Education benefits, the under-tapped strategic growth lever

Education benefits have risen to the top of HR leaders’ minds as an essential means for filling in-demand roles. 

“You cannot always hire your way into change,” one HR executive told Guild. “So, it's time to introduce another option. And that is upskilling the talent we have versus trying to buy new talent."

In fact, offering the right education benefit as part of a talent strategy is quickly becoming the most urgent investment organizations can make to support strategic growth. Operative word being, the “right” education benefit. While the education and skilling space has never been more vast, the risk of selecting a mismatched partner is high. A number of surveys show more than half of executives say they are disappointed by their learning and development programs or they aren’t meeting expectations. 

Here’s how HR leaders should assess a legacy education benefit versus a strategic education benefit to ensure they’re choosing the right one for their organization’s next period of growth and transformation. 

What legacy education benefits get wrong

Legacy education benefits can be mere window dressing for companies, missing the mark on a number of key criteria required to be a strategic growth lever. 

• They lack the visibility into outcomes and ROI for the businesses they serve.
• They are misaligned with business and talent development objectives.
• They place a heavy benefit administration and management burden on HR departments. 
• They only work for employees with higher-ed experience or more flexible schedules, and aren’t designed for the diversity of your workforce. 

In fact, research shows:

33%

Only 33% of organizations collect ROI metrics to measure success of learning programs through their education benefits. 

75%

75% of business leaders are looking for better ways to measure their learning strategies.

28%

Only 28% of organizations believe they are making effective decisions on how to close skills gaps.

Criteria for a strategic education benefit: Six questions to ask yourself

With the right education benefit in place, education is a strategic investment in a company's talent strategy—and a competitive advantage. There are six critical things to look for in a strategic education benefit, and we’ve framed them as questions to ask yourself when evaluating who to partner with:

1. Does the education benefit solution provide me with the right data to make meaningful talent decisions for my business?
   Pinning down the critical data that gives visibility into the mechanics of your education benefit is notoriously difficult and downright unheard of for legacy education benefits. But this is truly where the rubber meets the road when it comes to seeing the impact of the right education benefit over time.
   
   HR leaders should look for education benefit providers that can bring their own data to life through real-time visualizations and reporting, so you can literally see how your investment is working.
   
   Can you get reporting on enrollments and persistence rates for learning programs that will supply workers with the skills needed to fill business-critical roles? Will you be able to see numbers that reflect the impact of the education benefit on metrics like retention rate? Data like this, upon which to ground talent decisions for the business, will pay off in dividends by enabling you to move quicker and more strategically.
   
2. Can it deliver the outcomes we expect for both employees and our business units? 
   Any provider that doesn’t stand behind outcomes should be relegated to the position of snake oil salesman. A strategic education benefit will be a win-win solution with outcomes that both your employees and your business will see. Because for a strategic education benefit, outcomes are everything.
   
   Employees should expect to see outcomes from their time invested in learning and skilling — and that could come from a promotion, an internal role change, and/or increased proficiency at work. At the same time, business units should see ROI outcomes in the form of meeting business objectives aligned to talent strategy — whether that means meeting worker retention goals, attaining an internal mobility quota, or something else. 
   
   Without this in-depth ROI analysis customized to your business, you haven’t threaded the needle on the most critical part of marrying the education benefit with your talent strategy. Data, analysis, and consultation are the wash-rinse-repeat ingredients needed to ensure you’re getting the outcomes you expect.
   
3. Will my employees have access to high-quality schools that cater to working adult learners?
   Accounting for the diverse needs of an employee population means offering a mix of learning programs through the education benefit: foundational learning programs (high school completion and English language learning), short-form (certificates and bootcamps), and degrees (associate’s and bachelor’s) — all suited to the needs of working adult learners. 
   
   The work of curating these learning programs is where a strategic education benefit will make all the difference. Without the upfront vetting of programs suited for the diverse needs of working adult learners, employees are dropped into a sea of choice for education and skilling options. Overwhelmed and unsure if a learning program is good or will lead to career outcomes, they can easily falter in the decision-making process alone — ultimately facing barriers to using their benefit or persisting through a program that wasn’t designed for nontraditional learners. A strategic education benefit does the work of continuously vetting and collaborating with learning providers to meet the needs of your employees.
   
4. Can the education benefit connect my employees to learning programs that are aligned to my priority business needs? And can it dynamically respond to new skilling needs like AI?
   A strategic education benefit will ensure that talent objectives align with career pathway-oriented learning programs offered to employees. With this critical piece in place, the business can build the skills it needs internally and enables a clearer picture of its skills pipeline — and employees can enjoy the transparency of internal career growth opportunities as a reward for their investment of time in a learning program. Additionally, employees will have access to comprehensive career resources to pursue the pathways they’re shown.
   
   This process should be agile, so that as skilling needs change, the domino effect goes into place for the education benefit: career pathways adjust to include new skills (or entirely new pathways might be created), learning providers are recommended or added to the learning marketplace to meet the skilling need, and dashboards showing progress with relevant data are stood up.
   
5. Does the education benefit meet the needs of my frontline, hourly workers? And does it offer the quality wrap-around support they need to succeed?
   Going back to school as a working adult is no easy feat, and a strategic education benefit provider will offer the support that makes a challenging endeavor more manageable. It’ll do this through end-to-end support services, including career and success coaching from application to graduation and beyond. A best-in-class program helps employees find the path that’s right for them, stay motivated through coursework, and take the next step in their career. This requires a data-driven, proactive approach — represented in layers of support — throughout the employee journey.
   
6. Will my team have the right amount of support with program administration and business strategy to evolve the education benefit program along with our needs?
   Having a dedicated point of contact and support to ensure your education benefit is driving impact on talent priorities is essential. This translates to regular meetings to review data and reporting, discuss any changes to the business or talent strategy, and make decisions about how to steer the education benefit program forward. Importantly, the education benefit will manage the brass tacks of program administration, so HR leaders can focus on talent priorities.

More and more organizations are recognizing the potential of education benefits to be the growth levers for a future-oriented talent strategy. As the bar has been raised for these companies to solve critical problems involving their workforces, so too has it raised the expectation on what education benefit providers should be capable of. Expectations appropriately set, consider this: If you were to snap the right education benefit into place for your business, you might just find that your talent strategy is suddenly firing on all cylinders. 

About Kelli Billstein

Kelli Billstein is a senior content marketing manager at Guild, writing about topics ranging from talent strategy to education and skilling. She has experience working in higher education and innovative startups, and she enjoys bringing a journalist lens to bold new ideas in workforce development and career growth.