How New Partnership With LinkedIn Learning Improves Betterworks’ Upskilling Platform

A new partnership announced today by performance software company Betterworks and LinkedIn Learning will provide an improved integrated approach to corporate learning and development that could ensure the success of upskilling programs for those who participate and sponsor them.

Companies that help employees improve their skills and expertise can do more than increase the value of their workers. Offering learning and development opportunities can encourage people to join or stay with employers, help limit the impact of the Great Resignation, and reduce the likelihood of a crisis for organizations.

Pilot Project Results

Wednesday’s announcement is a follow-up to the May 2021 launch of a pilot project by Betterworks and remote learning provider Udemy for Business. That initiative was meant to give employers and their workers a more robust online education experience.

“Across customers actively using the Udemy integration within Betterworks, an average of 44% of courses synced to milestones (within Betterworks' goal-setting product) were completed,” a Betterworks spokesperson said in a statement.

That's compared to an “average Udemy course completion [rate that] hovers around 10% and an average employee training completion [of] around 25%,” he noted.

The classes chosen for that collaboration were cherry-picked from Udemy’s library of 155,000 courses taught by more than 70,000 instructors in over 65 languages and feature videos, with practice exercises, quizzes and other reinforcement mechanisms woven throughout. All are free to employees of companies that subscribe or pay a licensing fee, and the topics covered range from development and IT to leadership, marketing, design and stress management.

A More Integrated Approach

LinkedIn Learning adds more than 16,000 courses in seven languages to Betterworks’ catalog of training topics.

The collaboration:

• Allows employees to search, discover, and launch LinkedIn Learning courses from within the Betterworks platform
• Syncs learning progress and outcomes to measurable performance goals, such as an employee's professional growth
• Aligns employee performance and learning to drive business success through a more engaged and skilled workforce
• Provides managers with instant access to employee’s progress with courses and easily tracks course completion rates

“The whole point of professional learning is to be able to acquire new skills and perform at a higher level,” said Arnaud Grunwald, chief product officer at Betterworks, said in a press release.

‘With this integration between Betterworks and LinkedIn Learning, employees are more likely to pursue and complete learning programs—increasing the value of an organization’s investment in LinkedIn’s learning and development resource,” Betterworks said.

“Steady investment in performance enablement ensures that organizations retain strong talent and committed employees,” said Lee Womer, vice president of business development at LinkedIn. “The tight integration between the two systems allows organizations to take a proactive and concerted approach to the performance management of employees.”

What Employees Want

The results of a new study commissioned by Amazon underscore the importance and urgency of helping workers improve their expertise, knowledge, and skills.

Research firm Workplace Intelligence conducted a blind survey of 3,000 U.S. employees from various industries and companies between August 12 and August 22, 2022.

The study found that:

• 83% of employees said that improving their skills is one of their top priorities
• Most employees are concerned they lack the skills (78%) and education (71%) required to advance their career
• 70% of employees feel unprepared for the future of work
• 58% of workers are afraid that their skills have gone stale since the onset of the pandemic

‘Clarion Call’

“Career-related learning has become the clarion call of organizations wishing to reduce attrition and keep their best people on payroll and performing at their greatest potential,” Brent Skinner, co-founder of research and consulting firm 3Sixty Insights, said via email.

“The notable ease of integration between Betterworks and LinkedIn Learning goes a long way in mitigating this challenge…,” he noted.

In More Learning Scenarios

“In our discussions with the vendor, we have learned that the Betterworks solution is finding itself more and more in employee learning-related scenarios and related activities such as goal-setting and career and development conversations,” Skinner observed.

“Users are increasingly availing themselves of the tools found in Betterworks to help managers and employees alike document goals, etc,” he pointed out.

“The notable ease of integration between Betterworks and LinkedIn Learning goes a long way in mitigating this challenge…,” he concluded.

Staying One Step Ahead

“In today’s employee-driven job market, employees feel empowered to seek out an employer that truly supports their long-term career goals and ambitions,” Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Workplace Intelligence, said in a statement.

“Companies who recognize this and provide a high level of support—from more time for skills development during the workday, to better learning benefits and programs—are going to stay one step ahead in the ongoing war for talent,” he predicted.