Compass Staff |
Charter Communications’s 95,000 employees do not just support the firm’s business; they define it. Since joining Charter (which operates under the Spectrum brand) in 2015, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Paul Marchand has been at the forefront of transforming how the company supports and develops the people responsible for delivering exceptional experiences for customers.
Spectrum provides internet, mobile, voice and TV services — available to more than 57 million homes and businesses across 41 states. While the pace of change facing the industry means a workforce in constant flux, to Marchand, Spectrum’s 100% U.S.-based workforce is its competitive advantage. Rather than just hiring new talent wholesale, Spectrum’s leadership has chosen to continuously upskill its current employees while striving to engender a culture of perpetual learning.
Under Marchand’s leadership, Spectrum has moved away from fragmented tuition reimbursement and toward fully funded education, leadership development, and self-directed career progression programs — all designed to meet the company’s evolving business needs. Today, employees who participate in Spectrum’s Guild-powered education benefit are 24% more likely to be promoted and 10% more likely to stay with the company.
In this Q&A with Compass by Guild, Marchand shares how Spectrum is building a skills-based talent strategy from the inside out. He discusses the durable skills required to compete in a rapidly changing sector, how HR partners with business leaders to define future capabilities, and what it takes to make workforce investment a board-level conversation. At a time when many companies are looking outside for the talent they need, Spectrum is proving that the path forward lies in better activating the potential already within.
Q: One premise of talent strategy in the telecom and cable industry has been that incumbent employees hold a tremendous competitive advantage: They know the company, the industry, and the ins and outs of the company’s business. And it’s far easier and more cost-effective to train people with a commitment to the organization and an institutional knowledge in that company than to go out on the job and buy talent. Is that still the case for Spectrum?
That premise absolutely still holds true at Spectrum — the value of institutional knowledge can’t be overstated. Our employees are at the heart of everything we do as we advance on our multiyear investment initiatives, including our network evolution and network expansion, which require a highly skilled, tenured workforce. Employees who’ve grown with us bring technical expertise and a deep understanding of our customers, products and culture. That kind of know-how doesn’t come overnight, and it reinforces why we’re so committed to investing in our workforce and growing talent from within.
When employees see that Spectrum is actively investing in their future — through career progression opportunities, tuition-free degrees and certificates, comprehensive health benefits and a market-leading retirement plan — they feel more connected to their work and the company. Most recently, we launched an Employee Stock Purchase Plan to further strengthen that connection, offering employees the opportunity to purchase stock via payroll deductions and receive matching RSUs based on their years with Spectrum. It’s a powerful benefit designed to reward tenure and foster a deeper sense of ownership in our shared success. Additionally, we’ve also seen that employees who participate in our Education Benefit with Guild stay with us at a rate 10% higher than non-participants, reinforcing the link between learning, engagement and tenure. And in the end, a more knowledgeable employee translates into a better experience for our customers.
Q: Spectrum operates in an era of rapid technological evolution, where innovation continually reshapes how we do business. How has the HR function – and L&D strategy generally – adapted to this reality? What has your team done to train for (and hire for) adaptability?
The pace of change in our industry demands adaptability as a core skill, and our talent-development approach reflects that. The ongoing training of our frontline workforce meaningfully benefits our operations and performance, which is why we offer thousands of learning experiences spanning leadership development and professional skills training, as well as self-progression opportunities. Our Education Benefit is also a key pillar of that strategy. Employees are pursuing in-demand fields like software engineering, project management and data analytics – skills that not only support their current roles but prepare them for what’s next at Spectrum.
Q: When you look at Spectrum’s business, and its need to build and maintain a competitive advantage over new entrants, multi-modal players, and familiar incumbents, where are you seeing the biggest skills gaps in your current workforce? Also, understanding that learning a new protocol or technology will always represent a skills gap, are there any skills gaps that you see persisting regardless of new technology (e.g., 'durable', or soft skills)?
