Five categories. Thirty-one submissions. Twelve big winners.
The 2024 Degreed Visionary Awards recently returned for its second annual trophy ceremony, celebrating Degreed clients from around the world that are advancing skill building and workforce development in innovative, productive, and engaging ways.
“We had so many great submissions this year, and it’s a testament to the incredible forethought, planning, and sweat equity our clients put into their L&D programs week in and out all year long,” said ceremony co-host Michelle Vock Laboy, Vice President of Client Success for Degreed Academies and Content Marketplace. “We recognize that it takes a lot of work to submit these applications, but it takes a lot more work to build out these learning programs and really create a world-class system of learning, development, and skills. We’re inspired, grateful, and proud to recognize all this outstanding work.”
The submissions shared some common themes—including the notion that to get ahead, an L&D program needs to start where it’s at, learn from that experience, and then grow from there. Perhaps you’ve felt this at your organization? Here’s hoping the winners’ stories provide a little inspiration.
The 2024 Degreed Visionary Awards were announced in early March in Houston at Degreed LENS, our annual flagship conference. Let’s take a closer look at the organizations that took Gold, Silver, and Bronze in each category. We’ll also introduce you to the 2024 David Blake Learner of the Year, an individual recognized for exceptional personal growth.
Learning Technology Launch of the Year
Visionary Awards in this category are presented for outstanding achievement in implementing a Degreed product.
Gold: BNY Mellon
The New York-based bank needed to make it easy for learners to find the right learning and to assess their skills, to build skills needed for tomorrow. To launch Degreed LXP+, learning leaders prioritized the company’s engineering organization of 12,000 employees. Using agile practices, they conducted six early launch campaigns, and a full enterprise launch followed. In addition, the company launched Degreed Academies to more than 250 participants.
Judges awarded the Gold award based on BNY Mellon’s significant 38% cost savings through content optimization via Degreed and the 3,261 active learners the platform attracted in the 48 hours post-launch.
From kick off to launch, “We did it in less than a year,” said Judy Arruda, Vice President of Global Learning and Development. “And we took an agile approach. We had 10 work streams focused on this. It wasn’t just learning and development folks. We made sure we have the right partners from the business, technology, communications, et cetera.”
One of the reasons BNY Mellon implemented Degreed was employees didn’t know where to go to find learning materials, Arruda said. “It was confusing. One of the great things that’s already happened is Degreed is our front door to all learning for the organization. And that aligns with investing in talent . . . and having something to attract talent as well.”
Silver: bp
The talent team at the London-based oil and gas company aimed to align employee skills, passions, and purposes with the company’s vision. The team created its Workforce of the Future program to unlock employee potential, personalize learning, and provide more meaningful employee experiences through a culture of lifelong learning.
The Degreed implementation grew from a pilot aimed at 7,000 people to a full launch serving 42,000 employees three months later. Since then, 89% of workers have rated at least one skill, and more than 60% log in at least once a month.
Note: Bronze was not awarded in this category this year.
Learning Marketer of the Year
Awards in this category are presented for outstanding achievement in adopting and using Degreed.
Gold: Innovapost
Employees at the IT Services Management company based in Ottawa, Canada, operate with a guiding principle: No one gets left behind. For L&D, this means everyone has opportunities to learn and grow their skills, and the company invests in world class learning partners to support people’s learning needs.
To promote those initiatives, the learning team employed a number of tactics including completion and skill-rating challenges, scheduled learning hours, and a variety of communications. The upshot? In 2023, the company achieved 100% employee adoption of the Degreed platform. Leadership credits the activities it took to get there with contributing to the organization’s 2023 employee retention rate of 97%.
Silver: Regions Bank
Based in Birmingham, Alabama, the financial institution presented employees with a five-day challenge designed to promote the benefits and features of Degreed. Brief daily informational sessions lasting 10 minutes or less focused on upskilling, reskilling, career planning, and personal development. The campaign engaged employees through several communications channels, including daily podcasts.
Learning leaders exceeded their participation goal by 10 times, and Degreed usage increased by 50%.
Bronze: KPMG Brazil
People struggled to find learning across a multitude of access points at the South American professional services firm. After learning leaders implemented Degreed to help, they needed to promote it to 4,000 people in 25 offices across nine states.
Launch activities combined an online virtual event and in-person road shows featuring senior leadership, who helped to demo and champion the platform. The result? Employees rated thousands of skills. Nearly 75% of employees are active Degreed users, and nearly 400 new hires engaged with a fresh new-hire experience.
Business Performance Program of the Year
Visionary Awards in this category are presented for outstanding achievements in the use of Degreed to improve organizational strategic business outcomes.
