Toppling Silos: How L&D and Talent Acquisition Can Team Up for a Strong Talent Strategy

Education benefits can be an integral part of your organization’s talent strategy. But when it comes to maximizing the impact of their benefits, too many organizations overlook opportunities that are close at hand – in fact, sometimes they’re just down the hall. 

In many organizations, the talent acquisition team and the learning and development team aren’t on the same page. Talent acquisition is working with internal hiring managers, reviewing resumes, setting up interviews and facilitating the hiring process. The L&D team is creating training programs, working with external learning partners and exploring new ways to upskill existing staff. One group needs talent, and the other is expanding it.

How can learning and development and talent acquisition teams collaborate on a smarter talent strategy?

This is where education benefits – and a valued education benefits management partner – can make a real difference, by helping to connect these talent pipelines, align priorities and synthesize differing business goals.

To find out what it can look like when these two functions are truly aligned on an overall talent strategy – and how a strong education benefits management partner like Workforce Edge can help make it happen – we spoke with Mackenzie Tallman, enterprise partner director at Strategic Education, Inc. 

Tallman works with many of Workforce Edge’s biggest employer partners, and she’s seen the full range of talent strategy, from companies that are aligned from top to bottom to companies that could be doing much more to streamline and connect their HR talent functions. And she has some real-life insights on the value that a talent strategy partner can provide.

Where to start? Find a partner who offers real education value

To get the most from your education program, find a partner that can draw on a real-world education background. With a partner like Workforce Edge, part of Strategic Education, Inc., you can connect to valuable expertise and insight informed by broad educational experience. According to Tallman, such a partner can “ask higher-level questions about what the organization as a whole is trying to solve and then come to the table and provide valid solutions.” When your benefits management partner is also an educator, “they can be more creative – they can brainstorm other possibilities,” she says. 

Using education benefits as a talent strategy

One of the companies Tallman supports, a national retailer, is a timely example of this creative thinking. The company saw a post-COVID shift toward more part-time workers. This pushed them to explore education benefits beyond their longstanding tuition reimbursement program, which was intended for full-time employees. 

With input from Workforce Edge, they allotted a portion of their education budget to reimbursement and a portion to the Strayer University Degrees@Work program, which provides employees with access to courses and degrees at no out-of-pocket cost, all through a straightforward, fixed-fee structure. For this organization, Tallman explains, there was a clear benefit in having a partner who could help conceive this two-tiered strategy and also deliver on it: “With Workforce Edge, they can have both their reimbursement students and their Degrees@Work students all on one platform, which is really useful.”

Involve all decision-makers in talent strategy development

Tallman has seen the siloed nature of HR functions firsthand. In her experience, it’s not unusual for the L&D department to report up to one leader and the talent acquisition team to report to another – each with different direction and goals. Which is why it’s so important to have all the key players involved in any initial talent strategy discussions. 

“An education partner with real strategic insight and experience can help bring key players together – especially if you start the conversation early.”

Tallman gives an example: “This can help the talent acquisition team zoom out a little bit and say, ‘Did you realize your L&D partners are generating a lot of talent – they’re upskilling employees. Wouldn't it be great if you could use that as a talent pool to fill your roles?’” This can lead to deeper discussions of your organization’s talent strategy. 

Redefine talent strategy goals

With both talent acquisition and L&D at the table, it’s an opportunity to clarify new talent development goals. Tallman works with some companies that have created specific KPIs around education-benefit-driven hiring. 

“We’re seeing some organizations say, ‘As a company, we really believe that we can upskill people and invest in talent.’ So they may commit to filling, say, 25 openings with people who are engaged in their education programs. Once you start having goals like that, it changes the behaviors. It teaches hiring managers to hire for potential, not just the role that they're filling today.”  

Align key skills to your organization’s unique roles

When you rethink your talent strategy goals, it’s important to drill down to specific roles, and this is where a partner like Workforce Edge can offer game-changing insight. Most companies know which roles they need to fill in the future. But finding workers with the right skills is no small task. 

Our team can support your efforts to: 

1. Identify the key skills required for critical jobs
2. Build custom learning pathways to upskill current employees and
3. Create a reliable talent pipeline while potentially cutting acquisition and hiring costs

This gives L&D better direction to support talent mobility and career development internally while giving talent acquisition teams a clearer picture of the type of candidates to pursue.

Identify and measure key data to prove ROI

New goals and new roles require new data for measurement. Organizations need data to track program outcomes and quantify the ROI. The benefits management partner needs data, too – on employees, roles, reimbursement thresholds, and much more. With all parties working together from the start, they can each have a voice in what kind of data is important and share this information with each other to identify exactly what will best support overarching talent development goals.

The access to data also matters. Thanks to the real-time reporting available in Workforce Edge, for example, an organization can always stay on top of its education benefit budget. Talent acquisition and L&D departments can monitor usage, spending, approvals, and ROI in an accurate dashboard. They can then use this data to make important decisions about organization-wide hiring, talent pipelines, and more.  

Explore benefit policy options

Revisiting your benefits policy can unearth potential solutions to budgetary pressures, workforce trends, and more – and this is where a savvy education partner can be especially valuable. 

“Organizations wonder, ‘what levers can I pull?’ Our Workforce Edge team can say, ‘You can change this in your policy, you can cap enrollment, you can narrow down your programs, etc.’ There are lots of things we can suggest.” 

In the past, many organizations assumed education benefits were an all-or-nothing proposition: you either offered a common benefit to all your employees, or you didn’t. But with input from a benefits management partner, you can elevate your policy with a tailored approach. “How do you segment your population and segment your programs?” Tallman says. “There are many ways to be more strategic about what pathways are available.” 

How to break down silos and build strong talent pipelines

To truly unlock the full potential of employee education benefits, organizations must break down silos between talent acquisition and learning & development. When these teams collaborate – supported by a strategic education partner – they can align goals, share data, and build smarter, more agile talent pipelines. 

Are you ready to connect the dots between hiring and upskilling? Contact Workforce Edge to see how education benefits can become a cornerstone of your talent strategy.