to this success, our flagship virtual conference, the annual Degreed LENS Lite, last year drew more than 12,000 registered participants from more than 90 countries.

We’re Not Even Close to Being Done

Throughout our history, we’ve been highly intentional about how Degreed has developed as a company and as a product. This remains a top priority, said Kat Kennedy, President and Chief Experience Officer. She was employee No. 1, hired by the co-founders. 

“Thriving employees are eight times more likely to work for a company that they trust will provide them with career opportunities, even if their job changes or goes away,” Kat said. “And businesses that can quickly reallocate talent to the most critical strategic priorities are more than twice as likely to outperform their competitors on total returns to shareholders. That’s exactly what Degreed does, and it’s the picture we are working to make a reality at each of the organizations we are lucky to serve.”

The post The History of Degreed: Mission-Driven Momentum appeared first on Degreed.

Human capital management, talent management, and learning management systems are all built for just that: management. But people need more than management to navigate change and disruption. They need insights, empowerment, and opportunities.

That’s where Degreed comes in.

What is Degreed?

Degreed is an upskilling solution that helps your organization quickly and easily understand, build, and activate skills.

How Does Degreed Work?

Degreed helps you identify the skill gaps across your business and then find learning, talent development, and experiential learning opportunities for your people — to help you close those gaps. Degreed can provide a single and fluid skill-building experience powered by your people’s engagement and interests.

Degreed Intelligence helps you understand the supply and demand for skills at your organization. So you can get real-time insights and focus upskilling and reskilling on the capabilities your business needs next.

Better performing, more adaptable workers are 64% more likely to get regular feedback on the skills they need to advance their careers. So we embed and integrate with industry-leading skill measurement tools to get the most holistic view of your talent.

Not sure where to start with skill data? Check out our Skill Data Handbook.

Degreed Learning Experience helps your people build the skills they need — so you can create integrated, personalized development experiences that continuously engage your teams with the tools, content, and people that matter to them.

Better performing, more adaptable workers are 142% more likely to get personalized guidance and recommendations from their company’s learning systems, so we use industry-leading data science fueled by industry-leading user engagement. Want to learn more about how people learn? Download our full report on How the Workforce Learns.

Connect it all with experiential learning. Offering experiential learning opportunities helps you activate skills across your business — so you can reveal your people’s strengths and automatically match everyone to tasks, projects, new assignments, or mentors — right now.

Better performing, more adaptable workers are 87% more likely to have access to projects and other opportunities to grow their skills on the job, so we enable workers and managers to find and connect with them.

There are a lot of ways to connect learning, skill data, and experiential learning at your organization. If you’re not sure where you stand, take our Upskilling Strategy Audit, designed to guide you on a personalized pathway of content and tools to help you succeed.

Why Degreed?

Degreed is agile and efficient. But don’t just take our word for it. The successes of our customers speak volumes. They learn more, they learn faster, and they’re more productive.

Contact us to learn more about how Degreed can help you anticipate, amplify, and activate the skills your business needs next.

The post An Introduction to Degreed: Your Learning & Upskilling Platform appeared first on Degreed.

While we wish you plenty of hot cocoa, holiday movies, and snowball (or dirtball if it’s dry where you are?) fights, there’s bound to be some downtime where this survival guide can be the antidote to your kids’ holiday boredom. As a companion to our April activity book, Everything’s Canceled!, A Holiday Survival Guide is here to fill the next few weeks with winter trivia, craft projects, brainteasers, and — most importantly — dad jokes. 

So what are you doing still reading this? Download your copy and get started (the Madlibs are extra spicy this year). From everyone at Degreed, we wish you safe, happy holidays and a Happy New Year. Thanks for riding this crazy wave called 2020 with us. 

The post Our Holiday Survival Guide: A Kid’s Winter Break Activity Book appeared first on Degreed.

