Skills transformation for the now and where you’re heading

Skills shortages have been making the headlines for decades. And they’re not letting up. So it’s not surprising that 48% of employers cite their most urgent concern over the next three years as a skills and talent shortage, according to our recent Global Skills Report. But maybe not as surprising is how high-performing organizations deal with this skills shortage compared to the laggards. Simply put, high-performing organizations focus on developing talent as the number one way to fill skills gaps, while laggards were 3x more likely to stall skills development investments. Luckily, that’s Cornerstone’s specialty: helping organizations stay ahead of talent challenges by creating a personalized and connected learning experience for their employees. Learn what Cornerstone customers have to say about how they’re powering the future ready workforce and putting employees in the driver’s seat of their own growth. Powering the future ready workforce One of our customers told us, “We don’t even know sometimes what the skills we will need tomorrow and when we find out, everyone else needs the same skills, so it’s super competitive.” This is an issue cited by an increasing number of organizations since skills shortages have become so widespread. But Cornerstone has given them an edge up. Skills are recommended by AI and help the customer determine if these capabilities are really something they need. They continued, “We can see it really clearly and in advance of it becoming a problem, and then do things to develop our own people with those capabilities.” It can be challenging for organizations to do all the legwork required to gain this knowledge on their own. That’s where Cornerstone and our technology play their part. Thames Water said, “We needed a partner who can help us go on that skills awareness journey and bring that data into us successfully in real-time. That’s where working with a partner like Cornerstone is really critical.” Teleperformance acknowledges that access to all this skills data powers the future ready workforce and retains them. “Having a central platform where we can have skills, skill path and more gives us the opportunity to do great things and retain the people by offering them the opportunity to really take, take a step forward,” they said. More on that next. Putting employees in the driver’s seat In 2022, only 55% of employees are confident in their organization’s prioritization of developing new skilling opportunities for them. Whether related to time, focus, adequate resources or other reasons, employees are not confident that their organizations are prioritizing new skilling. But the following organizations are showing employees they are listening by offering Cornerstone’s skills transformation technology. At Deutsche Post DHL, “This idea of having a marketplace where you enable learning recommendations which are rather personalized, direct to the employee is a very powerful way of not only developing them but also engaging them, making them feel that they matter.” Because people these days want — rather, expect — to engage with their organizations. They just won’t settle for less. And they also want to be in control of their growth path. “One of the main games is really putting the employee at the center, letting them have the information to drive their career internally,” a leader at Alstom commented. The skills graph is one of the tools that helps customers do that. It can develop a rich skill profile for everyone in the organization with only a job title and a resume. And it will learn based on the courses an employee takes and mutes to continue developing a relevant path. Deutsche Post DHL added, “It recommends them to close gaps and suggests to them what might be a next role that suits their capabilities. But it also allows them to say, ‘Well, I’d actually like to make a career shift and what development what I need to put in place to take that route in my career?’” That is powerful.

How Cornerstone customers are supporting employee career growth and improving internal mobility

