Bright Horizons Convenes Learning Advisory Board to Discuss Top Priorities in Skills Development

June 09, 2021 at 06:50 AM EDT

Bright Horizons EdAssist Solutions today announces its Learning Advisory Board, comprised of senior learning executives from some of the country’s top employers, including Allstate, Bank of America, CVS, Liberty Mutual, Lockheed Martin, Merck, The Home Depot, USAA and Wells Fargo.

The events of the past year have demonstrated the importance of employee upskilling and reskilling, and have reaffirmed that employers must work towards a more inclusive environment that maximizes the potential of all employees. The Learning Advisory Board is a working group designed to share and discuss data and insights on workforce skill gaps, education investments, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and preparing for the future of work. Bright Horizons EdAssist Solutions will use this input to inform new workforce education, student loan, and talent management strategies for clients.

“The country is facing a massive challenge right now with getting Americans back to work and improving their prospective job opportunities,” said Patrick Donovan, Senior Vice President of Emerging Services at Bright Horizons. “We established the Learning Advisory Board to bring together some of the top employers throughout the country to address this by collaborating and ideating the best ways to enhance talent management and workforce development efforts like reskilling and upskilling.”

Members of the Learning Advisory Board are coming together to discuss important topics such as:

Workforce education strategies: A workforce education program can help transform an organization when it is tailored to specific business needs and can be tracked in terms of quantifying recruiting, retention, promotion and return on investment.
Talent marketplaces: It is more cost-efficient to train current employees for new roles than to hire externally. More and more companies are looking to create “Enterprise Athletes, “or employees who are well-skilled in diverse areas of the business and primed for horizontal mobility across the organization.
Skills and competency mapping: Understanding the skills and competencies necessary for each role within an organization is an important step towards developing learning strategies and career mapping, but many HR leaders have found this effort overwhelming and do not know where to start.
Personalized learning experiences: The most successful learning experiences are those that are tailored to each role and each individual. This may include on-the-job learning experiences where skills development is incorporated into the flow of work.
Engagement and support: Employers must provide the right supports to help their employees succeed in an education program. Some best practices in engaging employees include removing financial barriers, providing coaching and advising, and delivering wrap-around services like laptops and child care support.

“The corporate learning market is exploding with new ideas, technologies, and solutions,” says Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst, who facilitated the first meeting of the Bright Horizons Learning Advisory Board in May. “I am thrilled to be a part of this working group as we collaborate on new solutions for career development, reskilling, and ways to make learning a critical part of corporate culture.”

“Employees work in a world of uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity,” said Tom Spahr, Human Resources Vice President, Talent Management and Development, The Home Depot. “We must find new ways to give them the knowledge and skills required to succeed. Our solutions should be simple, relevant to the moment of need, and most importantly, effective.”

About Bright Horizons

Bright Horizons^® is a leading global provider of high-quality child care and early education, back-up care, and workplace education services. For more than 30 years, we have partnered with employers to support workforces by providing services that help working families and employees thrive personally and professionally. We operate approximately 1,000 child care centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and India, and serve more than 1,300 of the world’s leading organizations. Bright Horizons’ child care centers, back-up child and elder care, and workforce education programs, including tuition program management, education advising, and student loan repayment, help employees succeed at each life and career stage. For more information, go to www.brighthorizons.com.