The global consulting and technology services firm has long recognized that new managers need support. This has proven especially true in a learning climate marked by digital fatigue,  and what some have casually described as “death by pathway.”

At a time when the Capgemini business is scaling rapidly and client demands are growing more complex, the organization understands the importance of supporting its first time managers, to set them up for success right from the get-go.

Yet, traditional leadership programs are hard to scale, difficult to maintain, and often disconnected from the pace and priorities of the business. Learning delivery teams spend too much time managing training logistics, emails, and manual processes. And Learning teams want something more coherent, modern, and impactful.

To meet these challenges, Capgemini has launched an Emerging Leaders program—a guided, cohort-based experience built on Degreed Academies. The result? A 26% jump in skills proficiency, a big drop in attrition, and a 4.6 out of 5 learner satisfaction rating—proof that Capgemini first-time managers aren’t just trained, they are equipped to lead. 

Leadership Development That Starts Strong and Scales Fast

Co-created with business leaders and learning partners, Emerging Leaders follows a complete learning cycle. It’s more than a content playlist. It’s a full development journey designed to embed growth into everyday work, supported by nudges, mentors, reflections, and social accountability.

To build the journey, learning teams worked closely with HR and business leaders to define success, select content, and ensure the program reflected the company’s Leadership Vision—a set of guiding leadership principles that the company believes every employee should develop.

The result is an experience designed to match the expectations of a digitally fluent, ambitious audience. Employees progress through a six-week cycle, combining curated digital content, real-world projects, mentoring, reflection, and guided practice—all within a single Degreed-powered environment.

How Degreed Academies Makes It Possible

Degreed Academies gives Capgemini the infrastructure to deliver a holistic, guided leadership journey within a single, unified experience. From onboarding and nudges to live events and reflections, everything is centralized—no more spreadsheets, scattered tools, or siloed communications. And, with Microsoft Teams integration and built-in calendar functionality, participants stay on track while balancing their day-to-day responsibilities.

Capgemini uses Degreed Academies to structure monthly cohorts in a fully guided, week-by-week experience—layering content, leadership simulations, mentoring prompts, and reflection points in a clearly defined journey. Employees always know what to do next and why it matters. Automated nudges and personalized messaging help maintain momentum and accountability, without overloading delivery teams. By streamlining what were previously resource-heavy, manual tasks like scheduling, communications, and tracking, Degreed gives L&D professionals more time to focus on content quality, learner engagement, and business alignment.

Because everything runs through Degreed, Capgemini can access real-time insights on progress, engagement, and outcomes. This allows learning leaders to tweak delivery based on cohort behavior, and to identify bottlenecks early. With Degreed Academies, Capgemini isn’t just delivering training—it’s running a scalable, data-backed leadership product.

Features like live events, embedded reflections, and automated reminders help create a sense of connection and momentum.

Completion rates have peaked at 81%, with learner satisfaction scores averaging 4.6 out of 5.

More Than Engagement. Measurable Growth.

In 2024 alone, nearly 4,000 employees across 39 countries completed the program. Capgemini is on track to scale cohorts of 2,000 people per month in 2025. Attrition of managers who completed the program dropped to 6.5%, versus a much higher company average among the same target population.

And employee feedback has been resoundingly positive. Participants consistently call out the program’s relevance, structure, and challenge.

“The Emerging Leaders program was unforgettable among the other trainings I’ve taken,” said one employee.

“One of the most practical, useful, and challenging programs I’ve participated in,” said another.

Employees show a 26% average increase in skills proficiency from pre-program assessments to post-program outcomes. And more than 90% of those surveyed said they’d apply what they learned in their current roles.

A Model for Strategic Leadership Growth

Capgemini hasn’t just improved leadership development—the company has reimagined how it should operate. Instead of a fragmented or manual model, Emerging Leaders is now a repeatable, data-driven experience that’s aligned with the long-term Capgemini leadership strategy.

For enterprise learning teams facing similar challenges, the takeaway is clear: When leadership development meets thoughtful design and scalable technology, impact multiplies.

With momentum building and demand accelerating, Capgemini continues to refine and expand the program—proving that with the right model, early leadership development can be both high-impact and high-scale.

Learn more.

Build a scalable leadership program like this one. Let’s talk about how Degreed Academies can support workforce development at scale at your organization.

The post Innovative Leadership: Capgemini’s Approach to Emerging Leaders appeared first on Degreed.

This scenario might sound nonsensical, but this is how many company leaders treat employees with upskilling and reskilling: They point to a learning content library and send employees on their way.

The good news is many companies do take upskilling and reskilling seriously. Their leaders know how critical employee development efforts are—to achieving breakneck digital transformations and overcoming the growing talent crisis.

For these reasons, upskilling and reskilling programs are on the rise; 72 percent of businesses offer reskilling programs. But it’s not enough. The skills gap just gets bigger. 

“Our systems of learning and work were not equipped to skill up and transition large numbers of workers to jobs that are in demand,” noted researcher Michelle R. Weise, founder of the Strata Institute for The Future of Work and author of Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet.

So how can companies effectively support upskilling and reskilling efforts? Like climbing Mt. Everest—or reaching any lofty goal—upskilling and reskilling require time and guidance. 

Employees want to learn but don’t have the time.

IT team members have a 90-minute online class on data analytics scheduled for Thursday. It’s on their calendars so their boss, who agreed to the course, can see it. But on the day of the class, their boss schedules a different meeting and says it takes priority. 

It’s the same old story. 

Many companies today encourage learning, but they don’t offer the time employees need to learn new skills. Survey after survey shows us that employees want to learn on the job, but time is a barrier. A LinkedIn Learning survey, for example, found lack of time is the number one reason employees don’t develop. 

Who’s responsible for making time for learning? Many employers place the responsibility on their workers to upskill and reskill. But only a small, select group can afford this.

If your company maintains that employees are responsible for finding time to upskill, it’s probably negatively impacting the many who are:

• Primary caregivers
• Parents or guardians
• People with second jobs

People’s lack of time and their need to earn money are underlying forces at play in why so many traditional learning programs, like tuition reimbursement, remain inequitable. So it comes as no surprise that a recent Randstad survey found upskilling and reskilling efforts often favor certain populations over others. 

Ignoring the inequities of traditional learning programs hurts employees and their employers. This is especially true amid today’s unrelenting digital transformation. Today’s changes are so deep and wide that they’re fueling a new era described as The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Industry 4.0. Soon businesses will need skills that haven’t been invented yet. And they’ll need those skills in bulk.

Almost every worker will need to upskill in today’s new world of work. The skills gap isn’t limited to tech jobs. It applies to chief executive officers, CEOs, HR employees, and data scientists alike. Businesses will pay dearly if only the employees who have the time and money to spare upskill and reskill.

Companies must set aside time for employees to learn new skills.

You need to give workers time to learn—plain and simple. Weise understands the problem and how to fix it. She points out that “time is the biggest barrier” and “no skills-building initiative will work unless we solve for this limit factor of time.”  

Giving employees time to learn is particularly important for skill building. This is because learning a skill is different from acquiring knowledge. It’s the difference between learning about climbing Mt. Everest and being able to actually do it. For example, if your friend visiting Nepal only watched hundreds of climbing videos from their sofa to prepare, the skills to summit simply won’t be there. Learning a skill, especially specialized or complex skills, requires more learning time than any other type of learning. 

In terms of time commitments, the journey to summit a mountain is comparable to an upskilling and reskilling journey. Some estimates say it takes 480 hours on average to learn a new skill. Of course, the number of hours depends on the skill. An employee could devote at least 10 hours to developing a simple skill. To build complicated skills or obtain a college degree? A person might need as many as 5,000 hours. 

As companies move toward establishing new upskilling and reskilling initiatives, they must reevaluate how much work time is dedicated to learning. Keep in mind how much time your upskilling and reskilling efforts require. If your leaders find learning time is lacking, they can mandate learning happen on a weekly or monthly basis and hold managers or employees accountable for taking time to learn. 

Employees want to learn new skills but don’t have support.

Proactive engineers want to learn a new programming language, and their manager recommends finding a course in your company’s content library. So they peruse and complete the two Python courses that they manage to find. But after consuming about 30 hours of content, the employees still don’t feel confident enough to tackle a project that requires Python skills.

It’s the same old story. 

Paying for learning resources doesn’t guarantee your company’s upskilling and reskilling success. L&D focuses a lot on content, but you can’t expect a content library to provide people with the guidance they need to effectively develop the right skills.