Since its inception, our industry has constantly evolved, and we’re continually learning. We’re focused on equipping our workforce with the skills needed to support and accelerate the business. Through the Education Benefit, for example, we’ve seen strong interest in software engineering from frontline employees who are eager to build their technology skills, helping them to be more effective in their current roles, and at the same time, creating new pathways into roles that are critical to Spectrum’s future, such as software development, cybersecurity and data science. By investing in employee development, we’re not only preparing our workforce to support today’s technology needs; we’re building internal pipelines for the tech talent we’ll need as we continue expanding and evolving our network.
But equally important are the durable skills: communication, critical thinking, leadership and adaptability. These aren’t tied to any single technology, but they’re essential to thriving in a fast-changing environment. That’s why we offer leadership development, professional skills training, and courses through Guild in areas like project management, because we know those skills translate across every part of the business.
Q: Skills-needs identification is a crucial part of workforce transformation. How do you partner with the business and other C-Suite members to ensure your L&D investments and strategies are contributing to business goals?
Close alignment with our business leaders is baked into everything we do. We treat talent development as a strategic business driver, not a support function. That means regular check-ins with senior leaders across the business to identify evolving skills needs and workforce challenges. And our partnership with Guild is an example of a program that is designed to be flexible in support of this. We can update degree and certificate offerings based on talent-development needs to ensure employees are gaining relevant, high-value skills that support their career growth, but benefit Spectrum as well. We closely track outcomes like promotion rates and internal mobility to show how these investments contribute to operational excellence and business performance.
Q: Do senior leaders at Spectrum – particularly at the CEO and CFO level – recognize workforce development as a strategic priority? If not, how do you educate them? How do you ensure they understand the skilling needs of the business and secure the support and investment required to meet them?
We have full support from executive leadership in regard to our workforce development strategy. Our CEO has been a strong champion of our “Investing in You” initiative to grow the tenure of our frontline workforce with the keen understanding that our employees are critical to executing our operating strategy. When collaborating with leadership around workforce development, we speak the language of the business. For instance, when we proposed shifting from a tuition-reimbursement model to a fully funded education model, we came to the table with data: projected ROI, historical promotion, and retention rates. We demonstrated that investing in our people isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a strategic decision that will drive a skilled, tenured, U.S.-based frontline workforce that can ultimately benefit our customer service.
Q: Speaking of ROI, in an industry that has historically measured things well and often (average revenue per user, network downtime, etc.), how do you measure the business impact and value of your L&D investments?
We have a data-driven approach to L&D measurement, much like the rest of our business. For our Education Benefit, we track participation, completion rates, internal mobility, promotion rates and retention, and we segment by role and business unit to identify where programs are having the greatest impact. For example, under our legacy tuition reimbursement program, only one-third of participants were frontline workers, despite making up two-thirds of our workforce. By embracing a 100% tuition-free model that doesn’t subject participants to any out-of-pocket costs, we’ve removed financial barriers and, as a result, 68% of participants in the Education Benefit are frontline. For these employees, completion of certificates and degrees is leading to career advancement.
Employees engaged with our Education Benefit are 24% more likely to be promoted than non-engaged employees. This initiative is driving meaningful impact, not just for individual employees, but for our business as a whole.
Q: Performance is much different than it was in the days before multi-modal competition. How have you modified performance metrics to better recognize their upskilling and the market value of their jobs?
The skills, experience and industry knowledge of our employees meaningfully benefits our operations and performance. To that end, we embrace a self-progression structure that provides most of our customer-facing roles with opportunities for upward advancement, including through supervisory and leadership roles.
In our Field Operations organization, for example, we have a formalized self-progression structure where employees who maintain exceptional levels of performance can complete online coursework to advance to the next level within their job family, earning a 10% wage increase plus a bonus. Our Broadband Technician Apprenticeship Program, certified by the U.S. Department of Labor, builds on this program, including thousands of hours of on-the-job training and when employees complete the program, they become certified broadband technicians. Similarly, in Customer Operations, employees can progress from Rep 1 to Rep 2 to Rep 3 based on performance and metrics, with wage increases ranging from 5-10% depending on their location.
These types of self-progression opportunities give employees the autonomy to control their career progression and rewards them with increased wages, increased company contributions towards retirement and more. This commitment in our workforce is translating into a more tenured, higher skilled employee base that can best serve our customers.
