Institute For The Future

Build Your Employer Work + Learn Portfolio Like Your Stock Portfolio

Employer Work + Learn Portfolio: Invest in Internships to Cooperative Education to Apprenticeships to More
credit: Online Trading Academy

Parminder K. Jassal, Work + Learn Futures Group, Institute for the Future

Holly Zanville, Senior Adviser for Credentialing and Workforce Development, Lumina Foundation

An employer work + learn portfolio is a new idea that riffs off of stock portfolios. Stock portfolios help us plan and invest in our personal finances. Investors agree it’s best to start investing early in life because the magic of compound interest and regular balancing means that a small investment early on will significantly outperform a large amount invested later. Similarly, through a work + learn portfolio, connecting learning and working at a young age for learners and workers reduces over-investing in education and helps companies achieve desired outcomes to meet their talent development and business goals.  It doesn’t matter if the business has 10, hundreds, or thousands of employees.

Traditionally, most employer work + learn portfolios contain work + learn models that range from internships to apprenticeships to cooperative education, and fall into three silos: philanthropy, corporate social responsibility/citizenship, and/or diversity and inclusion. Sometimes, employers transcend these silos and offer work + learn opportunities that directly contribute to their bottom line like part-time and full-time jobs that include learning as a significant component.  The idea of the work + learn portfolio is to consolidate these work + learn models into one portfolio that is regularly invested in and balanced to meet business objectives. Where the organization is in the business life cycle determines whether to invest heavily in specific work + learn models akin to stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

In a company where future talent is critical, for example, it may be valuable to invest in offering internships and cooperative education. For a business where talent is needed now, it may be better to offer part-time jobs or apprenticeships that can be classified as “on the job training.” For a third company, it may work best to institute working learner-friendly policies such as safeguarding learning time, or offering tutorial or career guidance services to allow staff to keep up with changes. A fourth company may be prioritizing diversity; in this case a deeper partnership with community organizations and schools, or a corporate college/university that taps into diverse populations for recruitment may be the better fit. 

The work + learn portfolio approach is already being tried by some companies. Here are two examples.

• Chevron Engineering Academy: Chevron Corporation has always maintained a work + learn portfolio of summer internships, semester internships, cooperative education, and apprenticeships. A new work + learn model—the Chevron Engineering Academy—was recently added to Chevron’s work + learn portfolio.

 

At Chevron, we need diverse problem solvers. The Texas A&M Chevron Engineering Academies allow us to build the diversity of the talent pool by partnering with community colleges with large populations of minority and first-generation college students. With dedicated advising, scholarships, and work opportunities, we have services in place to reduce the top three barriers students usually have to solve on their own.   —Bill Hunter, University Affairs Manager, Chevron

The Chevron Engineering Academy recognizes that a diverse workforce with diverse skills are needed to succeed in the global marketplace. The Texas A&M Chevron Engineering Academies offer students interested in pursuing an engineering degree at Texas A&M University the opportunity to co-enroll at select community colleges in Texas and the College of Engineering at Texas A&M. Academy students are Texas A&M engineering students from the start and take 12 credit hours per semester saving as much as $3,500 a semester compared to a student taking all 12 credit hours at the university. This amounts to a savings of approximately $14,000 for students who remain in the program for the full two years at the community college. Upon successful completion of the Academy at the community college, students are admitted into one of the 18 college of engineering majors of their choice at Texas A&M. The remainder of the bachelor’s degree coursework is completed at the university. Dedicated Academy advisors assist students from day one in making the transition to the Texas A&M campus and into engineering school. Scholarships are set aside to lessen costs once the student transfers. While at the community college, students have access to career services from Texas A&M to help students obtain part-time jobs, full-time jobs, research, cooperative education, apprenticeships, and project contracts creating a customized learn + work path for the student. 

At test IO, we have a unique work + learn model that involves thousands of testers. Whether the tester simply wants to gain real-life experience while in school, switch careers and learn while being paid on the side, or are already working elsewhere yet want to learn the latest technologies while getting paid, testers work for pay and learn from senior testers.   —Phillip Soffer, CEO, test IO

• Greenhorn Tester Academy: At test IO a software testing and quality assurance service, a work + learn model contributes to the company's business model. test IO provides crowdtesting, which means that software testing is performed by a network of freelance testers, some of whom begin without formal testing experience. Testers are paid by the severity of the bug captured, and for replicating bugs in different environments. When a candidate applies to become a tester, a communications test is made available online. If the applicant passes, he/she is welcomed into the Greenhorn Academy where the new "greenhorn tester" works with experienced team leaders to learn the business of capturing and formally describing bugs. No qualifications except for excellent communication skills are needed, so anyone from their home computer or elsewhere can go bug hunting and submit captured bugs for cash paid out monthly.

At different points of the business life cycle, an employer’s work + learn portfolio offerings may vary. Regardless of the forces that drive the type of work + learn options the employer invests in, the work + learn portfolio must be reviewed against goals regularly and re-balanced to continue meeting goals.

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More information about Work + Learn Portfolios and Models:

• The National Network of Business and Industry Association’s Work-and-Learn in Action Guidebook 
• The New Learning Economy and The Rise Of The Working Learner

More Information about IFTF's Work + Learn Futures:

• Contact Parminder Jassal at [email protected]