Consider the Python example above. The employees’ company might not even need another Python engineer. Gartner found that 70 percent of employees haven’t mastered the digital skills they need for their jobs, and it’s likely those same employees or managers don’t necessarily know which skills to focus on. The Harvard Business Review calls this “unconscious incompetence.” 

Workers don’t know what they don’t know. Managers and leaders aren’t much better off. In the Brandon Hall Group 2020 Learning Strategy Study, almost every company (87%) expressed the need to align learning and goals, but only 13% said they were capable of doing it. 

Most content libraries don’t provide the tools needed to align skills with business outcomes. Even if by some miracle employees implicitly know the right skills to learn, most content libraries don’t provide them with the right experiences or resources for learning those skills. Consider once again our Python example. Consuming all 30 hours of a content library’s Python videos won’t make employees experts, and it won’t necessarily make them ready to deploy new Python skills successfully.

A study of 14,000 businesses found that 63 percent of managers aren’t equipped with the right upskilling resources. This is because many legacy learning content libraries focus on learning resources for training and everyday learning. These bite-size learning resources don’t provide the specialized, in-depth content that deep upskilling requires. 

Companies must provide a skills infrastructure. 

Employees need hundreds of hours to develop skills, and they also need expertise and an infrastructure to guide their skills journey. For this reason, 91 percent of the thousands of employees and HR pros surveyed in Randstad Risemart’s 2021 Survey of Skills said that skilling initiatives would be more effective with expert guidance. 

What does “expert guidance” mean? When HR professionals were asked what would have helped employees make better choices about which courses to take or which on-the-job experiential learning opportunities to seek, top responses included:

• Assessments of skills, career interests, and possible career paths
• Access to a broad view of learning opportunities, including courses, certifications, academic degrees, and experiential learning 
• Advice on the best-fit skilling options 
• Insights into in-demand skills

If you value this list, stop providing your people with a login to a learning content library and expect business-aligned skill-building to take place. Meeting your upskilling and reskilling challenges requires an ecosystem of human guides and technology working in concert to deliver the right content and experiences to the right employees at the right times. 

Your company can build this infrastructure internally and take advantage of external third-party programs. One popular practice today is to turn to external programs for the learning portion of skill development. These can take several forms. Bootcamps, seminars, and academies provide participants with specialized, in-depth content, experiences practicing a skill, and feedback from experts. 

Companies must guide employees along their upskilling and reskilling journeys. 

It’s been said that if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re already there. In other words, you’re lost. Being lost isn’t an ideal state for businesses looking to thrive in an era in which the shelf life of skills is down to only three years. 

If you’re lost on the upskilling and reskilling mountain, get a guide. With something as complex and critical as upskilling and reskilling, companies can’t afford to point their employees to a content library and wish them good luck.

Building skills is the most complex and time-consuming type of learning there is. Take time and offer guidance. Provide your people adequate time to learn new skills, and give them a comprehensive skill-building solution.  

To learn more about how learning academies can support your upskilling and reskilling efforts, read “Academies 101: Everything You Need to Know.”

The post Debunking Two Upskilling and Reskilling Myths appeared first on Degreed.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It was the first year of Sunday Night Football on ESPN.”

A graduate of North Carolina State University and the second round 1989 draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Peebles was playing for the Cleveland Browns against the rival Houston Oilers on Nov. 17, 1991, when the helmet-to-helmet hit compressed his neck into his shoulders, fractured in his C3 vertebrae, and temporarily paralyzed him from the neck down.

“I was at the top of my game, at the height of my powers. And in one play, it was over. But once we realized I was going to regain mobility, I wasn’t in panic mode about my next steps.”

Danny didn’t panic because he’d always put learning first. In fact, we learned this week he’s never given up on the lifelong learning mindset he’s embraced since childhood. As our Q&A affirms, it’s a mindset that’s guided Danny throughout his nearly 20-year career in L&D and HR tech—and every day here at Degreed, where he works as a Raleigh-based Enterprise Sales Director.

Degreed: Working in the world of L&D, you obviously understand the importance of building new skills. Where did that appreciation originate?

Danny: I come from a family of educators. My mother was a math teacher. My oldest daughter is a teacher. My grandparents, my mom’s parents, were college professors: My grandfather was a math teacher. My grandmother was an English teacher. So math and science are kind of what I lean toward. I just happened to be good at sports. In fact, my nickname through middle school was “The Professor.”

I started off at North Carolina State in computer science, and the challenge in computer science at that time was it was all mainframes. There were 25 seats in the computer lab. After I got out of football practice, sometimes I’d be waiting until 2 or 3 in the morning to get a seat to do my punch cards and things of that nature. And I was like, I can’t. Do you know what I mean? I can’t survive doing this.

I studied biology. But eventually I was like, “What am I going to do with a biology degree?” I’ve always been a logical, practical thinker, but I was ignorant at the time of the Raleigh pharmaceutical research triangle right in my backyard.

I had a cousin who was a partner at that time at [accounting firm] Arthur Andersen. We had a conversation. I switched my major and made the decision to get a degree in accounting, and I got a second degree in business management. One of my advisors was like, “You’re only two classes away from getting a second degree.” So while I was prepping for the NFL draft, I went ahead and did two more classes. That’s how important school was to me. The draft was the night before my finals. When I showed up for my exams the next day, they were perplexed.

Degreed: You say you “happened” to be good at sports, but there’s got to be more to it than that. What did your path to the pros look like?

Danny: Coming out of high school, I got recruited for both track and football by some top schools. I was probably actually better at track than I was at football. NC State is seven minutes from my house where I grew up. So I grew up an NC State fan. Honestly, the reason I ended up at NC State is because I thought, “If I go to school and get on the field and play, it’ll be easy for me to get a job.” That was my mentality coming out of high school. I wasn’t thinking, “I’ll be in the NFL.”

Nowadays, I mentor kids and go speak. In middle school, they’re saying, “I’m going to the NFL.” When I was that age, I didn’t have any preconceived notion that would be the case. I always thought that if I didn’t get drafted before the fourth round, I was going to do other work. The money you could make in football as a late-round pick back then wasn’t like it is today. I already had other job offers coming out of college. But during my senior year, I started moving up the charts to the point where they were talking about me as a potential late first-round, early second-round pick. That changed the dynamic.

Degreed: You played running back in high school, but you weren’t big enough for that position in college or the pros. How did you adjust?

Danny: I naturally was a running back and defensive back, but I knew I wasn’t going to be big enough. Back then, if you were fast, you played running back. So literally almost my entire career until my senior year in high school, I played running back. I had to learn to be a receiver. It wasn’t as instinctive for me. I forced my high school coach to move me to receiver my senior year. I probably caught 15 passes my senior year. I had more interceptions. But it was vital.

We didn’t call it “skilling” then, but that’s what I had to do. I had to refine my skill set. I had to upskill myself. The path to success in any field requires continuous growth and a relentless pursuit of improvement. It’s about making a choice to invest in yourself, even when it’s not easy.

I’ve always wanted to push myself forward to be relevant. Take the role I have today. Sales was a learned skill for me. As a kid, we had to sell raffle tickets and stuff to raise money, and I wasn’t going to ask anybody for anything. You would’ve never in a million years convinced me I was going to be a salesperson. But it works for me today because I’ve upskilled, and I believe in what we do.

Degreed: How does your personal career journey inform your conversations with L&D leaders, our customers, and prospective Degreed clients?

Danny: I see the learning and business leaders I sell to as coaches. I often talk to them as If I’m talking to a coach about empowering a team. When I’m talking to prospects, I like to talk about their individual employee’s journeys. I talk about my own journey too.

In my first year with access to an LXP, I learned more than I had in the previous 20 years of my professional career. I’m always trying to hone my skills. I’m so grateful for platforms like Degreed that provide a comprehensive solution for skill-building and continuous learning. It’s like having a personal coach and mentor right at your fingertips. I’m currently learning a lot about generative AI and Chat GPT. And I’m always keeping current from a business development standpoint.

When I’m talking to prospects, I like to talk about how they can improve the individual employee’s learning journey because it’s going to help the business reduce turnover, which improves the bottom line. It’s going to help boost career mobility. It helps business leaders keep the people they want to keep.

The beauty of the LXP to me, versus an LMS, for example, is the experience. I’m passionate about that with the people I’m talking with because of what’s in it for them. And if you watch me demo, most of the time I’m demoing from the passion of the person, the employee, the learner.

Degreed: You enjoy mentoring kids, and mentioned they often dream of the NFL. They can’t all make it. How do you talk to them about other options?

