Did you know that in 2022 of the overall workforce of large tech companies, and within that only 25% of women held technical roles? Empowering women with education and employment opportunities can help bridge this gap and often is the catalyst for dreams and aspirations to take shape. 麻豆原创 is committed to promoting equitable access to education and employment, fostering future skills development, and driving innovation for a better future.

One of our 麻豆原创 Corporate Social Responsibility partnerships that we are incredibly proud of is our partnership with , the first nonprofit, tuition-free, American, accredited, online university dedicated to global access to higher education. Established in 2009, it provides virtual learning for over 126,000 students worldwide, with over 16,000 refugees as part of its student population. It serves students believing that higher education is a fundamental right for all.

Last year, in honor of 麻豆原创鈥檚 50^th anniversary, 麻豆原创 funded 100 scholarships, with 50 associate鈥檚 degrees and 50 bachelor鈥檚 degrees in computer science or business administration, for refugees and displaced youth aged 18 to 30 worldwide. 麻豆原创 CSR also partnered with the 麻豆原创 Learning organization to support specifically for Ukrainian refugees and aligned with University of the People and Teach for Afghanistan to fund scholarships for student teachers in Afghanistan seeking their master’s of education degrees. Beyond scholarships, 麻豆原创 established a pilot, one-on-one, virtual mentorship program, where 麻豆原创 employees provide career mentorship for students seeking advice and guidance.

Each scholarship funded by 麻豆原创 supports a refugee student on their education journey with University of the People. To honor Women鈥檚 History Month, we wanted to highlight a few stories of some inspiring refugee women from University of the People who show that education is the tool they used for a hopeful tomorrow.

Let’s start with Kateryna Glubochenko, who proves that education can transform lives, even in the toughest of circumstances.

Kateryna is a University of the People student from Ukraine who recently graduated with her master鈥檚 in education.

In the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kateryna wrote this message: 鈥淚 am paralyzed with fear. This is our sixth day in a bomb shelter. Air raids happen every hour. Russian troops are only 50 kilometers from my city. I can鈥檛 yet leave my home because I鈥檓 pregnant and have no way to leave the city. Studying is the only way to calm down, and I still believe I will survive all this. Studying at University of the People is hope for me now.鈥�

Thanks to University of the People鈥檚 entirely virtual online experience providing students access to education from anywhere in the world, Kateryna decided to continue her studies despite the ongoing warfare in her hometown. Luckily, Kateryna could travel to Moldova with her 10-year-old son a few weeks later but had to leave the rest of her family behind. Her husband joined the fight against Russia and her parents were too elderly to make the long trip on foot. From Moldova, Kateryna and her son took a train to Poland and then traveled to Spain to stay with a distant relative.

A few months after arriving in Spain, Kateryna gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and, shortly afterward, completed her master鈥檚 degree in education. Kateryna鈥檚 strength and commitment to completing her degree in challenging circumstances is incredibly inspiring. After the fighting in her hometown stopped, Kateryna returned to Ukraine with her two sons and reunited with her husband and parents.

In June 2022, in honor of World Refugee Day, Kateryna joined 麻豆原创鈥檚 hosted by Alexandra van der Ploeg, head of 麻豆原创 Corporate Social Responsibility. On the panel, Kateryna talked about what she hopes to do with her new degree.

“Before the war, I believed I could be a curriculum reformer, helping Ukraine advance its education system. I wanted to help advance our economics curriculum because I’m an economics teacher,鈥� she said. 鈥淣ow, I hope to be part of rebuilding the Ukrainian education system. I believe we can make our educational system more student-oriented and help Ukrainian students flourish. It might take many years to rebuild our educational system, but I want to take part in this process, and my degree will help me become a specialist and help my country.”

In a recent update, Kateryna used her master鈥檚 degree to help her get a job working online for a Ukrainian university and is on her way to making her dreams a reality.

Another inspiring University of the People student is Asima, based in Afghanistan. Asima is from Kunduz, a northern Afghan city. In late July 2021, she was displaced to the Afghan capital, Kabul, to seek safety from the conflict between the government and the Taliban. Things took an unexpected turn on August 15, 2021, when the Taliban took over Kabul. Life changed drastically for Asima and her family. Women鈥檚 access to education, which had expanded over the last two decades within the country, ended abruptly.

Throughout these changes, University of the People continued to support Afghans seeking degrees, particularly girls and other marginalized groups. The university has provided around 2,000 scholarships to Afghan women since the Taliban鈥檚 return to power so they could continue their studies safely.