Learning is a natural human tendency. But organizations can struggle with harnessing employees' inclination to learn and aligning it to their future workforce needs. Technology can help. According to the Cornerstone 2022 Global Skills Report, 97% of high-performing organizations agreed that talent development solutions should improve employee growth – and that just so happens to be Cornerstone's specialty. We're passionate about learning and helping you achieve your employee development goals. Here's how global organizations use Cornerstone to set their employees up for success and career growth opportunities. Empowering people to take development into their own hands When people are passionate about something, don't stand in their way. Better yet, help them achieve what they set out to accomplish. According to our research, 95% of employees at high-performing organizations say their company shows a sense of responsibility to its employees and helps them develop their careers. When organizations invest in the future of their employees, people take notice. That's precisely what Alstom, a multinational manufacturer, believes. "If you want the employee to drive their own career, you need to give them the tools to be able to assess themselves and then prepare their development plan." Generali, a financial services organization, has inspired employees by allowing "people to access learning in their own time." Employees feel that the learning experience is personalized and can "take control of their own development." Ease of access is important, too, so employees feel empowered to learn rather than bogged down by the prospect. Amplifon, the world's largest hearing aid retailer, found this was key to adoption. "We want to make learning fun and easily accessible. And this is important especially for our employees in the shops because flexibility is crucial due to their filled agendas with customer appointments. Therefore, we created the opportunity to learn and upskill anywhere and anytime, also online or offline, and on any device." For 40% of employees looking for information about skill development and growth inside organizations, their skills and development platform is their first stop. In high-performing organizations, that percentage is even larger. And employees are making it clear that they want even more learning content from their employers – to the tune of 80%. Inspiring organizations to improve promotability and increase internal mobility Skills development and career development go hand in hand. As organizations better align to their future workforce needs, they can guide employees through their career journeys. Adding technology enables employees to chart their desired career path by seeing an integrated view of the skills needed and how it translates to internal mobility. Employees who see a future in your organization are more likely to stay. We found that 74% of employees want more tailored, comprehensive career guidance. And that's what Interfor, one of the largest lumber producers in the world, has served up to employees with the help of Cornerstone. "We're committed to providing employees with a career where they can grow, contribute and prosper. We set ambitious targets for internal promotions and have successfully met those targets. And we think that has a lot to do with our employee development programs. "One of those programs that we believe help us with our success is our career development plan. That is a robust program for employees and managers to have multiple check-ins, communication, and opportunities to develop long- and short-term goals that both work toward organizational goals and their own personal development. Part of that is using the Cornerstone system to ensure that we have our formalized goals setting, mid-year check-in and the year-in-review with the incorporation of development plans as well." Interfor's commitment spans the entire talent development cycle and all levels of the organization, including leadership. "We also focus a lot on mobility and growth and developing our future leaders. So, one of the ways that we do that is with our succession planning, which is called Talent Review. And this is a process that allows managers to identify successors, high-potential employees, any sort of gaps on their team and really help develop the next generation of leaders." Aureon, a business solutions provider, has found Cornerstone courses to be integral to internal mobility because employees have access to learn entirely new skills. "We've had people get promoted. We've had people change departments." It's a win-win. Organizations can fill their current and future roles with talent that's already committed to their culture, and employees get the opportunity to progress their careers in ways they may have never dreamed up.

Accelerate Skill Building with Cornerstone Content Anytime

Cornerstone Content Anytime is a set of subscriptions designed to help organizations build critical power skills that every employee needs to be successful. With Content Anytime, organizations will be able to build better communicators, stronger leaders, and higher functioning teams. In turn, they will provide employees with opportunities to develop and grow, leading to greater retention, employee satisfaction and business performance.

The history of Juneteenth – and how to honor it this year

On June 19, 1865, news that the Civil War was over reached Galveston, the capital city of Texas. A brief statement, General Order No. 3, was read aloud. It went like this: The order freed the enslaved Black people of Texas, marking the end of official slavery in the US. The tradition of Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteen) began June 19 of the following year. Despite the historical significance of Juneteenth, it took until June 16, 2021 for President Joe Biden to sign a bill into law, recognizing it as a federal holiday in the United States. Why learning is an essential part of Juneteenth According to research from Deloitte, educational opportunities outside of the standard unconscious bias training are key to driving diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts. Making sure employees understand the history of Juneteenth and the history of being Black in the United States is important for your DEIB efforts because it serves as a reminder of Black Americans’ ongoing pursuit of racial equity and justice. “Being an ally is critically important in this work,” Duane La Bom, chief diversity officer at Cornerstone, said in a recent blog post. “Sometimes allies feel as if they’re supposed to have all the answers, and it’s the exact opposite...An ally is supposed to listen, learn and leverage their strengths and privilege to help when it makes sense.” Celebrating Juneteenth this year Organizations have moved a little faster than the federal government when it comes to recognizing the significance of Juneteenth. In 2020, 48 major organizations made Juneteenth a permanent, paid holiday, including major companies like Spotify, Twitter and Lyft. In addition to giving employees paid time off to celebrate Juneteenth, employers can encourage their people to acknowledge the holiday in other ways. Pull together a list of ways to support or donate to Black Lives Matter movements or other anti-racism initiatives in their local communities Coordinate with local, online Juneteenth events (like festivals, poetry readings, online celebrations or protests) and encourage your employees to attend Remember: When celebrating Juneteenth at your organization this year, there are also 364 other days a year where you can take action to better support your Black employees and the Black community.

