Increase Revenue with Modern Continuing Education Software
How using modern eCommerce principles drives revenue in Continuing Education
The following interview is with Dan Pontefract, the Senior Director of Learning and Collaboration at TELUS, a major provider of telecommunications products and services in Canada. TELUS spends 1 million dollars annually on tuition reimbursement for its employees. This year, the company expects approximately three percent of its employees to actually take advantage of it. In this interview, Pontefract explains how employee learning and development is managed at TELUS and how he thinks higher education institutions could shape themselves to better suit employer needs.
1. A recent research study found that, when it comes to employees taking advantage of tuition reimbursement, a participation rate of 10% was considered very high; this is evident in the participation numbers at TELUS. Why do you think so few employees take advantage of tuition reimbursement programs?
Iām not sure what recent research study that was, but I know that we look at tuition as really a full package within the environment and community of TELUS. So yes thereās external learningāwhich we coined external learning financial assistance (ELFA)āand then on top of that TELUS spends roughly $30 million on operating expenditure per year on its internal programs and those might be with various vendors that are academic partners as well.
Really, at the end of the day, TELUS has a community whereby employees are participating in learning in various different ways, of which a percentage of our portion goes to ELFA and weāre really proud of that investment. But in terms of commenting on why perhaps other employees arenāt taking advantage of it, it could be a range of issues; promotion opportunities for other organizations, employees not knowing the difference between what is considered an external learning opportunity versus an internal one. There are a myriad of different ways to crack the nut but thatās my first cut at that question.
2. What are the differences between the materials that are covered in an internal program and an external one? Does TELUS have more handle on the material thatās covered in an internal program?
We have roughly $30-odd million a year invested in our people, of which about a million of that is what we call external learning; thatās a team member applying through a formal process to take an MBA or a bachelorās degree or specific courses at a community college or technical institute or university. Thatās usually in participation with their manager who is going to have the career-development conversation with the individual on whether or not, based on the process weāve developed, whether thereās merit there and ultimately if that makes sense for the purposes of that individualās job inside of TELUS.
With the other $29-odd million that we invest in our people, thatās usually role-specific or future-role specific and thatās where we control the curricula. When I say control the curricula, I mean weāre developing learning paths that might be formal, informal or social in nature with the employee in mind. ⦠That 97-odd percent of the budget going towards internal programs does not necessarily mean that weāre not using academic partnersāin fact in Canada we have several academic partners across the country we use to help us offset some of ourā¦development.
Itās just the delineation there is between an individual employee that would like to perhaps attain some sort of credentialāand thatās what we consider the ELFAāversus whatās in-role or future-role development which is where we take a specific leadership message and building of that curricula for our employees.
3. Is the internal learning mandatory or is that also voluntary?
It sort of depends. As we like to say around here, āIn-role development is a right, future-role development is earned.ā Meaning, we as an organization provide all the necessary learning⦠for people to do their jobs. Thatās our responsibility; weāve taken a corporate oath if you will to ensure that our people are prepared to do their roles.
But when weāre talking about future roles, when weāre talking about the next step in an organization, we believe thatās earned. So when youāre thinking about āHow do we reward TELUS team members for investing in them?ā, which we may do through the avocation of ELFA program like an MBA or through pre-defined, pre-meditated learning paths that are for future-role opportunities, thatās when we will have career-development conversations with people and say either āYouāre not ready yet,ā or āYou are ready and hereās a couple of paths that we might recommend for you.ā
4. How does TELUS reward employees who complete accredited external programs? Do they have a better chance for raises or promotions?
We at TELUS donāt see it as binary. Itās not, āif you complete a program, thereās a promotion,ā or āif you complete a program, thereās remuneration increase.ā
We look at performance development much more holistically, meaning, sure, learning competencies and education upgrades are looked at and included in the holistic representation of an individual team member. Itās not a binary decision of, āSally or Henry completed X course or X degree, ergo there is not a trigger in a process that suggests that she or he is going to be promoted or she or he is going to have extra remunerative pay.ā
Performance development at TELUS is a much more holistic process in which learning is part of the equation, but there are other factors such as your objectives, your retention, your value to strategy and a bunch of other factors that we have in play.
5. Are there any changes employers could make in order to make continuing education a more enticing option for their employees? Especially given the lack of binary between completing education and moving forward.
