Great education programs drive extraordinary talent outcomes. That’s to be expected: when employees see it’s possible to advance their careers through new skills and internal mobility — and that their employer is invested in helping them do it — they stay (and they tell their friends and family).

But not every education program is created equal. When strategically designed, there’s so much an education benefit program does to drive organizational value in today’s competitive landscape.

Here’s what happens when you intentionally build education benefits programs to support talent and business strategy.

1: Upskilling becomes scalable — while benefit administration becomes easier.

It’s hard to scale your upskilling efforts when the processes to administer the benefit are built across multiple, complex systems and tools (or worse, still in spreadsheets).

The HR or L&D staff responsible for administering education programs are often working outside of their core capabilities to do so, which can distract from other valuable tasks and projects.

And for employees, navigating confusing policies and systems to access their benefit is demotivating — and may prevent them from using the benefit altogether.  A poor experience means poor adoption and engagement rates (not to mention wasted time and money on your part).

HR departments spend more than 40% of their time on administrative and transactional HR tasks, such as answering phone calls and emails, and re-entering data from one system to another. (McKinsey & Company)

HR departments spend more than 40% of their time on administrative and transactional HR tasks.

So how do you make upskilling programs efficient and scalable? Limit administrative complexity with a centralized solution.

• Employees need an easy-to-navigate platform that helps them understand and explore internal career growth possibilities, find the right program, and enroll with confidence that the program they’ve chosen is aligned with their skills needs and is covered by their employer’s policy.

• Employers need a streamlined solution designed to support their specific skills needs and handle aspects of education benefit administration that can eat up time, like developing a strategic portfolio of vetted programs, confirming eligibility and enrollments, and facilitating payments.

2:  Program value — including ROI — becomes measurable.

Proving the value of an education program is as critical as it is uncommon: many leaders who can lay out clear program goals still struggle to measure ROI.

The ROI of upskilling and development investments becomes evident through measurable cost savings in hiring, recruitment, operations, and beyond.

3: Your workforce becomes resilient through market and business-aligned skill-building.

In a changing world, the fastest learners set the pace for success. Agility, and the resilience it creates, starts with a workforce made up of employees who are ready to learn and adapt.

To achieve this, organizations need to do more than promote continuous learning. It’s crucial to take active steps to ensure skilling programs stay aligned with where the business is headed.

That puts a lot of emphasis on program quality and active management of the portfolio employees can access.

But with thousands of degrees, certificates, and bootcamps available (with more springing up every day), finding and maintaining the right portfolio of programs is a full-time job.

What you can do…

…to scale upskilling without scaling administrative workloads:

Prepare to vet solution vendors: In-house education benefit administration requires a lot of time and resources and often isn’t structured to scale (the same can go for the wrong vendor). The right solution can drive quick results.

• Identify your highest-impact career areas (where your skills gaps meet open roles).

• Within those areas, document what job progression looks like at your organization.

• Ask vendors about their ability to configure educational and career pathways that match priority roles and reflect job progression. A career pathway should branch into multiple priority roles (Guild, for example, covers over 60 high-demand roles with 18 pre-built pathways that can be configured to match your needs).

• Ask about the data you’ll be able to access and what the employee experience will look like. Vendors that fail to deliver the data or quality of experience they promise can increase, rather than lower, administrative complications.

Use this guide to see what questions you can ask to get vendors to reveal whether they’re really equipped to help you simplify benefit administration.

…to make ROI measurable:

Focus on outcomes, not just outputs.

Metrics used to justify spend like adoption and usage, completion rates, and NPS are valuable indicators that a program is tracking in the right direction — but they aren’t the end result an education benefit needs to drive.

Ultimately, education benefits are intended to be a net positive way to build strong internal pipelines of talent that help employees grow their careers through internal job movement into key areas of focus for the business.

With that in mind, look to measure these outcomes:

• Internal job mobility (both lateral and vertical): This is a key outcome that shows employees are putting their new skills to use and filling open roles that align with both business priorities and their own growth goals.

• Positive ROI: Savings comes from increased retention, lower talent acquisition costs through increased internal career mobility and talent attraction, and more. Employers who partner with Guild consistently see the savings that come from employee retention alone more than covers the investment.

…to build workforce resilience:

What you can do:

Work with a vendor who understands labor force and market trends within your industry — and both tailors and regularly audits the programs in your portfolio against your skills needs and open roles.

Watch out for:

• Set-it-and-forget-it approaches to learning options: The realities of a dynamic business environment will quickly reveal the danger of failing to actively manage your skilling programs: it assumes your talent skilling needs are fixed.

• Barriers hidden in your policy: Stipulations that make it harder for employees to put their benefit to good use are outcome blockers. Here is a checklist of the most common barriers you can check for and address.

There’s more to workforce resilience than role-aligned skills alone. When large groups of employees are upskilled effectively, your organization can accelerate the implementation of new strategies and technologies, too. This continuous influx of knowledge fosters innovation, leading to better problem-solving and more creative approaches to business challenges… and inspires employees to stay longer.

An active partnership unlocks internal talent pipelines.

Through a comprehensive platform, dedicated account management, and robust member support services, Guild ensures your education benefit runs smoothly and drives the outcomes you and your employees need.