鈥淲hen I heard about the scholarships from the University of the People to Afghan women, I quickly applied. Women must empower themselves through education. We are too strong to be frightened. Therefore, I will continue my education,鈥� Asima said. 鈥淲hen I entered the University of the People learning module for the first time, I was thrilled. I couldn’t express my joy and happiness at that moment. University of the People is a fantastic university where I’m in touch with people from different parts of the world for the same purpose of educating. That is where I feel near to my dreams. Thanks to the University of the People, that has become a light on the darkest day of my life!鈥�

As Women鈥檚 History Month ends, we proudly tell stories of women at the University of the People who are using their education to build hopeful futures. We look forward to bringing stories of inspiration and empowerment and powering equitable access to education and employment for students everywhere. To learn more about corporate social responsibility at 麻豆原创 and our partnership with University of the People, .

Julia Donovan is a corporate social responsibility specialist at 麻豆原创.

Learning cultures are the shared values, beliefs, and norms that influence learners’ behavior and outcomes. Strong learning cultures are rare and challenging to create and sustain yet worthwhile to build and invest resources in fostering. Our research* indicates that only 30% of employees consider their organization to have an excellent learning culture. However, these employees reported:

• 25% higher engagement
• Rated their learning experience to be 24% more positive
• Were 15% more likely to apply their newly learned skills on the job

Early talent is also attracted to organizations that support employees sharing knowledge, provide learning opportunities, and reward learning.**听To help your company rapidly adapt as business continues to change and build up the skills needed for current 鈥� and future 鈥� positions, your employees must be continuous learners. Clearly, it’s important to promote a positive learner experience and provide the building blocks for a continuous learning culture.

Four Culture Keys听

From the findings of our research program, we set forth four keys to building a culture of lifelong learning in your organization.

Culture Key #1: Reward and Recognize Learning

Employees will believe it is not a priority if an activity is not rewarded. A lack of reward and recognition leads to less engagement in learning behavior and affects learning effectiveness. Employees who cite inadequate reward for learning are more likely to turnover, feel less motivated to learn, and be less engaged.

Recommendation: Consider Learning as Job Performance
Incorporate learning experiences into goal-setting and continuous performance evaluation processes. Setting and tracking development goals will keep employees accountable for their growth and ensure that it is recognized. By using , organizations can provide clear career paths that are linked with development goals and learning programs that help employees thrive.听 And, just as important, this allows you to recognize the user’s whole self: what’s important to them, who they are, who they are becoming, and what they are passionate about.

Culture Key #2: Leadership Support and Role Modeling

Leaders are integral to building a culture of learning. Leaders specify and communicate the priority. They signal the importance of learning by role modeling and dedicating time and resources to foster learning.

Recommendation: Tailor Learning to the Leader Persona
Ensuring learning opportunities capture leaders’ desires for social learning can improve听leadership learning behavior. For example, an open forum for leaders to discuss their current听challenges and share best practices can give them a platform to celebrate wins and learn from听the losses of others. You can also take advantage of the built-in discovery and collaboration capabilities, peer resources, and intelligent recommendations from to help employees of any level find the educational resources they need and get access to social learning. Leaders can connect to each other and to relevant content throughout every stage of their experience, making it easier to collaborate with peers, find interesting information, and start or join communities.

听Culture Key #3: Close the Awareness Gap听

The maturity of an organization’s learning culture can be demonstrated by the existing strength of the “awareness gap,” or the level of employee knowledge regarding learning resources and opportunities available.

Recommendation: Provide Equal Access to Learning Technology
Digital learning can be scaled to a broader audience. With 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Work Zone, learners can get unified access to all kinds of learning experiences both content-focused and experiential 鈥� even from different sources. Employees don’t have to sort through multiple systems with multiple logins and search to find what they are looking for. Having one access point to all learning content and solutions from any source helps to simplify and optimize learning processes and increase engagement.

Culture Key #4: Technology Enablement听

Technology enablement is a crucial factor in the learning culture of organizations as learning opportunities are increasingly being augmented or offered through technology.

Recommendation: Personalize the Experience, Especially for the Digital Learner
Intelligent learning technologies can personalize learning topics and modality recommendations, provide performance insights, and develop custom pathways, including content and experiences. With , personalized learning recommendations powered by machine learning help provide employees with curated access to ideas, topics, and courses uniquely tailored to their goals and interests. And by using SuccessFactors Learning, you can gain insights into real career growth opportunities, use system data to recommend topics, skills, and future roles to consider, and make personalized resource discovery easier than ever. Finally, Experience Management solutions from 麻豆原创 and Qualtrics can help to continuously measure employee sentiment and determine the right actions to improve learning experiences.

Addressing these four keys in your approach to learning can help build a lifelong learning culture in your organization to help meet your business objectives.

Read more about the research and how a can help build a continuous learning culture in your organization.