Danny: I’m not going to kill anybody’s dream. I always say, “Chase it 100 miles an hour, but don’t just have one basket. You need to have something not as a Plan B but as a parallel.”

Presuming they do make it, a good education is going to help them be more engaged in their affairs, finances, and things of that nature. I point that out.

But the most important thing I say is, “I was right there where you want to be. One play, one hit, took it all away. So just because you get there doesn’t mean you’re going to stay there.”

That message, that’s where I think I actually make the biggest headway.

The post <strong>From the NFL Gridiron to Degreed: Adversity, Success, & Lifelong Learning</strong> appeared first on Degreed.

This is what we like to call ecosystem mapping. No matter the size of your ecosystem, be it a puddle or an ocean, ecosystem mapping is critical.

Mapping is a tried-and-true methodology for architects, engineers, and now L&D: If you can map it, you can see it, critique it, and perfect it. Not only can the exercise help you plan for the future, but it can help you spot many of the causes for your L&D growing pains. 

When you consider all macro and micro elements of your learning ecosystem and create an accurate map, it can help your L&D team to:

• Identify current ecosystem strengths and opportunities for improvement. 
• Provide a compelling visual for the C-suite and strengthen your relationship with IT.   

Get to Know Your L&D Ecosystem

Whether you planned it or not, you have a learning tech ecosystem. Truth be told, most ecosystems aren’t planned. They develop organically over time as you add one solution here, a solution there — oh, and yet another to solve that random problem that popped up a month ago. 

Often in these moments, you don’t consider how your new tech will interact with existing tech. So after a while, you end up with a tech stack in which the overall connectedness suffers from being an afterthought. It’s a bit of a mess: redundancies, dead-ends, data pits, and other blind spots.

You didn’t end up here because of bad intentions — you were just solving problems. This isn’t bad. People are problem solvers. But through this process, you can create a larger challenge. 

So let’s see what you’ve got. Let’s see what your current ecosystem looks like. 

Where to Start with Your Ecosystem Mapping

1. Make a List of All Your Solutions

Account for EVERYTHING.

List the systems specifically bought for employee development. And don’t forget to include systems employees broadly use for learning experiences — even the solutions not necessarily designed or intended for learning. For example, SharePoint was initially designed for file sharing, collaboration and productivity during the course of a project, but this, and other programs like Slack and Microsoft Teams, can play a role in your learning ecosystem. 

Does your list seem never-ending? If this step becomes overwhelming, a good place to start is by reaching out to your IT partners. Oftentimes, they’ll have a list and possibly even diagrams. Or if it helps, break down your tech solutions into categories. The graph below shows the different layers of technology and some common vendors you might already partner with. 

2. Find Connections

Draw arrows to show the relationships between the solutions on your list. 

While you can do this manually, the IT diagram we mentioned above serves as a handy cheat sheet for this step. A full-blown IT architecture diagram may be overkill for your needs, but it can help you consider the flow of information and interdependencies of resources and activities across your ecosystem. And that’s precisely what you need to do for this step: show how the various systems in your list integrate or communicate with one another. 

3. Identify Hubs

Find software nerve centers.

By drawing those connections, you’ll discover a few solutions that serve as major nerve centers. These solutions direct learner traffic, generate and collect data, and drive engagement. They might also be the primary way your learners access most experiences. These are your hubs — your core software partners. These core partners are mission-critical to the success of your ecosystem, so once you identify them, circle them.

4. Refine Your Map

Draw a revised version of your ecosystem map. 

Your ecosystem map might look chaotic after listing solutions, adding arrows, and identifying your hubs. Draw a clean version on a blank canvas — metaphorical, real, or digital. To keep things organized, place your solution hubs toward the center. Of course, remember to include your arrows, or whichever symbol you prefer, to show the connections between systems.   

Ta-da! Now you have a working map of your current learning ecosystem. 

Using Ecosystem Mapping to Identify Improvement Opportunities

With a clean copy of your current ecosystem map in hand, some problems may jump out at you.  Others may require some deeper analysis. But no matter the method of discovery, the beauty of ecosystem mapping is how effectively you can identify common issues. Generally speaking, there are a few common problems to be on the lookout for.

Gaps

Are you missing any mission-critical solutions?

Business goals and outcomes can change at a dizzying pace, and L&D strategies, tools and solutions can easily fall behind. Identify your business needs and goals and see which are going unmet. Once you identify your gaps, there’s no guarantee that a technological solution is the answer, but technology moves so quickly that you’ll never know until you check. 

Examples:

• You provide tools for training and everyday learning, but you’re missing resources for deep upskilling experiences. And if you do provide resources like leadership academies, coding boot camps and certificate programs, are they siloed and require a lot of different people to manually manage?
• You have access to some metrics but not everything. For example, your content platforms and LMS may produce similar reports based on time spent sitting in a classroom or staring at a screen. While these metrics are necessary for meeting regulatory and legal requirements, they fall short of providing actionable insights. Can your data demonstrate employees upskilling or other key KPIs?

Redundancies 

Can you streamline your solutions? 

If several solutions perform the same service or function without any unique added benefit, you’ve got redundancy. While you look for redundancies, also identify solutions performing services you no longer need. But be careful during your audit: there’s a difference between having systematic overlap and redundancies. Some overlapping is nearly impossible to avoid, and that’s okay. 

Examples:

• You’re paying for multiple video conference tools to facilitate your virtual Instructor Led Training sessions. Do you really need MS Teams, Zoom, WebEx, and Google Meet?
• You’re paying for content authoring tools (Adobe Captivate, Articulate 360, Camtasia Studio, etc.) al-a-carte and could get better pricing based on an enterprise or bulk subscription basis or visa-versa.
• You’re paying for several premium content providers with very similar catalogs and you may be able to retire the one with the lowest utilization rate. 
• Two solutions appear redundant but actually serve separate needs or audiences.  

Disconnects

Are learner experiences easy and seamless? 

A highly functioning ecosystem should make it easy for your employees to move from one system or solution to another. But sometimes they can find themselves unable to access specific solutions or functionalities in a logical or sequential way. Often, this is due to a lack of integrations, improper system configurations, or systems being simply not available.

Examples: 

• You have more than one access point for learning. While it’s okay to have more than one access point (accessing a content provider directly or via your LXP), it’s not okay to leave your employees guessing what’s available and how to gain access.
• Your employees use a solution that analyzes their “fit” for new roles but doesn’t provide any next steps or solutions. 

Data Pits 

Can information freely flow across all systems?

Data pits occur when important data can’t be shared between core vendors in your ecosystem. For instance, to get access to that data, you have to log into specific solutions, or sometimes,  the data can only be applied or analyzed using that solution. 

Example:

• An employee enrolls in a recommended boot camp, but you need to manually enter information into your LMS, LXP, or academies platform. This information could include completion dates, the cost of the program, the specific skills learned, and proficiency scores for skills. 
• You ask employees to fill out a professional profile, but that data doesn’t get shared with solutions. Since a professional profile is critical, this siloed information can lead you to ask employees to manually enter their current skills in several systems. Not a fun experience.

If you need more direction in figuring out your ecosystem weaknesses, read “Experiencing L&D Growing Pains? Look to Your Learning Ecosystem.”

Analyze Your Vendors’ Ecosystems 

Armed with your ecosystem map, you know the current state of your L&D ecosystem and how it can improve, but the ecosystem mapping exercise isn’t done. Ecosystems are complex and yours doesn’t exist in a silo. To fully understand it requires some zooming in and out.

First, zoom in on your vendors and platforms to better understand if they integrate well with others. Why? If vendor ecosystems are restrictive, they’ll inherently limit your own ecosystem’s capabilities. Let’s look at the qualities that make an L&D vendor ecosystem great — so you can see if you’re partnering with the right people. 

What to Look for in Vendor Ecosystems 

At this disruptive moment for learning technologies, it helps to partner with purpose-built, multi-product, integration-friendly, and forward-thinking vendors. It makes your job easier if you find the right vendors to sit at the top of your stack, to connect and organize the tools and technologies within your learning tech ecosystem. 

What does that look like? Well, we didn’t need to look far for an example of a healthy vendor ecosystem. Degreed is full of ecosystem nerds, and we’re constantly mapping and assessing the health of our own ecosystem. While we’re not the only vendor ecosystem out there, our Degreed ecosystem map is truly fantastic. 

