As part of The cloud collaboration report from The EIU, this case study focuses on how TELUS has driven culture change with cloud-based tools.

1. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
TELUS is a Canadian telecommunications company that provides nearly 14 million connections to wireless,
Internet, TV and wireline customers, generating $12bn in annual revenue. Faced with intense competition
within a highly regulated environment, the company regards its strong corporate culture as a critical
competitive advantage. A key part of nurturing that culture was creating an integrated cloud-based learning
and collaboration environment to engage the company’s 42,700 employees around the globe.
Leveraging human capital
After experimenting for a few years with a variety of digital tools to promote employee conversations,
TELUS leaders wanted to create a better “2.0” user experience. “We looked at what the user experience was
like for the 40,000-plus team members from a perspective of whether or not it was creating good
innovations, and the answer was ‘we can do better’,” says Dan Pontefract, a TELUS executive with the novel
title of Chief Envisioner. “So it was an easy decision to adjudicate several different products to create a
suite that you might call ‘human capital performance’.” TELUS increased employee engagement levels to
85% last year from 57% in 2010. The company wanted a comprehensive platform that encompassed
multiple functions, including collaboration, learning, performance and career development.
Making knowledge permeate
At TELUS, learning is owned by the business, with HR responsible for various policies, processes, standards
and guidelines. For example, the company’s collaboration platform is used heavily by the call centre
organisation to build knowledge and share information among various teams. That particular team created
a community called “Service 2.0”, where team members engage with one another to “transform the TELUS
service model to focus on customer outcomes rather than individual transactions”. The community consists
of call centre agents, team managers, project managers and business analysts who discuss tools,
procedures, new ideas and options that support the Service 2.0 initiative. Recognition of this connection
between collaboration, learning and behaviour is at the core of the company’s approach to improving
customer service—something it refers to as ”Customers First”.
Evaluating options from different perspectives
The shared services teams within TELUS—IT, Finance and HR—worked together to evaluate each alternative
tool to determine if it met stakeholder needs, distilling the choice down to a handful of contenders. The
decision to use cloud was straightforward, Mr Pontefract says, given that the company’s operations are
built on advanced technologies: “A growing part of our external strategy is data centres and external
storage via those data centres. So it wasn’t a difficult conversation in terms of to be on the cloud or not.”
TELUS
Collaboration meets learning: Driving culture change with
cloud-based tools
A case study from
The Economist
Intelligence Unit
Case study
TELUS increased
employee
engagement levels
to 85% last year
from 57% in 2010

2. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
Case study
A robust, integrated set of tools
TELUS launched its new cloud-based suite in April 2013, integrating collaboration and learning platforms
from a single provider and then adding more modules like performance, succession and analytics. “We
believe that learning is equal parts formal, informal and social,” says Mr Pontefract, explaining that the
new cloud-based collaboration platform pulled together multiple components—including some existing
components already in the cloud—to create an integrated solution.
Tight integration of collaboration and learning is a key part of the design. To start with, formal face-to-face
learning events have been shortened and “bookended” with collaborative content such as discussions,
commentary and videos before and after each event to solidify learning objectives and outcomes. But the
broader learning process is ongoing, Mr Pontefract says: “We know that our teams and leaders are using
[the tool] to have a general discourse about ideas, or new product launches or customer support issues. So
it becomes a conversation just like you’d find in the cafeteria, or the hall or during a barbecue.”
Nothing succeeds like culture change
A rapid roll-out of the new cloud platform quickly generated the critical mass needed for real culture
change. The adoption rate was 75% within three months, soon rising close to 100%. The company doesn’t
worry about the difference between “lurkers” and power users, Mr Pontefract says, “because not everyone
is an extrovert and we believe that lurking is learning, as long as they’re accessing content”.
Beyond learning, employee engagement, as measured by biannual third-party surveys, is the company’s
overriding internal objective; the firm’s leaders are satisfied that an engaged workforce drives
improvements in all of traditional enterprise KPIs. Mr Pontefract reflects, “If you treat your people well and
invest in them, as opposed to just saying so in the annual reports—if you change the culture—that gives
you a competitive advantage in the end, and it easily can put your ‘Customers First’.”
Mr Pontefract adds that as people began using the tools they became more collaborative: “Because they
were free to debate and contribute, everyone became a leader. Today our employee engagement is at
85%—we are a collaborative, communicative organisation, and [our cloud platform] is another extension
of that.”
“if you change the
culture—that gives
you a competitive
advantage in the
end, and it easily
can put your
‘Customers First’.”
Dan Pontefract,
TELUS Chief Envisioner