Mark Tarallo is a solution marketing fellow at 麻豆原创.
Joshua Acosta an HR research analyst at 麻豆原创.

*From a global and cross-industry sample of 1,470 employees.
**71% of university student indicated being attracted strong learning cultures. From 59 university students who participated in a hackathon event hosted by 麻豆原创.

One of the oldest organizations in the world, can trace its origins back over 500 years to 1516. But even it is, as so many companies are, facing the need for business transformation to be recognized as the top delivery company in the UK and across Europe and to stay ahead of evolving market needs.

Royal Mail Group is a global organization, operating in 43 countries around the world with over 140,000 employees. It delivers more than 1.8 billion parcels and 14 billion letters every year. To continue on its business and workforce transformation trajectory, Royal Mail needed a platform that provided a personalized user experience, delivering the right tools and information in the right format and at the right time, to perform its day-to-day roles. , it transformed its learning experience by offering a user-centric, digital personal development platform 鈥� branded as 鈥淭he Royal Mail Academy鈥� 鈥� that has impacted company culture intrinsically with a bottom-up approach to learning and development.

Fully deployed in just 12 weeks, the platform brings people into one place for all of their HR requirements and applications and services they need. Now, data insights provide the ability to more easily identify local experts, 30% of the target audience has already engaged with the new platform after the implementation, agility between program managers and frontline employees has increased, employee engagement has improved significantly, and the delivery of information on a large scale is more streamlined.

Another interesting customer story is , a multinational technology company that specializes in specialty glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies, operating in 60 countries with over 50 000 employees.

It uses 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Work Zone for different use cases, but let鈥檚 focus on the one for learning and development. As with other larger customers, Corning exists of many different business divisions that all have different needs. The goal has been to put together different learning university experiences leveraging the existing 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Learning investment and to create an environment that gives people guidance to develop and grow their career. The usage of workspaces boosts the overall experience, such as through collaborative learning complementing formal learning.

Corning uses the personalization capabilities to help people surface information for particular uses and what is applicable to them, instead of potentially being overwhelmed with too much information. Giving the user the ability to choose content they might want and are interested in helps here. This could be any kind of information from 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors solutions but also from Microsoft Teams to facilitate virtual learning clubs.

Corning also plans to support its remote deskless workforce with 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Work Zone capabilities, as right now it doesn鈥檛 have a platform to communicate with them in an effective way. With the solution, it can communicate with them in more engaging ways right from their mobile device or even their laptop at home in multiple languages. Corning is currently exploring the 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace solution, which will help empower its employees to drive their own development and growth while aligning to Corning鈥檚 values and talent strategy. This can be a huge differentiator when it comes to attracting and retaining talent while enabling the organization to support the growth of its workforce.

Get more insights into how and help organizations elevate their learning experiences to be prepared for the future.

Margit Bauer is director of Solution Marketing at 麻豆原创 SE.
Mark Tarallo is a solution marketing fellow at 麻豆原创.

The flipside is that your employees are likely hungry to learn. In fact, in a recent 麻豆原创 survey as part of our research, 69% of respondents said they would need to learn new technical and professional skills to do their current job in the future. Add to that the fact that organizations and employees are dealing with remote and hybrid working environments means that learning needs to be accessible and easy to find. Furthermore, organizations are still looking for the best ways to personalize and engage learners. While there are many learning experience platforms in the market that can help with this, they may not have the depth and breadth of a solution like , which can help provide unified access not just to content from , but across other applications and processes.

Moreover, a strong learning culture should incorporate a 鈥減ull鈥� rather than a 鈥減ush鈥� mentality. A 鈥減ull鈥� learning culture is one in which employees are inspired to learn because of their own interests and desires. They actively seek out learning on topics or areas that are of interest to them, either professionally or personally. In a 鈥減ull鈥� culture, the learner takes charge of their learning. On the other hand, a 鈥減ush鈥� learning culture is one in which employees are required to engage in learning and development activities. This includes taking mandatory compliance or health and safety training courses. And while training like this is necessary and often essential, the fact remains that the learner is not given a choice. Making the change from a 鈥減ush鈥� to a predominantly 鈥減ull鈥� learning culture will require planning and support from management, including modeling this behavior.