What makes our ecosystem healthy and successful applies to any vendor learning ecosystem. A learning tech ecosystem vendor should: 

• Include diverse and extensive providers
• Share, collect and synthesize data
• Focus on the future of corporate learning

Work with Diverse and Extensive Providers

You can tell a lot about someone by their friends, and the same goes for your vendor and their partnerships. In some ways, it’s as simple as counting providers to ensure that their own ecosystem is diverse and comprehensive. For the LXP platform of Degreed, this is not just limited to content partners, and badging and assessment providers. It extends beyond to include partners across HCM/HRIS, talent intelligence & career navigation, coaching & mentoring, and advanced data analytics and insights.

No matter what solution a vendor provides, much like a stock portfolio, the more diversified your tech partner’s ecosystem is, the more easily you’ll be able to adapt and grow your own system to your advantage. 

While you might only leverage 20% of a tech partner’s ecosystem today, you can’t predict what you’ll need tomorrow. You need room for growth, and you should have confidence in your preferred tech partner’s ecosystem to make that growth simple. 

Ask yourself: Based on your company’s goals over the next 2 to 3 years, are you working with vendors that can leverage partnerships to help you meet your learning and skills goals? 

Example

To provide a tangible example, let’s take a look at Degreed’s map. Specifically for content, badging, and assessment, Degreed works with over 100 providers. 

Why do we have so many? We realize every organization has different needs, and only some vendors have them. Also, employees require diversity in learning experiences, and no one vendor provides the diversity that learners need. For these reasons, we integrate with other vendors — so our clients can have it all without sacrificing anything.

Shares, Collects and Synthesizes Data

Skills data is critical to the future of L&D. To be clear, the data we’re talking about goes beyond the one-way integrations that have been around for a long time. Upskilling requires more than one solution pushing basic employee data into another system. The new standard — due to customer demand — is a true two-way exchange of data between providers. 

In short, you need an unrestrictive ecosystem that encourages data to flow between systems to give your organization a holistic view of your workforce and skills are becoming part of that view. To do that, work with vendors that prioritize integrations with the tech solutions collecting critical skills data. Even if your organization doesn’t feel ready for the “skills agenda” today, collecting the data now will set you up for success when that day does arrive.

Ask yourself: Can your vendor’s ecosystem enable the exchange of more data than just search results and completion stats?

Example

When we look at the Degreed ecosystem map, it’s clear we prioritize data. Degreed connects and works directly with Workday, SAP, Filtered, Eightfold and others to help measure the skills of your current workforce and offer guidance on where your people need to develop. These integrations allow data to flow between systems, and we are the only LXP that’s a leading partner with Workday, SAP, Filtered, Eightfold and more. 

Thinks and Acts Proactively for the Future

Tech vendors live and breathe learning and upskilling, so they should be thinking hard about solving current and future problems. Even if you’re not ready to start thinking about problems for L&D that might occur 5 years down the road, your vendors should.

Right now the learning tech industry is furiously trying to solve for a skills-based future (SBF). While there are a lot of questions that remain to be answered, you need vendors in your ecosystem who can help you chart a course to get the answers and solutions you need. One day, maybe sooner than you think, it will become a strategic priority. 

Ask yourself: Does your vendor anticipate your future needs?

Example

By thinking about and solving for the future, Degreed now offers a suite of tools — not just an LXP. Experts like Josh Bersin predicted a shift within L&D that would focus on deep skill-building solutions, and Bersin specifically promoted a solution called capability academies. Seeing this growing need and shift for L&D, Degreed acquired a startup learning academy platform called Learn In. Now we offer our clients Degreed Academies.

At Degreed, we think about the future and anticipate it in seismic ways. Our ecosystem and growing product suite attest to our proactive vision. And again, we’re using Degreed as an example. This is not to say that Degreed is the end-all-be-all — it just illustrates what to look for in future-facing vendors. 

“Marry Up” With Your Vendor’s Ecosystem

To sum up this section: any ecosystem that’s designed for natural growth is one that contains point solutions such as content providers as well as big or small platform partners with a large or niche focus. Look at your current ecosystem map. Think of the hub solutions you identified. As you make plans to improve your ecosystem, pay attention and scrutinize your vendors. Are you partnering with the right people for the future?

For an analyst-led, deep dive to find the best tech partnerships for your business, watch a recording of this HR Executive webinar, “A Better Way: Using Learning Tech to Your Advantage.”

Align With Overlapping Internal Ecosystems

You’ve zoomed in on your current vendor ecosystems, now zoom out. Your L&D ecosystem is more likely than not a subset of your broader HR ecosystem. And an HR ecosystem is a subset of your holistic IT ecosystem. There needs to be a natural flow between all of your company’s various ecosystems, each supporting and strengthening the next. Just as in nature, very few ecosystems can thrive in isolation. It’s important to know this because it will get you to think about solving your ecosystem goals in a way that your C-suite will appreciate and expect.  

As you finalize your plans for the future, ensure those plans integrate and align with the HR ecosystem and IT ecosystem. In fact, if you haven’t contacted IT yet for a map of your L&D tech, do that now. Build a strong collaborative relationship with IT so you can build your dream ecosystem. Sizeable learning tech changes require IT support, and it’s best to gain that support now before you present your ecosystem plan to the C-suite.

But it’s more than just a matter of IT-friendly support. As a recent RedThread report explains, “L&D must start thinking in terms of enabling.” Once L&D teams use learning technologies to bring together development resources, programs and data, it’s up to the employee and departments to build, develop, and share their own learning experiences. IT and HR play a crucial role in helping you build an ecosystem that can enable everyone in your company to learn and upskill. You may even discover systems or tools already inside the organization that you leverage for your own L&D pursuits.

After L&D provides the spark, the inspiration and direction for building skills and growing professionally can come from anyone anywhere. And to enable that, you must reduce the burden on L&D Admins and IT teams to figure out how to connect various, disconnected technologies.   

Making a Strong Case for Your Ecosystem’s Future

Ecosystem mapping, as you’ve now experienced, requires careful thought and planning. It’s also quite satisfying: you know what your current ecosystem looks like, and you can dream up and build an ecosystem better equipped for the future. Not only that, but the exercise provides you with insight into improving your ecosystem and building connections outside L&D to get everyone on board. (Plus you’ll have a great visual that will impress C-suite!) 

For a more in-depth guide to help you plan a learning ecosystem that will impress C-suite, download our guide, “Building Your Learning Tech Ecosystem: Open, Diverse, Flexible, Interconnected.” 

The post Ecosystem Mapping: The Secret to Optimizing L&D appeared first on Degreed.

Can business leaders reimagine and modernize tuition assistance programs (TAPs) so they benefit every employee rather than a select few? Yes, it just takes a little work and innovative thinking, but the payoff is undeniable. 

Modernizing tuition assistance and reimbursement benefits your company and employees by making it easier for them to upskill, remain relevant, and grow in their careers. Not to mention that when you reimagine outdated education funding, your company can close its skill gaps and boost retention. 

If your business ranks among the 47% of companies offering undergraduate or graduate school tuition assistance to employees, or if you offer some form of reimbursement-based learning program, we explain why that’s more than likely a problem, and provide five alternate solutions. 

The Big Hurdles with Tuition Assistance and Reimbursement

What parts of your tuition assistance and reimbursement need modernizing? It’s likely there are several obstacles that could be hindering your upskilling and retention success. Here are the common issues you need to solve first.

Hurdle 1: Siloed Funding

The primary problem with TAPs for mid-size and enterprise businesses is siloed funding. If yours is a small business with one person running HR, then siloed funding won’t be an issue. (SMBs, feel free to skip ahead to the next hurdle). But the larger your organization, the more disjointed funding becomes. 

Most tuition assistance funds often roll up into HR, and this means L&D can’t to use these dollars for critical upskilling initiatives. This leads to U.S. employers spend $22 billion each year on TAPs, but according to the Lumina Foundation, just 2.5% measure the ROI of these programs or align them with broader talent-building initiatives. Ideally, this significant investment should be directed more effectively towards upskilling initiatives. 

Hurdle 2: One-size-fits-all Learning Experiences 

Along with aligning funding with upskilling initiatives, companies must modernize how they spend these funds. Today, because of how it started, tuition assistance is primarily used for traditional formal education programs like MBAs. But in order to fully address the skills gap, learning benefits should prioritize faster, skills-based learning experiences.  

While traditional programs have a time and place, they’re not always focused on the skills your business needs. Only 11% of employers surveyed told Gallup that new graduates have the necessary skills for their businesses. Before you think this is just business owners being cynical, consider that the American Association of Colleges and Universities agrees. An AAC&U survey found just 25%of employers say new grads have the necessary skills for their jobs. Combined with today’s rapid pace of technological advancement, two- and four-year colleges and university programs can’t keep up.

So why are businesses sending employees to programs that aren’t delivering a stronger workforce?

To be fair, many of today’s opportunities such as boot camps and short courses didn’t exist as recently as the 1970s when tuition benefits became law. But now there is a growing awareness that adults learn faster in blended work-learning environments, where new skills and knowledge can be applied immediately and retained more quickly. It’s an easy fix: diversify. Luckily, the tax benefits typically used for traditional degrees also qualify for a variety of shorter and skills focused programs like bootcamps and certification programs.

Hurdle 3: Inequitable Opportunities 

In addition to misaligned funds and unimaginative applications, most TAPs are inherently biased. The sheer size of the skills gap doesn’t give any wiggle room — everyone needs to upskill. If business leaders don’t make upskilling accessible to every employee, the job won’t get done. 

How do traditional tuition assistance and reimbursement programs exclude employees? They’re biased toward workers privileged to have the discretionary time and money to use them. And they favor people who have a support network that enables education to be a priority. 

Tuition assistance may work for management consulting firms that want elite pedigreed MBAs who will graduate and return to attractive salaries. But for the majority of employees, TAPs make little practical sense. Deloitte drew a similar conclusion: “Such a program [TAPs] is more likely to be attractive to and used by more highly compensated employees — whom it could be argued to have a less pressing need for such a program in the first place.”

To find out just how inequitable tuition assistance programs are, read “Why Your Tuition Reimbursement Benefit is Hurting Your DEIB Strategy.”

Remove Hurdles & Upskill Equitably 

TAPs were invented for a different era when degree programs were the primary pathway to business skills, and these skills remained relevant for decades. The digital revolution, or what the World Economic Forum (WEF) calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is changing how people learn, what they need to learn, and the rate at which they need to learn new competencies. 

In January 2023, the WEF estimated that some 1.1 billion jobs are liable to be radically transformed by technology in the next decade. That’s already a staggering number but also take into consideration that the report came out before the generative artificial intelligence blew up in March 2023. Now, the CEO of IBM is telling The Washington Post that the tech giant could replace 7,800 jobs with artificial intelligence. 

Undeniably, business leaders have a skills emergency on their hands, and businesses of all sizes feel the skills pinch. In fact, 87% of executives told McKinsey that they were experiencing skill gaps in the workforce, but less than half of them had a clear sense of how to address the problem. Skills will become a major constraint akin to recent shortages of microchips for a wide range of businesses from smartphone manufacturers to automobile makers. Businesses need to invest in talent-building at scale or risk falling behind those that do.

TAPs — or more precisely, reimagined education benefits in the form of dedicated learning funds — can and should be powerful tools for your employees and businesses. By seamlessly integrating these learning benefits into your business’s comprehensive talent-building strategy, and aligning them with key performance indicators (KPIs), you can unlock the potential of your workforce to transform itself. When done right, learning benefits and talent-building can also become a diversity engine that further accelerates business performance. To get there, let’s explore five recommended changes to the traditional TAP model.

5 Ways to Tap Into Your TAPs

1. Move TAPs out of your HR benefits package and into your Talent Management department. Taps should be focused on programs that develop job-ready skills that are aligned with L&D, Talent Management, and relevant lines of business as another way to meet hiring goals. 
2. Leverage TAPs to enroll employees in short-form courses, boot camps, and certification programs that develop specific skills directly aligned with business outcomes. Move away from years-long degree programs that deliver generalized knowledge as the sole learning solution. Embrace shorter, more targeted programs that also enable employees to swiftly acquire and master new skills, then implement these skills in real time. 
3. Integrate diversity and inclusion. Diversity is not just a social necessity — it’s a business imperative. It’s been proven that businesses with diverse leadership teams outperform those with homogenous teams. Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the performance gap has widened in favor of diverse teams. Diversity of race, gender ability, and age enables teams to make better decisions for their employees and their customers. The barriers to leadership opportunities for underrepresented populations are different from those affecting more privileged groups. For the underrepresented, time, funds, awareness support, and guidance are often not available. TAPs and talent-building strategies can reduce or eliminate those barriers. 
4. Give employees time to learn on the job or during working hours. Time is an overwhelming obstacle to employees. Time constraints are also the most impervious barrier to low-income communities. Tuition alone will not enable your people to strategically upskill at the pace and scale that overcoming the skills gap calls for. 
5. Shift from reimbursement to prepayment with no financial penalties. The tuition reimbursement model, with all of its requirements to qualify for reimbursement, discourages participation and is subtly (and in some cases not so subtly) discriminatory. There are a few ways you can make the shift. One is by providing employees with prepaid learning stipend cards. If you can’t go that route, then at least consider a learning stipends program that streamlines and speeds up the sign-off and reimbursement process for employees.   

To learn more about using stipends and how to modernize your tuition assistance and reimbursement programs, download a free copy of “Rethink Your TAPs: Empowering Small and Medium-sized Businesses with Quick and Equitable Upskilling.” 

The post 5 Ways to Modernize Tuition Assistance (So It Benefits Everyone!) appeared first on Degreed.

One of our core values at Degreed is believing everyone deserves opportunities to learn and grow. That’s why we created our Upskilling Strategy Audit, to help you see what’s working, assess your biggest challenges and figure out solutions. In turn, we learned a lot and built a personalized pathway of content and tools to help you succeed. It’s delivered directly to you. If you haven’t already, you can still take the quiz! 

The results of the audit reveal insights from companies large and small — including what’s lacking, working and wanted. And that’s where this three-part blog series comes in — to help you understand the L&D landscape so you can increase participation, maximize insights and provide your people with real-life learning opportunities. In this third and final part, let’s focus on how you can improve career experience while increasing retention and mobility at your organization by using skill-based learning methods and embracing experiential learning opportunities. 

Why Experiential Learning? 

L&D is stepping up during this challenging time and looking at a new approach: filling the skill gap from within. By investing in upskilling and learning, the impact of L&D is at a historical high. But as we know, if people  don’t practice what they learn, they lose it. Investing in learning and upskilling is the first step to improving career experience. The next step is providing experiential learning opportunities. 

What does that look like? Let’s say someone wants to learn more about working with Microsoft Excel. They may first start by searching for articles, watching video tutorials and practicing on their own time. But if they’re not continuously practicing the skill they’ve just learned, they won’t improve and may even forget what they’ve learned. To truly build a skill and accomplish goals and expectations, experiential learning opportunities are needed. This can be a stretch assignment, a mentorship with an Excel expert, or the ability to apply those new skills on-the-job or out in the real world. 

Research confirms the importance of experiential learning. “ELT (experiential learning theory) is a dynamic view of learning based on a learning cycle driven by the resolution of the dual dialectics of action/reflection and experience/abstraction. It’s a holistic theory that defines learning as the major process of human adaptation involving the whole person,” according to authors Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb. 

In short, that means experiential learning opportunities combine learning concepts, doing work, and reflecting on that work to help people accomplish the task at hand.

Even with these science-backed benefits of experiential learning opportunities, 58% of respondents to our audit to date don’t have a standardized way of tracking learning on the job. Combine that with the 23% who have multiple systems in which employees can search for internal growth opportunities and it’s clear a majority of respondents so far don’t actively connect learning to opportunities.

Studies have shown that people are more likely to click on the first ten results in a Google search. What does this mean? The more accessible and findable something is, the more likely someone will click and interact with it.

Apply this same concept to finding internal opportunities at your organization. How can you make it easier for your people to find opportunities that will improve their career experience? By creating an opportunity marketplace. It’s a place where all your people get a chance to practice what they’ve learned while getting work done and also get immediate feedback from coaches, mentors, or managers they might otherwise never connect with.

And when the opportunity marketplace is intuitively connected to a smart platform like Degreed, the workload for L&D leaders is significantly reduced. Why? Your people are already learning in Degreed every day, making it easier for them to browse experiential learning opportunities in a habit they’ve already created. Aside from accessibility, a smart platform like Degreed makes it easier to connect your people to relevant and personalized opportunities based on their profiles. 

Why Skills? 

Part of ensuring that your people have access to the most opportunities to improve career experience is leveraging skill development and data. According to HR Technologist, “The primary responsibility of L&D at any organization is first to identify which skills employees need to develop to stay relevant to the business objectives. Then, they need to build an appropriate program to close this skill gap.”

In systems that don’t use data (or reliable data), people use informal experiences or word of mouth to determine who gets what opportunities at an organization. These non-scientific factors allow for recency bias to come into play. 

A majority of respondents are struggling with implementing a skill-based method to connect internal growth opportunities, with 76% responding they don’t have a current method in place to do so. While many organizations are comfortable with their current models, such as a competency model, we’ve found that skill-based models can be better suited for the current career experience landscape. 

What are the benefits of skills? Skills can be developed in a matter of days, weeks or months and improved in practice over time. Skills can be measured and standardized. Degreed uses a rating system designed by The Lumina Foundation. We can measure growth, track progress and match your people to on-the-job learning opportunities. Skills are transferable between companies, roles, projects and tasks.

Since skills are developed, measurable and transferable, there’s no longer a need to rely on assumptions about what type of work someone does. You can see what their skills are. And when you have a platform like Degreed that routinely engages people through learning, skill-building and career opportunities, valuable skill data is already available for you to analyze. 

Connecting Career Experience to Opportunities 

Growth and development opportunities have increased in importance for workers, even more than compensation in some studies. Millennials are prioritizing this as they imagine their ideal career experience, with a majority prioritizing career mobility and opportunities to learn on the job, according to Gallup. Yet, only 39% of millennials strongly agreed that they learned something new in the past 30 days that they could use to do their jobs better.

What does that mean for you? Be more proactive about employee development and career experience.

Despite the growing demand for growth opportunities and focus on career experience and development, a majority of respondents (54%) to our audit said they don’t have processes in place to enable growth opportunities. 

It’s safe to say there’s been a shift to new L&D models designed around investments in the data, tools and processes that prioritize employee learning, skills and opportunity. But what does it take for an organization to put this model to work?

Take a look at Tenaris SA, a global manufacturer and supplier of steel pipes. Tenaris gave its 22,000 employees across 30 countries more ownership of their learning and career experiences through mobility and saw immediate benefits to engagement and skill development.

Building skills isn’t enough to improve people’s career experiences and keep them at your company. Creating real business value happens when on-the-job learning is connected to experiential learning. This is at the core of what the future of L&D looks like, creating the right opportunities for learning and growth.

Want to Learn More?

Take our Upskilling Strategy Audit to gain insights on what you can do to help your L&D strategy thrive.

Download our new guide, 4 Ways Every Manager Can Create a Positive Learning Culture, to discover what managers can do to support their people like never before. 

The post Upskilling Survival Guide, Part 3: Improve Careers with Experiential Learning appeared first on Degreed.

The benefits of upskilling are huge. PwC found that successful skill-building programs lead to stronger culture, higher productivity, and accelerated innovation. Effective upskilling also makes it easier to attract and retain talent.

The perils of ignoring a skill strategy are notable, too. CEOs struggling with the skills gap are worried about missed market opportunities, rising talent costs, stunted growth, and a lack of innovation. They also expect quality standards and customer experience to suffer.

Mastercard has proven how effective upskilling pays off. Facing fintech startups in the wake of the recession, CEO Ajay Banga insisted that this payments company would become a technology company. Mastercard’s L&D team responded by revolutionizing its digital offerings, especially for the crucial Operations & Technology division. From 2016 to 2019, employee adoption of digital learning climbed steadily to 96% and the average number of learning platform logins per employee tripled.

In that same timespan, Mastercard’s stock price tripled too, as the company broke through in key areas like mobile payments and cybersecurity. Was the stock surge just a coincidence? The learning leadership doesn’t think so. “That represents Mastercard having the right skills and people to explore new payment technologies,” declared Steve Boucher, the VP of Global Talent Development.

Time to Shift the Paradigm

If the benefits of upskilling are so obvious, why aren’t most companies making progress? The problem is the paradigm. For too long, upskilling has focused on the company, not the individual.

The old models of work typically centered on the company. Leaders relied on a “command and control” management style, forcing employees into “one size fits all” training programs. Companies wanted to dictate when, how, and what people learned and tried to tie a predictable return on investment (ROI) calculation based primarily on employee participation. Decades of research have shown how ineffective this approach has been.

These days, leading analysts like Deloitte’s Center for the Edge are calling for a new model of work that puts individuals at the center. As artificial intelligence and machine learning make uniquely human capabilities more valuable, companies can no longer treat people like interchangeable parts. Workers thrive with variety, fluidity, and autonomy.

Focusing on individuals will transform upskilling efforts. Employees can direct their own development, recognizing and addressing personal skill gaps. Employers can get real-time data and insights about people’s skills and can make it easy for people to find projects and positions that match emerging skills, rewarding the workers who learn and grow within the company. In this paradigm, people can easily see the link between their learning and the skills they are building for their careers creating a more engaged, purposeful, and impactful workforce.

Align Individual Experience with Company Value

When organizations are effective with upskilling, the approach aligns the individual experience with value for the company.

The individual upskilling experience starts with each employee’s aspirations. Once it’s clear what people want, you can start conversations about the skills they’ll need to get there. Personalized learning platforms like Degreed make it easy to deliver content to close their skill gaps by leveraging data generated by its users. Then, individuals can put new skills into practice with stretch assignments, become more well-rounded as workers, and even take on entirely new roles within the company.

Focusing on individuals also creates value for companies. Affirming employees’ career goals helps establish trust so you can have an open conversation about strengths and weaknesses.

As workers learn on digital platforms like Degreed and strategic learning programs from your company, leaders can track progress via data dashboards and use the insights to inform supportive check-ins. The end result is a win-win: internal mobility rewards loyal workers and is often far more efficient than hiring outside talent.

Five Changes to Make in Your Organization

Alright, let’s get into the details. What specific shifts will support an effective upskilling strategy focused on individuals? To get started, try these five adjustments in the following key areas:

1. Recruiting: from external talent to internal talent.

External hires are costly and risky. But internal mobility can improve retention and accelerate the learning process. Deloitte found that 76% of top talent acquisition teams look to hire internally, compared to just 17% of low-performing teams. 

2. Capacities: from static competencies to dynamic skills.

Many people don’t know the difference between competencies and skills. Competencies usually include attitudes and behaviors. Skills, on the other hand, reflect transferrable expertise. Competency models were designed to keep people in one role, but shifting to a skills strategy can enable much greater flexibility for individuals and organizations.

3. Performance management: from top-down evaluation to employee experience feedback.

Managers are key to helping their employees build skills and progress in their careers. This all starts with having a career conversation. In addition, when employees know what’s expected of them, when they can use their strengths every day at work, and when they are recognized and rewarded for the great work they do, it’s an all-around win. Finally, managers should help employees find projects and stretch assignments so people can actually apply the skills they’ve learned. This may even lead to a completely new role inside the company. The role of managers in effectively upskilling the workforce is to focus on being “career coaches” and helping people grow and thrive in the company. Yet, many managers are not tuned in to their team’s development. To compensate, I recommend asking for feedback on employees’ experiences. Do they have clear expectations? Are they using their strengths and earning recognition? Can they find opportunities to grow?

4. L&D: from one size fits all training to a continuous skill strategy.

For generations, companies trained large groups on discrete objectives. Teams gathered to learn a management technique or the latest software program. But this approach could never keep pace with digital disruption. Now top firms like Unilever are using digital tools to create a lifelong learning ecosystem. Workers are always exploring and building the emerging skills that they’ll need for their unique journeys.

5. Career development: from high-potential programs to building skills for everyone.

In the days of pricey in-person training, many employers treated career development as a perk for “high-potential” employees. This exclusionary approach had predictable downsides, making participants more entitled and alienating those who didn’t get invited. As online platforms drive down the cost of upskilling at scale, it’s time to get more inclusive. Looking for a model? One major bank pioneered a genius “funnel” approach that lets people prove their own potential.

Time to Take the Next Steps

If you’re ready to get started, check out 7 Steps for Upskilling Your Workforce for a clear framework on how you can build an effective upskilling strategy.

Skills are the key to the future. The only question is which organizations will be effective with upskilling. Now is the time for a strategy that elevates the individuals who make your organization great.

The post Now It’s Personal: Effective Upskilling Addresses the Individual appeared first on Degreed.

These world-renowned organizations may have the budgets to invest heavily, but encouraging learning at work and upskilling is crucial for every company. The World Economic Forum predicts that one billion people — nearly a third of the global workforce — need new skills for the upcoming decade.

So it’s no surprise that PwC placed the biggest bet on upskilling, especially when its research proves the urgency. When asked about the biggest upcoming threats, CEOs cited “availability of key skills” as one of their most critical concerns.

Skills are rising to the top of minds and executives everywhere are making massive investments in their workers. Yet there is no guarantee that these pledges will pay off.

