Case study
Industry
International technology and management consulting firm
Company HQ
Dallas, TX, USA
Number of Employees
650+
How Pariveda Solutions Powers a Grassroots Learning Culture
Udemy driving business outcomes
Case study details
As a 650-person consulting company, Pariveda helps companies creatively solve complex business, technology and organizational challenges. This holistic approach with clients mirrors Pariveda’s internal talent development strategy. By “growing people towards their highest potential,” Pariveda powers successful outcomes for their employees, their customers and ultimately, their communities. “That’s really our purpose as a company, based on the vision of our founder and CEO,” says Ted Cogan, Talent Development Projects Lead.
Scale consistent career development
Pariveda strives to balance the growing demands of consulting work with consistent employee development. Each consulting project requires different skill sets, which ideally should match the assigned employee’s growth trajectory. “We want to balance our clients’ outcomes with our employees’ growth. So even if an employee has been on a project long-term, we continuously assess how well the role suits the employee’s skill level. In some cases, if the employee has outgrown the project at hand, we might encourage employees to move to a different project and challenge themselves while still providing the best experience possible to our clients.
Additionally, Pariveda recognizes the need for career pathing to keep employees engaged as the company grows. Having clear, consistent expectations empowers employees to architect their future, no matter how new or tenured they are.
Lastly, Pariveda wants to provide different options for career growth. “We don’t just want to see specialization because we know that can limit our employees’ career options,” says Ted. “We want more of a well-rounded development model so that employees choose their own career journeys.”
Talent Development Projects Lead
Create a path for employee growth
To guide these career journeys, Pariveda presents employees with five role personas to choose from: Professional, Architect, Leader, Player/Coach, Advisor. To break down these personas, Pariveda’s team offers level-based expectations. “Your level doesn’t dictate the work you do,” Ted says. “It just clarifies expectations so that you can define success as you grow.”
Having evaluated platforms like Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning, Pariveda’s talent team chose Udemy Business. Not only did they love Udemy’s variety of content, but they appreciated the breadth of courses for mastery of critical topics. With the flexibility of Udemy’s mobile apps, employees could master these topics from anywhere, anytime. Best of all, the simplicity of the UX provided an elegant learner experience, encouraging the team to embed Udemy into each employee’s Pariveda journey.
“We were able to offer Udemy org-wide, thanks to its variety and affordability. As a result of our efforts, 100% of our employees have watched content,” says Ted. “And if we ever see low adoption, we won’t be mad at our employees for not using Udemy; we’ll be mad at ourselves for not providing enough infrastructure to power employee autonomy.
How Udemy Powers “The Fin Triangle”
As a strategic learning team, Pariveda knows that independent learning requires infrastructure and support. For this reason, they reinforce personal accountability with coaching, using their “Fin Triangle” approach:
- The Fin (individual) is responsible for their own career and growth; they manage their projects while working toward set expectations. On-the-job learning drives this blended approach, and that’s where Udemy fits in. Udemy helps individuals learn in the flow of work while also exploring new skills or opportunities to fulfill their goals.
- The Project Supervisor (manager) is responsible for helping the individual balance personal development with customer deliverables and project excellence. Managers leverage Udemy by recommending courses to their team, which supports current employees and streamlines ramp-up time for new hires. It also fosters team culture, as employees grow together by taking a course collectively.
- The Mentor empowers the individual by brainstorming on challenges, identifying opportunities and collecting quarterly feedback on the mentee’s performance. By providing an outside perspective on the individual’s work, the Mentor can help create new and unexpected spaces for growth. Mentors leverage Udemy to recommend supplemental courses that will help the individual achieve their current and future goals. Udemy also allows Mentors to grow personally by staying fresh on different approaches to coaching their Mentees.
Talent Development Projects Lead
Embedding learning in the flow of work
Originally, Pariveda’s team wanted to address the company’s technical needs, like learning AWS. With Udemy’s variety, however, they were able to support broader needs, like DEI, manager competency and more. “This type of holistic focus really reflects our culture,” says Ted. With this variety, Pariveda employees can answer immediate questions for projects. Some employees choose to learn new skills (like new programming languages) to become more efficient. And some people learn for “passion,” driving engagement on a personal level.
But this team didn’t stop at offering existing content. After promoting Udemy courses, they used Udemy’s Course Builder to ensure global, streamlined access to training programs. “
Udemy’s Course Builder helps us centralize our content in a permanent place with better UX,” says Ted. To date, Pariveda has created 46 custom courses to power global development at the company. Not only does this improve accessibility for existing employees, but it also streamlines the onboarding process so that new hires feel supported from their first day at the company.
Pariveda assigns custom content to new employees, allowing for a self-study period. Then, they socialize the experience by scheduling live onboarding sessions spanning different time zones. This pre-work method helps increase community, minimize Zoom fatigue and shorten onboarding from four days to three days. “As my colleague Shelby says, we’re ‘solving for the timing complexities of the virtual world,’” Ted says. “We’re spending more time on live collaboration instead of basic concepts.”
Development for the whole person
On a personal level, employees are encouraged to learn business topics as much as personal development topics, which means they’re just as likely to learn programming as piano. “We see employees as whole people, so Udemy’s variety is a big value proposition,” says Ted.
In fact, when the top five learners are recognized across the company every month, every month’s top learner group is different. Ted’s team prides themselves on this.
Considering global development trends, Pariveda’s team is aligned with the pace of business. Effective learning and development isn’t just about vertical and technical skills, but about supporting the whole employee.
On an organizational level, Pariveda’s Customer Success Manager at Udemy has helped them constantly identify new opportunities. Whether it’s onboarding, functional training or evergreen programs like DEI, Pariveda has worked with Udemy to drive diverse learning outcomes for employees.
Building the business case for learning
As a strategic learning team, Pariveda knows that adoption data isn’t enough to measure learning impact.
From a sentiment perspective, they track engagement survey data and referral rates to gauge employee happiness. From a business impact perspective, Pariveda knows that it’s critical to align learning with business priorities. The connection between learning and business success provides the necessary context for employees to become autonomous learners.
“Our Udemy Customer Success Partner built a transparent relationship with us from the beginning,” says Ted. “She deeply understands our priorities, which helps us measure the impact of our efforts on what is most important.
“Anecdotally, we’ve seen a positive correlation between the use of Udemy and the successful achievement of development plan goals. We also are seeing a strong relationship between Udemy usage and the achievement of AWS certifications through our Rally Point program.”
With their Udemy Success Partner’s involvement, Pariveda shares these insights with their executive team, consistently reinforcing the business case for learning.
Talent Development Projects Lead
Preparing for the Future at Pariveda
As they define their vision for the future, Pariveda sees Udemy as a continuous key to their talent vault. Using Udemy, they’ve powered career development in a more transparent and equitable way as they scale. In a virtual world, they’ve centralized learning globally and made training more social, particularly for new hires. Using different mechanisms, they’ve quantified the returns of their efforts on Pariveda’s bottom line.
Ultimately, they’ve built the infrastructure necessary for autonomous learning, positioning themselves as a consultative and agile team with measurable business impact at their organization. We can’t wait to see what’s next for this innovative, insights-driven company!
Talent Development Projects Lead