AT&T Case Study - How it improved learning

1. What specific changes would make Workforce 2020 more effective?
Focus on Internal Training: Though AT&T was among the early adopters of web based
learning, it truly missed out on one of the core elements of learning – peer to peer learning.
Developing a “Train the Trainer” program would have helped them to cut the costs significantly
as well as helping them retain the learning within organization for a longer amount of time
Learning BasedKPI: As mentioned in Page 4 of the case, AT&T focused a lot on
benchmarking performance with skillset, it never linked KPIs to learning earned during the
period. Employees were rewarded for performance, but KPI and payouts based on training hours
spent outside office hours would have helped them enhance effectiveness of the training
Focus on Intellectual Property: The case does not mention the intellectual properties generated
out of these programs. As AT&T is a tech behemoth, IP could have played a significant role in
accelerating the competitive advantage. A KPI should have been drawn which linked directly to
the process improvements or patents file due to these re training exercise
The Forgetting Curve: Distinct Scholar Ebbinghaus mentioned about the forgetting curve.
Though these trainings were imparted to retrain personnel, it would be great to find how these
employees were able to use these newly acquired skillset into solving real business issues
Cost Burden was tremendous: The cost burden of the re training program ran upto a Billion
Dollars. Specifically it came around a time when company planned its acquisition of Warner
Bros and eventually laying off 23000 jobs. A longer horizon could have saved many jobs along
with focus on core technologies which were slowly getting redundant
Better Communication: The goals and the intended outputs of these training program could
have been articulated better. In the case we find in Page 10 makes us believe that the benefits
were not communicated properly by management as were seen as a “way to greedy executive
plan to cut headcount in fluffy, feel good employment pseudopolicies”. It also resulted in lot of
confusion as evident in Page 8 of the case
Too much focus on Online Delivery: The online content delivery platforms were in really in
nascent stage in 2012. They should have focused on a blended learning process rather than

2. forcing courses from Coursera and Udacity for tech Luddites who otherwise would have been
interested to learn from the opportunity
Lack of Focus for Union Workers: Some union workers had complained regarding the some
programs were only available to managers and they are not available across “all strata of the
company”. The design thus could have been more inclusive in nature