Success depends on how the money is spent. Learning at work is in the middle of a major transformation. Traditional models are crumbling, disrupted by the need for agility and the resulting new approaches. Certain companies are cultivating vibrant learning cultures, leveraging best practices and scientific research, while others are stuck with outdated ideas about knowledge and expertise.

So, how should the learning leaders at Chase, Amazon, AT&T, and PwC spend their booming budgets? They have to face the future fearlessly, create thriving learning cultures, and implement scientifically proven approaches.

Face the Future

The way we learn is changing. Our most recent research, How the Workforce Learns, shows that content is not enough to promote learning at work, but thriving companies create conditions for learning at work.

The average worker is likely to spend more time on content that has been somehow vetted —  an article that they searched for, a podcast that a colleague recommended, or a video that an algorithm suggested. Some forward-thinking organizations are cutting traditional classrooms and starting skills academies (often online) where people build capabilities in the flow of work through a combination of self-directed learning and group project-based learning.

Not only can this strategy save money — research indicates that 79% of learning comes from low- or no-cost resources outside of employers — but the future of learning will also be more effective.

Most formal training has failed, concludes Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer, because it does not fit firms’ existing practices. “The system of organizing and managing is so powerful,” Beer warns, “that individuals and teams returning from training will not be able to be more effective unless the system enables them to apply their learning.”

Instead, learning should flow smoothly into work. This will build skills, not just knowledge. What’s the difference? Knowledge is acquired information, but skills are abilities developed with that acquired information along with practice and feedback.

For a competitive advantage, skills beat knowledge. This is undeniable in athletics, for example. Plenty of fans know how to play baseball or soccer. But far fewer folks are skilled enough to hit a curveball or dribble past defenders. Without those skills, the knowledge is useless. You can’t just study the game, you have to practice.

Similarly, workers might watch tutorial videos or click-through training modules. But if they never practice or receive guidance, they won’t build skills.

To properly develop people’s skills, try the learning loop. (The Expertise Economy dives deep into this framework.) Knowledge is the first step of the learning loop, followed by practice. Next, people need feedback on their performance to adjust their efforts. Offer time to reflect, so the learning gets locked in. Then, the learning loop begins again, with a fresh dose of knowledge.

Booz Allen Hamilton has effectively implemented the learning loop for workers. The technology consulting firm is developing data scientists internally, rather than paying a premium to bring outsiders onboard.

To start, participating workers assess their existing skills. Next, the employees explore curated pathways to gain the knowledge they need. After absorbing this information, they take on mini-projects with mentors to practice their emerging skills. To close out the learning loop, the aspiring data scientists prove their abilities with a capstone project.

Create a Learning Culture

Of course, for AT&T and PwC, those billion-dollar budgets must build more than one specific skill set for a select few employees. Upskilling has to happen at scale. Therefore, the entire organization needs a strong culture of learning at work.

This was a top priority for Satya Nadella, the celebrated CEO of Microsoft. “Culture is something that needs to adapt and change,” he insists. “You’ve got to be able to have a learning culture.”

To instill this culture at Microsoft, Nadella told his staff about two imaginary employees: “If you take two people, one of them is a learn-it-all and the other one is a know-it-all, the learn-it-all will always trump the know-it-all in the long run, even if they start with less innate capability.”

This was more than an abstract anecdote. Nadella modeled the behaviors that he believed in. “Where was I too closed-minded, or where did I not show the right kind of attitude of growth in my own mind?” he asked. “If I can get it right, then we’re well on our way to having the culture we aspire to.”

Organizations typically go through four stages of building a learning culture. They start at the lowest level — a compliance culture — where learning at work is limited to mandatory requirements. The next notch is necessary training, when people push themselves to learn whatever their job entails. Strategic learning is the third stage, as individuals build skills for the organization’s key initiatives. And the highest level is continuous learning, meaning employees choose to cultivate their capabilities in the flow of work.

Climbing that ladder could seem daunting. But many people are already in a position to help. Managers might be the most important influencers for any company’s learning culture. Workers crave their guidance, recognition and encouragement.

For managers, the next steps are straightforward. They can set clear expectations, reminding folks that it’s important to take time for learning at work. Managers should start regular career conversations with their workers to identify personal goals and give guidance on which skills to build. Additionally, managers should pick new projects to which people can apply their skills, earning genuine praise for their growth.

Implement Proven Approaches

So far, much of the advice can be done by individuals. Workers can build their skills, executives can promote a learning culture, and managers can guide people as they learn.

But what about more systemic shifts? Can companies adjust their structures and incentives to enable more effective learning at work?

Certainly, more profound changes can be powerful. The key is to implement proven approaches backed by data and research. Here are a few methods to consider:

• Recognize and reward learning. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck is famous for her work on growth mindsets, which most companies have embraced. But she worries that many people misunderstand her research, as they market meaningless mission statements and praise any effort. Instead, Dweck urges organizations to affirm learning, not just effort, and to connect learning goals to real rewards.

• Let go of command and control. One powerful way to change structures and incentives is a bit counterintuitive: get rid of them. In his synthesis of scientific research on motivation, award-winning author Daniel Pink argues that intrinsic motivation is stronger than extrinsic forces. Instead of prizes and punishments, most people thrive through autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

• Optimize the conditions for learning. If workers are trying to learn at work, organizations must put them in a position to succeed. Bror Saxberg of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is an expert on learning motivation. His team has identified four critical factors: relevance, confidence, environment, and emotion. Employers should monitor these conditions, and assist employees if anything is amiss.

• Have regular career conversations. Thoughtful managers might do this on their own, but smart organizations will encourage regular career conversations for everyone. At LinkedIn, managers tracked how these talks boosted employees’ engagement and retention. Harvard Business Review has published similar conclusions for organizations in general.

• Get insights from learning analytics. As mentioned above, the latest research from Degreed shows how people are actually learning at work. Workers are looking to a variety of sources, like their professional network and favorite websites, not just their company’s L&D offerings. Smart learning platforms can track these activities and find patterns. The savviest Degreed clients are diving deep into their unique data. The analytics help these firms adjust their offerings and refine their strategy.

Whether they are spending $350 million or $3 billion, the world’s leading companies should ensure that their learning strategy is backed by rigorous research and detailed data. Even without such budgets, all learning leaders must make every dollar count. These proven techniques can strengthen an emerging culture and prepare companies for the future.

Sure, it may be challenging to change old habits. Many people don’t think they’re learning unless they’ve sat in a classroom. But it’s time to broaden our definition of learning. To address the concerns of CEOs and actually upskill one billion workers, we have to innovate. Now is our chance, so let’s seize this moment.

Want to Learn More?

Download our latest research for actions you can take to promote learning at work through a positive learning culture. Or contact a Degreed representative today.

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Jordan, cut from his high school team, became a teenage phenom. Scottie Pippen, the star sidekick, kept trying even when he didn’t make his college squad. Dennis Rodman, the top defender, persevered through poverty and depression. Head coach Phil Jackson almost went back to school before his breakthrough with the Bulls. They all knew failure, but together these cast-offs became champions.

If psychologist Carol Dweck was watching The Last Dance, she would not be surprised. Years ago, Dweck analyzed Jordan in her best-seller Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. “He was a person who had struggled and grown, not a person who was inherently better than others. He was the hardest-working athlete, perhaps in the history of sport.”

MJ and his teammates had what Dweck calls a growth mindset. They practiced relentlessly to improve their weaknesses, always trying new tricks. Jordan led by example and challenged the others constantly. If you wanted to be like Mike, you needed to cultivate a growth mindset.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

With a growth mindset, we believe our skills and smarts can develop over time. If we fail at something, that’s okay, because we learn from it and try again, which makes experimentation exciting. With this mindset, we focus on the big picture, stay patient, and reach our potential.

The opposite of a growth mindset, according to Dweck, is a fixed mindset. When we feel that our intelligence, talents, or abilities are innate — that we cannot change what we’re capable of — then we have a fixed mindset.

With a fixed mindset, we’re worried about our performance. Failure and feedback are bad because they expose our inadequacies. When we make a mistake, it feels like proof of our permanent limitations.

Why Mindset Matters

These days, cultivating a growth mindset is essential. Disruption demands flexibility from all of us. We might learn one way to work, then some new technology changes everything. To build skills for the future, we must believe that we can grow and change.

Your mindset affects your creativity and resilience. Someone with a fixed mindset won’t see fresh perspectives; they’re too busy pushing their own agenda. With a growth mindset, though, you can let go and change your approach. This sparks innovation. You embrace new ideas and explore unique applications.