I truly believe higher education plays a role in the development of employees in any organization. I think itās foolishāand if not foolish itās foolhardyāof a company like TELUS not to be partnering with institutions⦠to help us with our quest to become future-friendly and to create a very competitive culture.
If thereās any way in which to entice team members, itās really more about ensuring that the organization is aware of what it is holistically weāre doing, from an in-role development and future-role development perspective, and making sure that people see the paths to apply for things like ELFA. We take that opportunity in much of our promotion and marketing of education of reminding people that the ELFA program does invest about a million dollars a year on our people. Weāve got a database of records that showcase where people have gone, what institutions theyāve been a part of, the number of unique people we may have helped, the number of programs or courses weāve reimbursed. We make these data points available on something we call our Learning and Collaboration Analytics Dashboard.
I guess itās sort of a case of Moneyball, where youāre surfacing the data for people to see and promoting that is a way which to also entice. So I think organizations could be less exclusive and less recluse in surfacing the data, let alone just promoting the opportunities that may be at their fingertips.
6. What about higher education institutions? What do you think they could do to make continuing education and ongoing learning more appealing to professionals?
On the whole I would say most Canadian-based higher education institutions are doing a pretty good job marketing their continuing study opportunities. ā¦
I think two things need to happen, one of which is⦠these institutions need to become slightly better aligned. There are still fiefdoms and silos within the various faculties and if they want to present a unified case to a company like TELUS, itās easier to manage a relationship when weāre thinking about the technology folks and sales and business folks and leadership folks, etc, we need more of a commonality in a go-to-market strategy of how we might partner with that organization to bring some of that customized curricula into a place like TELUS.
Itās just one avenue that they might focus on, that is unifying themselves and even finding better ways to customize.
The second bucket would be, I think thereās still a reticence to utilize informal and social learning opportunities in higher education. Itās inching towards an evolution but in essence itās still a lot of classroom, instructor-led, face-to-face. TELUS as an example is an organization that believes learning leadership is part formal, part informal and social. I think higher education institutions need to see that as the new way in which learning happensāitās continuous, itās collaborative and itās connectedāand they need to fit in with that strategy as opposed to saying āYou will come to our course.ā
Depth inside of a subject matter expert-led course is very important, donāt get me wrong, and weād like to tap into that higher education expertise, that goes without saying. But there is some enhancements that could be made in terms of how some of these education opportunitiesāwhether theyāre courses or bachelorās or masterās degreesācan be offered such that TELUS team members donāt see a dissimilarity between whatās offered inside the organization as it might be when youāre at a local community college, university or institute.
7. Is there anything youād like to add about how continuing education opportunities could see higher participation rates from employees?
I think itās incumbent upon higher education to reach out and partner with organizations as opposed to ābuild-it-and-they-will-comeā syndrome. I think thatās one step.
Offering perhaps customized bachelorās or masterās programs for the working team member is slowly beginning to happen, and I like what I see in some of the higher education institutions out there but I think more could be done in that vein. Particularly when weāre referring to places where we can learn like edX, or MITx, or Coursera or Khan Academy, thereās a lot of neat, open-source learning thatās going on out there. I think weāre at an inflection point for higher education if they want to see their business increase as to what changes they might need to make ultimately to cater to the customer.
How using modern eCommerce principles drives revenue in Continuing Education
Author Perspective: Employer
This split between internal and external learning actually perfectly exemplifies this notion that there is great opportunity for institutions to partner and work with corporations.
If higher education institutions were more active in finding out what kind of learning and programming corporations are delivering through internal approaches, they could design programs to deliver that internal learning. After all, at TELUS alone, that’s a $29 million market
It’s interesting that the piece is guiding higher education institutions to adopt more social approaches to teaching and learning for the professional market. I think a lot of learning happens informally — employers see this every day. It’s time that colleges, in addition to providing formal learning programs, provide spaces for informal learning to take place (ie: forums, social media hubs, etc)
I’m most interested in the idea of developing MOOC-style courses for the corporate training market. The demand certainly exists among professionals for online educational opportunities. The question is whether anyone can identify the most-needed skills and information across a number of corporations (or across an entire industry) to be able to create one course that would appeal to a wide variety of professionals.