Case study
Industry
Non-Profit
Company HQ
New York, United States
Number of Employees
320+
Office Locations
9 Locations Across U.S.
UNICEF USA Creates a Culture of Asynchronous, Remote Learning with Udemy Business
Udemy driving business outcomes
Case study details
With around 320 hybrid and remote employees, UNICEF USA wanted to improve its learning and development (L&D) resources to create more opportunities for asynchronous and remote learning. The organization also wanted to meet the new development needs of its people as they adapt to remote working.
Using Udemy Business, UNICEF USA offers on-demand learning resources to all its employees for a diverse range of business and personal skills. The company uses the platform to encourage a learning culture throughout the organization and help people upskill in their roles.
New ways of working demand a new approach to L&D
UNICEF USA has a workforce made up of around 320 hybrid and remote staff who occupy outward-facing roles in areas such as policy, advocacy and volunteering, as well as inward-facing roles like finance and human resources. With such a diverse employee base, the company has to meet a wide range of learning needs.
Previously, UNICEF USA’s learning and development (L&D) offerings were only delivered to employees who expressed interest, But Kristi Burnham — one of the company’s most active learners and now the Vice President of Employee Engagement and Development — wanted to extend learning opportunities to everyone in the organization.
As she explains: “I gathered people from all across the organization, individual contributors, managers, [and] leaders, to ask what they wanted out of a learning program. We launched with some annual training, individual consultations, and some opt in online offerings. Later, we increased our capacity to develop our resources like an onboarding library and really customize our learning offerings.”
The push to rethink L&D also came from a shift in how the company worked during the pandemic. “We were very much an onsite organization up to that point. So being forced into a fully remote setting was a really abrupt change for us,” explains Eleanor. “Thankfully, we already had Udemy Business in place by this point, so that provided our learners with continuity on the asynchronous learning front.”
UNICEF USA also wanted to drive a learning culture throughout its organization and offer its employees access to on-demand learning resources that could help them upskill in their roles.
Assistant Director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development, UNICEF USA
A platform to upskill an entire workforce
UNICEF USA chose Udemy Business due to the intuitiveness of the platform and its diversity of content and instructors. And crucially, because it gave the organization a chance to scale asynchronous learning across its employee base.
“We developed an enhanced learning strategy to support the new ways of working for our now hybrid workforce,” explains Eleanor Son, Assistant Director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development at UNICEF USA. “That strategy included three areas of focus: fostering a coaching and strengths-based culture; upskilling to support our staff to meet the demands of their roles and the ever-changing landscape we operate in; and really targeted manager support.”
The team’s strategy has helped guide many of UNICEF USA’s employees in their self-directed learning and encouraged people across all roles to contribute to the wider learning culture.
Making Udemy Business a key part of performance reviews
As part of UNICEF USA’s new L&D strategy, the organization has incorporated Udemy Business as a primary professional development offering.
“Udemy business is our primary online learning platform. And it has really been instrumental in helping us to upskill our staff,” explains Eleanor. “We’re particularly fond of the learning path feature, where we’re able to gather content from across the platform into one place as well as link our own internal tools to support staff around a specific skill.”
One of the company’s most popular learning paths is for new supervisors, equipping them with all the information they need for their new roles and expediting onboarding.
“A very popular learning path we have is for our new supervisors as well as supervisors who are just joining the organization. We’ve linked both internal and external resources, and this helps us to ensure that all of our supervisors are receiving baseline knowledge and information when it comes to management,” says Eleanor. “My team is currently focused on delivering live learning sessions tied to those competencies as well as our staff goals and coaching.”
UNICEF USA’s L&D team also capitalizes on key moments throughout the year, such as the organization’s performance review season, to highlight the resources available in Udemy Business.
“In the midst of performance review season, my team was sure that we were pushing out that competency model again — reminding people that it’s there and referring people to their strengths,” says Eleanor. “We also coordinated with our coaching platform to help staff prepare for these reviews. It’s really about identifying opportunities and connecting these dots for staff.”
Vice President of Employee Engagement and Development, UNICEF USA
Learning at every step of the employee journey
Udemy Business is also starting to play a crucial role in onboarding for the company, with new hires getting access to the platform as soon as they arrive.
“We have a ton of articles and guides that address our six elements of learning and our competencies,” explains Kristi. “Among the most popular is our onboarding library, which is an internal resource that provides both hiring managers and new hires with what they need for a smooth and robust onboarding.”
UNICEF USA’s learning team also encourages the use of resources like Udemy Business throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
“If your organization is anything like ours, it’s fast-paced, and there are a lot of competing priorities,” explains Eleanor. “So, we continue to put various offerings in front of staff using our internal communications tools like Slack and try to make participating as easy as just a click or two away.”
Creating and celebrating personal learning journeys
Part of driving uptake for Udemy Business is also done by encouraging the celebration of learning achievements as they happen.
“We have a lot of eager and enthusiastic staff who want to learn and grow in their roles,” says Kristi. “The way we approach it is we want to make learning as easy as possible for everyone at UNICEF USA. We try not to mandate anything that we don’t have to, but really just try to meet learners where they are. And then we celebrate achievements and victories.”
“Learning is such a personal journey, and so I think you have to give learners choice and trust that they know what they need,” adds Eleanor. “Providing the offerings so that when it comes time and they’re ready that they are able to tap into it; I think that’s huge.” Kristi’s team has also been essential in helping to keep the social elements of learning alive since the company’s switch to remote working. And some of their lockdown era initiatives are still going strong.
“In addition to formal learning, we wanted to be sure informal, social learning was continuing to take place in this remote environment. So, with input from our staff, we set up employee interest groups around topics of interest like caregivers of children under five or frontline workers,” explains Eleanor. “Staff really took ownership from there, and some of these interest groups are still active. It just goes to show the power of social learning.”
Assistant Director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development, UNICEF USA
Insights that keep UNICEF USA’s L&D evolving
Moving forward, UNICEF USA is planning to use Udemy Business’ reporting tools to continually improve the way it uses the platform.
“It’s arguably the L&D world’s greatest challenge: measuring the impact of learning and growth. We rely on metrics like demand,” says Eleanor. “Udemy Business’s insights and reporting mechanism is fantastic at capturing this data for us. We also include L&D indicators on our annual employee engagement surveys.”
UNICEF USA’s L&D team is also continuing to further integrate the organization’s competency framework into its performance reviews and develop more opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous learning.
“We just have such a great appetite for learning at UNICEF USA,” says Kristi. “We want to make sure that our staff have the knowledge, resources, and support they need to be successful in their roles and beyond.”
Assistant Director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development, UNICEF USA
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