Jordan’s Bulls went through this. In 1989, Chicago was a top team and MJ won the MVP. After losing in the playoffs, though, the Bulls switched to an unusual offense called “The Triangle.” At first, they struggled with it, falling short again in 1990. But the Bulls kept learning, undaunted by failure. The next year, they won their first championship.

Myths About Growth Mindset

Since Carol Dweck published Mindset, many have tried to follow her advice. But a few folks are stuck with myths about mindsets. Let’s set the record straight by busting a few of these common misconceptions:

• You either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. None of us have the same mindset all the time. It depends on the context. For example, I have a growth mindset when cooking, but with artwork, I usually doubt myself. Recognizing this is key since fixed mindsets can sneak up in certain situations.

• A growth mindset is all about positivity. You could try to smile through every struggle, but that’s unrealistic and unnecessary. In many cases, a growth mindset means recognizing problems and leaning into frustrations. For some of us, negative emotions fuel our fire to persevere.

• A growth mindset just means setting goals. Some goals reinforce a growth mindset, but others backfire. Stretch goals push us to patiently improve. Yet certain performance goals — like trying to make every shot or get all the best grades — can discourage us from working on our weaknesses.

• With a growth mindset, you can master anything. Trying new things does not guarantee mastery. A growth mindset helps you get a little better; it won’t completely overwhelm other factors, like luck and talent.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

What can you do to cultivate a growth mindset? Psychologists have identified plenty of specific strategies that you can try:

• Deal with discomfort. When we’re confident, it’s easy to try hard and take feedback. But what about when we don’t feel so great? That’s when we need self-awareness. Recognize your discomfort, then remember that everyone feels this way sometimes. Tell yourself that it’s okay to make whatever mistake you’re afraid of.

• Put improvement before performance. Work on your weaknesses instead of always playing to your strengths. Tracking your progress helps, too. When you’re stuck, reflect on the long run. Look back one year, and recognize how you’ve grown. Then, think one year into the future, and imagine what you might learn in that time.

• Making adjustments. Psychologists recommend “flexible thinking patterns,” which means looking at a problem in different ways. You can try unique strategies until you figure out what works. Other people can help you adjust, too. You can learn from those around you, even if they can’t fix all your problems.

• Positive self-talk. Language makes a difference, too. Try adding “yet” to negative thoughts. “I’m not good at this… yet.” After you make a mistake, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Or, you can even quote Michael Jordan when he said, “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Even if you’re not winning NBA championships, the possibilities are exhilarating. Working towards cultivating a growth mindset can transform your personal and professional life.

It won’t always be easy –– but the right mindset can help you look past your imagined limitations. Like Mike said, “You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.”

Want To Learn More About Growth?

Take our Upskilling Strategy Audit to receive personalized insights to help build your strategy, or contact a Degreed representative today.

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It takes many skills to be a great leader, and those skills evolve as a business, team, and market change. Unfortunately, many organizations haven’t kept pace in consistently upskilling leadership. In Australia, more than 72% of workers who left their jobs in 2019 cited poor leadership as their main reason. Managers, overall, ranked as ‘average’ in the eyes of many Australians, scoring just 5.6 out of 10 when rated on their performance and skills. 

The Evolution of Leadership

Leadership is as old as human civilization. As people began forming groups, leaders emerged to establish order, provide direction, and help groups meet goals (with survival as a top priority).

Fast-forward to the modern era, to the emergence of what we recognize as traditional leadership. In 1905, Max Weber’s bureaucratic management theory said it’s essential to have clear lines of authority, rules, and procedures in each business operation. Frederick Taylor in 1909 presented his scientific management theory, which focused on worker output and said that if tasks were optimized and simplified, productivity would increase. Workers’ main motivation under this model was that they remained employed. And in 1916, Henri Fayol formed what became known as administrative theory, which looked at how efficiently management was organized and processes standardized. He also created the 14 principles of management. 

Together, these theories were building blocks for many of the management practices used today. 

Leadership Today

Today, leaders are required to navigate significant organizational and social realities that exceed any challenges early business leaders could have imagined.

For example, leadership must anticipate and address disruptions to take advantage of new opportunities created by digitization and automation. 

Simultaneously, there’s an increased demand for empathetic leadership styles that understand people perform best when all of their needs and concerns are taken care of. Managers are increasingly asked to consider work-life balance, family and other commitments, and the fears or concerns of their people. Indeed, research has shown that managerial support is critical in supporting people as they deal with stress and health issues.

New Leadership Skills

New expectations require a new set of skills. The most important behaviors that workers want from their leadership are authenticity, trustworthiness, and inspiration. Therefore, many of the skills that modern-day leaders need are human skills. Upskilling leadership in human skills can inspire, set direction, build trust, and foster teamwork.

“Leaders need to turn up and give confidence that they are working on [an issue],” said David Thodey, former CEO of Telstra and Chair of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. “And you need to bring in processes around the collection of data to create a single source of the truth. You need to be open and transparent, but you also need to be flexible, because sometimes you will see you made a decision where something isn’t quite right and need to be willing to say, ‘We got that wrong,’ and move on.”

What skills should be on the list?

1. Emotional intelligence

Upskilling leadership in emotional intelligence and empathy is critical. Stress, anxiety, and depression rose by 21% in 2020 among workers in Australia. And managers are increasingly supporting the mental wellbeing of their people. 

2. Effective communication

Transparent and open communication can help to alleviate people’s concerns and build trust between leaders and their workers. Many CEOs now communicate with their teams multiple times a week — to respond quickly to changes, communicate their thoughts, and address suggestions. 

3. Agility

The ability to effectively respond to change is another key skill. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, only 12% of organizations reported having continuity plans that prepared them for it. Many leaders scrambled to adjust their business strategies. As a result, leaders are now watching more closely for new opportunities and unexpected challenges. 

4. Resilience

In the wake of COVID-19, resilience skills rose in importance by 34% (up from 13% pre-Covid) among surveyed workers. This makes sense when you consider that leaders are expected to be a calming force

How to Build Leadership Skills

Knowing what skills are needed is one thing, but building them is a whole different challenge. Human skills cannot be taught in a classroom. 

Tailor development to each individual.

Successful organizations empower their current and future leaders to own their upskilling. By taking control of their own upskilling, people can dictate what, how, and when they embark on their personal development journeys. 

OceanaGold emphasizes enabling leaders at every level to achieve sustainable results and help their teams thrive.

“We recognized that leadership needs to be values-driven, constructive, and capable,” said Karlie Webster, Group Manager for Organizational Culture and Development. “To achieve this, our leaders require a strong achievement orientation (focus on delivering high-quality results) with a humanistic, encouraging approach (supporting the growth and development of people) that filters throughout our culture. A bespoke, interactive training series takes our leaders through all the key elements needed for great leadership — 95% of our 400 leaders completed the first round of this within three weeks.”

Offer formal and informal learning.

Providing a range of learning opportunities can tailor leadership training to different interests, learning styles, and needs. Leaders are exceptionally busy, so learning delivered in bite-size content can greatly increase engagement and completion. A book, a podcast, a TED Talk, and everything in between can help leaders build much-needed skills. 

At the international spirits company Edrington, learning leaders shifted a one- and two-day leadership training program to a virtual, modular program that delivers training over three to four weeks. Now, upskilling opportunities are delivered at a time and pace that suits each individual, making them more accessible to global employees and those who otherwise couldn’t attend training days. It’s also reinforcing newly learned skills. Because people are learning over a longer period of time, they’re more likely to remember and apply their learning. 

Turn to peers.

Peer-led learning, coaching, and mentoring are important ingredients for upskilling leadership. People (55%) often turn to their peers to learn new skills. Shadowing a senior leader can be inspiring. And access to a coach or mentor can help aspiring leaders learn what it takes to be in charge. (And mentoring others can help people build valuable communication skills.) In addition, stretch assignments can give people their first chance to manage a team. 

Final Tips

Tracking what people learn throughout an upskilling leadership journey is important. Setting clear goals and skill requirements for their next career steps provides incentives to complete leadership training. It also provides direction. 

People need the opportunity to practice their new skills at work through experiential learning like secondments, stretch assignments, and volunteering. This helps them remember their learning and also hone those skills further.

Make no mistake: strong leadership will be the competitive differentiator for tomorrow’s top organizations. Enabling your people now, by putting learning in their hands and providing training that’s personalized, will pay off with higher engagement, completions, and capabilities.

Want to Learn More?

Take our Upskilling Strategy Audit to receive personalized insights to help build your strategy, or contact a Degreed representative today.

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