Ensuring your organization is future ready: Cornerstone Originals wins 6 Telly Awards

The results are in! Three Cornerstone Originals series — A Seat at the Table, DNA: Sustainability and The Glossary — recently received a combined six Telly Awards. This was the second consecutive year we’ve won Telly Awards. The Telly Awards, for the uninitiated, honor excellence in television and video across all screens. Telly Awards Executive Director Sabrina Dridje stated on their website, “Today, the quality of video work is measured using a new set of values that consider the impact on a global scale. As our community continues the important work of storytelling, it returns with a new perspective rooted in values of innovation, agility, equity, and tenacious creativity.” We joined other 2022 Telly Award winners, The Walt Disney Company, ViacomCBS, GLAAD, Sony Music, The Washington Post and more for excellence in learning content. Go us, but how do these awards help your organization? This year, the Cornerstone Originals series that won Telly Awards covered topics relevant to successful organizations, like Diversity & Inclusion, Workplace Culture, Sustainability and Corporate Training, in innovative and engaging ways. “We are set on breaking down barriers and pushing the envelope in how we deliver authentic, relevant and brief learning content to employees around the world,” said Cornerstone Vice President of Content Summer Salomonsen. The three award-winning series that Salomonsen and her team produced — A Seat at the Table, DNA: Sustainability and The Glossary — are each built to help your organization find success in unique ways. How to have real conversations about DEIB — A Seat at the Table The Cornerstone Original series A Seat at the Table won two gold and two silver Telly Awards this year. In this series, real professionals have honest and authentic discussions about DEIB topics like Asian stereotypes, BLM, ageism, transphobia, mental health, disability and more. To help produce the series, Cornerstone brought on Emmy award-winning producer David Grant as the head of production. Each episode of A Seat at the Table features four non-actors in unscripted, open conversations around sensitive yet critical topics within the workplace. “Nothing is more powerful than a person’s lived experience. Real people sharing their stories and experiences humanizes topics and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. The roundtable format created a safe space for our participants to engage in constructive conversations. For learners watching, we hope that A Seat at the Table will help build the skill of empathy,” said Cornerstone AVP of Original Content Doug Segers. You can bring the honest, perspective-shifting conversations of A Seat at the Table to your organization through Cornerstone Content Anytime. Building a greener organization – DNA: Sustainability Climate change is a dire situation and fighting it starts with learning and skills development. DNA: Sustainability address the actions organizations and their people can take to do their part directly and won a silver Telly Award for it. The series, part of the larger Digital Native Advancement (DNA) umbrella, can help you and your organization promote recycling in your office, work with people who have different views than yours, make sustainable choices while traveling for work and more. Per Segers, “DNA was our first original series built around teaching interpersonal skills to Gen Z, often referred to as a generation of digital natives. Shorter, episodic learning does become an easier ask than longer-form content when people’s lives are busy. It’s about meeting people where they’re at when competing for their time. It’s important for us to make a variety of types of learning available, taking into consideration which formats and genres are popular and how people are consuming content across devices.” Learn what your organization can do to fight the climate crisis with the DNA: Sustainability courses in Cornerstone Content Anytime. Creating a common language at your organization — The Glossary The Glossary, the Cornerstone Original series focused on defining and contextualizing common terms people hear in the workplace in less than 60 seconds, won one bronze Telly award. According to Segers, “The Glossary was born from conversations over the years with both employees and clients. It is essential for organizations to have a shared vocabulary around common words, helping employees understand their company’s broader strategy and better align with employee and corporate goals. This alignment helps prevent miscommunication and improve cross-functional understanding, leading to increased productivity.” The microlearning courses in The Glossary use memorable icons to contextualize common workplace terms. The combination of visual icons with definitions helps the words stick in learners’ memory and provide them with long-term retention. You can ensure that everyone at your organization knows all the same acronyms, initialisms and other business terms when you bring The Glossary to your Cornerstone’s Content Anytime library. More to come from Cornerstone Originals With new, innovative series coming soon, nothing is stopping Cornerstone Originals from releasing more award-winning caliber content throughout 2022. “Innovation in learning content, combined with our organization’s unique ability to connect learning back to skills, reinforces our fierce dedication to providing customers with resources for creating a more engaged, inclusive, future ready workforce,” said Salomonsen. Learn more about Cornerstone Content today.