Certainly, the role of technology can鈥檛 be overlooked. Even in a 鈥減ull鈥� model, having to go into multiple systems to find relevant content makes learning a chore; technology should be something that enables learning, not something that makes it harder. On top of that, the way we work and learn has changed 鈥� from where and when we work to how we work, learn, and grow 鈥� and that experience is shaped by a number of things. But the greatest impact to experience are the digital tools and processes that enable us to do our best work and be our best selves.

shows that an unfulfilling employee experience is the second major cause of employee churn. But what does a great experience mean when it comes to employees feeling supported by technology? You can empower your employees by having the right digital resources and information in place, giving them the guidance they need, and helping them to connect. A fragmented employee experience is still the reality in most organizations, and removing barriers like having to switch between different applications is key. Finally, you can empower them by providing learning in the flow of work so employees get the skills they want and the business needs. In today鈥檚 changing world of work, employees expect better experiences 鈥� especially when it comes to their learning, development, and growth.

helps employees discover, in one place, recommendations to fuel their ongoing career development and growth 鈥� learning, roles, projects, dynamic teams, mentors, mentor programs, and peer connections. At the same time, leaders can gain increased visibility and a better understanding of the strengths and capabilities of their people and teams. The potential gains for individuals and organizations are immense, like increased retention and engagement and ongoing adaptability that will keep people and companies growing and ready for change.

Learn how and can help build a powerful learning culture that leverages technology more efficiently.

Margit Bauer is director of Solution Marketing at 麻豆原创 SE.
Mark Tarallo is a solution marketing fellow at 麻豆原创.

Take automation, which has already brought changes to many jobs, as an example. The jobs that are currently available in today鈥檚 economy depend greatly on lifelong learning because they continue to change and evolve. This is nothing new, but the rapid pace at which technology and business models change is dramatic and with that comes the need to constantly keep skills up-to-date. According to a , adoption of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will mark an acceleration over the shifts of even the recent past. And this change is impacting all jobs: even those with high incomes spend an average of 31% of their jobs doing things that could be automated, according to McKinsey. Stockbrokers, for instance, spend a good portion of their time gathering and processing data, which could be done automatically with even greater accuracy than the way it is now done.

So, lifelong learning will be relevant for everyone. The good thing is that people are naturally curious. We鈥檙e constantly asking ourselves questions and finding answers. In addition, employees are keen on upskilling to be prepared for the future. According to a recent , 77% of the workers surveyed are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, with 74% seeing training as a matter of personal responsibility.

This is one of the reasons why employees expect a continuous learning culture. The risk of not building one is that employees may move to other organizations in order to remain relevant and add new skills. At a time when the Great Resignation shows no signs of slowing down 鈥� according to , one in five workers plan to quit their jobs in 2022 鈥� organizations unquestionably have to offer development opportunities. They need to upskill and reskill their employees not just to keep them excited and prepared for new job requirements, but also to fill positions they are not able to fill with external candidates.

Therefore, a key to organizations鈥� future success will be to provide continuous learning options and instill a culture of lifelong learning throughout the organization to develop the workforce of the future. For many years, learning and development organizations tried to find the optimal way to serve different learning needs to push learning like compliance trainings to their employees, to meet specific departmental training needs, or to empower their employees for further personal development, all while considering that the way of learning and employee expectations have changed tremendously. And this is change that is going to stay. According to a , only 5% of respondents think that their learning strategy, investment, and resourcing will go back to what it was before the pandemic began.

But exactly what do we mean by a learning culture? A learning culture refers to an organization鈥檚 values, beliefs, and norms that influence learning behavior and outcomes. Unfortunately, maintaining one is no easy task. A recent survey conducted through 麻豆原创鈥檚 program showed that only 30% of employees consider their organization to have an excellent learning culture. So how can an organization take steps towards creating a strong culture of lifelong learning? As part of the research program, we uncovered four evidence-based factors integral to a culture that encourages learning across an organization. Focusing on these can set you on the path towards an organization filled with lifelong learners.

• Reward and recognize learning: Integrate reward and recognition into your learning strategy. Not only does this demonstrate that learning is an organizational priority, but it also acknowledges the employees who proactively take advantage of learning opportunities.
• Leadership support and role modeling: Leaders should serve as learning role models to employees. They can do this by sharing their perspectives and experiences on their own learning and development. It鈥檚 important for leaders to 鈥渨alk the learning talk鈥� and not contradict what employees are being told about the importance of learning.
• Closing the awareness gap: It鈥檚 key for employees across the organization to be made aware of what learning is available to them. This will help to drive consistent perceptions of learning among all different employee subgroups resulting in a stronger learning culture.
• Technology enablement: Technology is a crucial factor in the learning culture of organizations. Technology can have an impact on an employee鈥檚 overall learning experience and should be leveraged to improve that experience and ensure smooth, easy access to learning opportunities.

Creating a learning strategy that addresses these four factors can have you on your way to building a culture of lifelong learning across your organization. In this rapidly changing business environment, this is more important now than ever.

Get more insight into the research and how a can concretely support you in fostering a continuous learning culture.

Margit Bauer is director of Solution Marketing at 麻豆原创 SE.
Mark Tarallo is a solution marketing fellow at 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors.