Telus Enforces Social Learning Case Study

TELUS EMBRACES SOCIAL LEARNING
ELUS is a Canadian telecommunications company that has been around for a century, and it wants to ensure that every Canadian is connected to the rest of the world, whether that connection is through wireless devices, the Internet, television, or traditional telephone lines. The company has 12.7 million customer accounts.
Providing superior service is an important corporate goal. Management believes that good teamwork and employee learning are vital for achieving this goal. Until recently, most employee learning at TELUS took place in formal c1assroom settings outside the company. Much of what employees learned depended on knowledge presented by instructors, and this learning method was expensive. Employees
The company decided to focus on making team member education more "continuous, collaborative, and connected" through informal and sociallearning, using mentoring, coaching, job rotations, videos, blogs, and wikis. TELUS set a 2010 learning budget of $21 million, 40 percent ofwhich was for informal and sociallearning and 60 percent for formallearning. (The year before, formallearning had accounted for 90 percent ofthe firm 's $28.5 million learning budget.)
To support the new learning initiative, TELUS harnessed the capabilities of Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010, which provides team members with a single point of entry to shared knowledge within the company and the ability to search all the company 's learning assets simultaneously. TELUS used the SharePoint MySites feature to enable team members to create their own Web pages that describe their are as of expertise and special skills. Team members are able to see their positions and those of others in the organizational hierarchy, connect with colleagues, and establish informal groups with other people with similar skills. An Expert Search capability provides ranked search results identifying TELUS employees with expertise in specific
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TELUS recognized that moving from formal learning to acquiring knowledge through employee collaboration and participation required a shift in company culture. "This is not a scenario in which we can flip a switch and have everyone change their work habits overnight," observed Dan Pontefract, Senior Director of Learning for TELUS. 'Io encourage acceptance of and participation in the new social learning processes, the company set up an internal site showing tangible examples ofthe new collaboration tools and launched a wiki to facilitate employee discussion. Pontefract includes information about the new learning initiative on his blog to help prepare team members for the shift.
The new SharePoint system gives TELUSteam members much faster access to the specific skills and knowledge areas where they need help-they don 't need to wait for the next formallearning class. lnstead, team members can immediately reach out to colleagues who have expertise in a specific area, or they can read wikis and blogs, watch videos, and participate in discussions to find