Gold: TD Bank
TD Bank created its FutureNow program to help 95,000 employees build capabilities aligned to key business priorities, providing enterprise-wide learning content focused on the skills most important to the business through multiple modalities including Degreed. Learning leaders promoted the program through a variety of channels including people, managers, emails, lines of business, HR, and L&D.
Judges were impressed with the bank’s build-once-for-many approach to developing and deploying learning resources, which enabled the company to create a more scalable and cost-effective way to upskill its 103,000 employees.
“There is an enterprise learning framework that was designed that underpins the strategy for FutureNow,” said Dave Woeller, Associate Vice President, Human Resources, Enterprise Design and Digital Learning Technology.
Among the pillars of that framework, “Any topic or content that we build has to have relevance across the 25 business lines that we support and has to be aligned to bank strategy ,” Woeller said.
“The FutureNow program has enabled us to actually start living and breathing the build-once-deploy-for-many philosophy, which has increased our efficiency, making sure our resources are tacked to the highest-priority work, and then also reduce content duplication and confusion for our learners.”
Silver: KPMG Global
Learning Leaders at the worldwide professional services organization empowered employees by providing them access to lifelong learning opportunities valued by leadership.
KPMG Global enabled access to globally developed learning pathways and plans that ensure expert guidance reaches local member firms. As a result, more than one million learning items were completed in 2023. In addition, more than 300,000 skills were rated by over 100,000 employees, with an average of 72% of users returning to the platform across 95 countries.
Bronze: Allianz
Headquartered in Munich, Germany, the financial services provider has reached 17,000 leaders through its lead learning program. The goal is to equip these employees with world class skills—in technology, change management, inclusive leadership, wellbeing-coaching and more—to help them navigate a constantly changing, digitized world.
In 2023, Allianz tracked attendee progress and found participants collectively clocked 1.2 million hours of learning.
Learning Innovator of the Year
Visionary Awards in this category are presented for outstanding achievements in using the Degreed platform in innovative, creative ways including specific learning initiatives, diversity and inclusion projects, skill development strategies, and manager or leadership learning programs.
Gold: Exness
The Cyprus-based fintech company significantly transformed its approach to employee development following the company’s introduction of the Degreed LXP. A year after implementation, Exness pivoted to a data-driven model for training that aligns with the company’s diverse employees’ professional aspirations.
Using skill matrices to map skills and proficiency levels, Exness effectively inventories staff competencies and then tailors training services to plug gaps and meet organizational objectives.
“Two years ago, Exness experienced significant growth. They almost doubled our headcount,” said Dmitry Shevchenko, Online L&D Manager. “As a result of this very fast organic growth, our structure became quite complex.”
Leaders realized a significant number of people in different positions with different titles were performing similar jobs and functions. “It was the first issue we wanted to address,” Shevchenko said. “Another thing was our approach to decision making in terms of L&D. It was quite classic and it was a reactive one. We wanted to change it, to make our decisions more meaningful.”
Silver: Bell Canada
At the nationwide telecommunications company, a virtual employee university provides opportunities for people to develop the skills needed to redirect their careers into new management roles. Dubbed Bell U Academy, it helps employees obtain professional designations and qualifications in high-demand, technology-focused areas. The Degreed platform is a key enabler of the program.
After three years and with nearly 500 graduates, the program has increased female representation in high tech at Bell, improved retention and engagement, ensured high performance, promoted career mobility, and saved the company money on recruitment. Return on investment is estimated at an impressive $18 million.
Bronze: CI&T
The corporate CI&T University sought to strengthen CI&T as a skill-based organization where individual competencies are the foundation for collective growth and ongoing success. To accomplish this, learning leaders created communities of expertise with a focus on learning, training, and innovation, generating new vertical business offers. Learning leaders also identified skill gaps and provided clarity to managers for upskilling. Along the way, they’ve used the Degreed platform to help employees focus on cutting edge topics like generative AI. Degreed has become the center of the company’s skill development initiatives.
David Blake Learner of the Year
This award, named for the Degreed co-founder and CEO, recognizes outstanding achievements made by an individual in the use of Degreed to grow skills and advance a career.
Winner: Brandon Konecny, Checkr
Using an annual personal learning stipend managed through Degreed Content Marketplace, Brandon Konecny, a senior commercial and regulatory counsel, upskilled in compliance and advertising law and purchased a number of books that support his ongoing development. The company’s flexible approach to providing learning opportunities afforded Brandon autonomy over his learning. As a result, he’s applied new skills in his current role at Checkr, taking on more responsibilities.
Ready to learn more?
Watch the full 2024 Degreed Visionary Awards ceremony.
And watch A Visionary View: Ask Award-Winners Anything, a conversation with Visionary Awards Gold winners at Degreed LENS 2024, now available on demand.
