Nicole Helmer recalls starting work at SAP in data and decision science in 2017, when a colleague urged her department to act quickly to claim a Pluralsight license before the end of the day. Pluralsight’s content had quickly gained popularity since it became available at SAP two years prior, and the competition for access was intense.
“That was the nature of how people thought about this. ‘Oh, quick! We need to make sure that we’re among the chosen few that can access this material!’” she says. SAP began engaging with Pluralsight in 2015 to upskill employees ahead of its transition to cloud-native architecture.
“The initial need from SAP was to focus on cloud migration and to foster a mature cloud strategy,” says Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. “Our relationship started because SAP identified that their technologists needed to get back to basics with fundamental tech skills in order to take on their massive cloud transformation project and Pluralsight was selected as the partner to do that. But our partnership didn’t stop at cloud.”
SAP leaders knew they would also need to train their global workforce on technical topics related to the product change. “We needed all those employees to simultaneously ramp up on all of that knowledge,” Helmer says.
In 2018, SAP’s workforce completed fewer than 3,000 courses. Just four years later in 2022, they saw almost 28,000 course competitions. Collectively, SAP employees have already learned for 75,000 hours on Pluralsight this year.
Now, Helmer is head of customer success and development learning at SAP, and the continued enthusiasm for Pluralsight’s content subsequently led SAP to open access to its entire development department, with plans to further expand in 2024.
A platform for skill-building
While learning and development at SAP must train its staff to be proficient in its own platform, the company also recognizes that there are other crucial skills that employees will need for the long term. “We need to be able to have a workforce that is consistently building the next skill and the next skill and the next skill. Upskilling becomes this real strategic imperative to make sure that you are keeping pace with the change in the market,” Helmer explains.
As new technologies continue to emerge, skills for using and understanding the technology continue to change. “Pluralsight fills a huge gap that we would otherwise have,” Helmer says. SAP employees do have mandatory company-specific training, and the Pluralsight content is not required.
“What I’m most interested in is more of this outcome-driven approach,” Helmer says. She wants to make sure SAP employees know the relevant information and are able to upskill where needed.
This knowledge can come from many places outside of a corporate L&D department, such as books, YouTube videos or even a neighbor. But Pluralsight centralizes the relevant upskilling information in one easily accessible place. “Using a data-driven, programmatic approach to tech upskilling has allowed SAP to achieve their learning objectives time and time again,” Skonnard says.
Forward-thinking skills, now
Intentionally upskilling employees helps ensure the future of the organization as well as its individual learners.
“SAP uses Pluralsight to keep pace with the ever-changing technology landscape and they have been immensely successful in creating a culture of learning in their organization because they have truly invested in the learning journeys of their employees,” Skonnard says.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023, employers expect 44 percent of workers’ skills will face disruption over the next five years, but only half of workers have adequate training.
And technologists are actually asking for this guidance and investment in their skills. According to a Pluralsight study of 1,200 technologists, tech leaders, and HR and L&D directors, 47 percent of technologists are considering leaving their current roles to grow their skills.
But upskilling can be a retention tool, helping employees develop those desired skills and then get promoted. In fact, 60 percent of HR directors use data from upskilling programs to identify potential candidates. But choosing the right skills can be difficult. According to the same Pluralsight study, 30 percent of technologists don’t know where to focus their skill development.
“Determining specific upskilling needs is the crux of every learning leader’s job,” Helmer says. “The purpose of the corporate function of learning is to determine what the business needs in terms of upskilling.”
Analyzing and filling the gaps
Historically, Helmer has seen companies simply asking leaders across their organization about the skills their team needs for the future, hoping the leader is thinking of everything at the right moment, including strategy and workforce composition. “I think that’s a lot to ask of a human being who also has many other things on their mind,” she says.
Instead, SAP has been intentional with upskilling. Helmer’s team conducted a gap analysis, taking stock of skills trending in the market, comparing them with where SAP plans to compete strategically and the proficiency level of its current staff. And this reaches across many corners of the organization.
For example, the talent attraction team takes Pluralsight courses to best conceptually understand the skills that SAP needs to hire for. Helmer says this training will yield better candidates through improvements in screening questions and better understanding the needs of hiring managers. While every hire might not have 100 percent of the skills needed, the talent attraction team will be able to help identify the extent of training the new hire will need, she says.
Helmer personally takes Pluralsight courses to better equip herself when explaining complex topics simply, which helps her teach others and engage in conversations more intelligently.
When identifying the content that SAP wanted to prioritize with Pluralsight, Helmer says the two parties acted strategically in creating a market standard of foundational skills the SAP employees need to understand. SAP asked Pluralsight to comb its catalog to curate courses that best match SAP’s needs. After SAP conducted quality checks with internal experts, the upskilling proceeded.
Catalogue of courses
Overall, the Pluralsight platform provides a motivating journey for users, Helmer says. Pluralsight’s catalog includes courses called “The Big Picture,” which cover various topics conceptually to help users have a broad understanding.
The courses feature modular videos organized into chapters that come together to educate the user on the topic, testing their comprehension with knowledge checks throughout. One tool called Skill IQ starts with a 20-minute adaptive test that ranks the user in the market based on their knowledge. The questions adapt to the skill level of the test taker, adjusting to easier and harder questions throughout the exam.
Helmer says the ranking provides a level of gamification that is “weirdly motivating to people.” From there, Pluralsight provides specific content that will improve the user’s individual skills.
The next chapter
SAP plans to continue expanding its Pluralsight licenses and getting creative in garnering interest.
Helmer shares an idea she attributes to Pluralsight: an initiative “Beat the Boss,” where leaders share their Skill IQ rankings with their teams. This will showcase leaders who are engaging with the learning content, as well as foster some friendly competition and motivation to improve skills through Pluralsight.
Already, leaders are curating channels of Pluralsight content and sharing them with teams, drawing people in to engage with training.
With a freshly renewed contract, SAP plans to increase the number of licenses to accommodate content that reaches more broadly throughout the global organization. The partnership with Pluralsight remains strong and will continue to grow, in part because “we have aligned incentives,” Helmer says.