We’ve come a long way. The business has quadrupled over the last two years and the number of people using our platform has tripled in the last year alone. We’ve built a more engaging platform, which helps our customers unlock new insights about the supply of skills within their companies. That’s why one-third of the Fortune 50 companies are using Degreed today to put their employees’ needs first.

The next step is helping our customers identify and respond to shifts in the skills that are in demand. So today, we’re pleased to announce that we have acquired Adepto to complete our vision and empower our customers to bridge the divide between the supply and demand for skills.

Where We’ve Been

Seven years ago, we realized that the HCM suites had forgotten about the end-user. Across the board, the existing platforms focused more on HR and administrative requirements than on the value delivered to employees.

So, we set out to build a different type of product — one that’s enterprise-class, meaning it’s scalable, secure, and most importantly, impactful — by being laser-focused on the needs of the employee.

Degreed is both platform- and content- agnostic, so you and your people can learn your way. It also includes a simple yet powerful toolkit that enables both users and administrators to personalize the experience based on everyone’s unique skill sets, interests, and ambitions. And by focusing on what the users really need, Degreed is able to generate a unique and valuable dataset on the learning and skills of your workforce.

The Demand to Our Supply

Listening to our clients, we consistently hear one thing loud and clear: they need more than inconsistent or inferred data sets from their HCM systems or yearly performance reviews. They want a system that not only promotes continuous user engagement, but also offers insight into how their people’s skills match with projects, career opportunities, and business priorities — and helps people bridge those gaps. This is where the acquisition of Adepto comes in.

Adepto enables organizations to build private Total Talent networks that intelligently match internal and external workers to open projects, gigs, and job opportunities that fit their abilities and career goals. It also provides business leaders with easy-to-use tools to track and access the skill sets of their entire pool of available talent, including current and past employees, as well as contractors, freelancers, consultants, and potential new hires.

Through the acquisition, Degreed will become the destination for business executives, team managers (as well as talent and HR leaders) to understand and manage the supply and demand for skills inside their organizations. Paired with Degreed’s award-winning Learning Experience Platform, Adepto’s technology will give our customers a talent marketplace to enable internal mobility along with the visibility and capabilities to respond to shifts in the demand for skills as they’re happening.

Adepto at a Glance:

• Offices in London, UK, Brisbane, Australia, and New York, USA
• 41 employees
• Leadership team includes Chris Milligan (Founder/CEO), Linda Davies (Financial Controller), Brenton Worley (CTO), Joel Luther (Head of Product), Vicky Holdsworth (VP, Marketing and Partnerships), Oli Meager (VP, Sales, and EMEA), Louise Anderson (VP, Solutions, and APAC), April Lea (Head of Delivery), and James Griffin (VP Customers)
• The company has grown by 150% per year for three consecutive years
• Clients include Atos, Capita, and Cisco, as well as public sector employers, such as the Queensland Government.

Where We’re Going

With our expanded set of resources and capabilities, we will combine Adepto’s technology and data with the core parts of Degreed. That will include:

1. Enhancing our core LXP features, such as Search, personalized recommendations, and on-the-job development opportunities.
2. Expanding our integration capabilities to include the broader HCM and work ecosystem.
3. Enriching our analytics, reporting, and decision-making functionalities.

The acquisition also expands Degreed’s ability to serve our global and multinational organizations with 40+ new product, professional services, and commercial teams on the ground in Europe and Australia.

Delivering the most comprehensive, user-first learning and skills platform remains our north star and we are proud to add Adepto on this journey.

To be clear, Degreed is still an open, integrated ecosystem. If our customers have content or data stored on a different platform, we will always allow users to access and utilize it.

Our partnership with Adepto is simply another critical step to demonstrate our dedication to ensuring no one becomes irrelevant due to lack of new skills, and that organizations have the ability and insights to support their growth.

If you have any questions or thoughts to share, we would love to speak to you and offer a variety of avenues to reach us. Read our press release, get in touch with your Degreed or Adepto contact or visit the Degreed blog.

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