How DEIB conversations are integral to a successful workplace

Amid the social and economic disruptions of the past 20-plus months, a key theme has surfaced — the importance of belonging in the workplace. Work is a major social structure for a lot of people. And many of them look to their careers for purpose, not just a paycheck. Through their work, they search for connection, community and belonging. Creating that sense of belonging at work is critically important to building a workplace that works for everyone. It encourages collaboration, mitigates exclusion and values individuality as a way to drive outcomes. Research shows that fostering belonging at work plays a fundamental role in employee engagement, which corresponds to greater on-the-job effort, more intent to stay and higher employee performance. But in order to make work a place that works for everyone, we need to recognize that our colleagues have life and work experiences that are different from our own. And that by working to understand the social issues that create the need for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) strategies, education and commitment, we can engage in meaningful conversations that make work better for everyone. Communicating about DEIB isn't just a social skill; it's a professional skill. But there are barriers to engaging in DEIB conversations As important as DEIB conversation skills are, it can be difficult to engage in these discussions. It’s a challenge to understand when, where and how to do it because, if we’re being completely honest, we often hide parts of ourselves at work. We may even censor ourselves to avoid "rocking the boat" or saying the wrong thing. Some organizations may even institute policies to ban these conversations outside of formal employee education protocols. But ignoring or avoiding these conversations won’t change the fact that social and political change and uncertainty affect people across their lives and can introduce distraction, disruption and division into the workplace.  And while DEIB training can and does help, it’s often reactive and compliance-focused, lacking tactical approaches for engaging in these conversations and initiating change. There is no perfect playbook for engaging in DEIB conversations but providing a model to guide people can certainly help. And it’s what our latest Cornerstone Originals learning series, A Seat at the Table, is designed to do. Using authentic people and conversations to model uncomfortable DEIB conversations A Seat at the Table offers an innovative approach to DEIB training. Across eight courses, the series features unscripted, meaningful conversations about important DEIB topics, such as how to talk about pronouns, racial discrimination, depression, and more.  Here’s what makes A Seat at the Table different from the typical DEIB training experience: It uses an unscripted format with real people — not actors — sharing their experiences and perspectives It explicitly demonstrates how workplaces bring together people of different backgrounds and perspectives It shows both the telling and listening that's necessary to appreciate the diversity of experiences in the workplace Through watching onscreen conversations, learners can better understand these social issues and why they're present at work. And to help put their learning into practice, each episode is accompanied by supplemental materials for managers full of tips to lead these conversations and create more inclusive environments. Take a look at this trailer for the A Seat at the Table series: Framing DEIB learning around a conversation is empowering By learning what DEIB and topics related to it mean to real people, we can better understand the critical roles we play in fostering DEIB in our workplace. Yes, talking about these issues can often be uncomfortable and weighted with emotional associations, but they're necessary to ensure we're truly creating a work experience that works for everyone. It’s not about bringing people together to disagree. It’s about nurturing human connections that foster more inclusive behaviors. Engaging in these conversations is a professional skill. One that you can help your people develop. Let us know how we can help A Seat at the Table can demonstrate your actionable commitment to DEIB and to creating a safe space for employees to bring their true selves to work. Because this learning content centers on developing competency in holding these conversations, A Seat at the Table is most impactful when incorporated with other DEIB training, like our four Cornerstone Content Anytime subscriptions: Professional Skills Leadership & Management Compliance Diversity, Equity & Inclusion If you’re interested in learning more about A Seat at the Table and how our broader content offerings can support your people and organizational goals, reach out. We’d love to discuss how we can help.