In 2013, AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunications company, recognized that it lacked talent in the areas of cloud-based computing and data science. Instead of recruiting externally, the company decided to focus on reskilling its current employees, adapting the organizational structure in order to make possible changes in job roles and create a culture of continuous learning. For this reason, AT&T initiated its WF2020 programme. The programme’s first task was to identify the skills the company would require in the future and create roadmaps for internal acquisition of those skills. Next, role structures were simplified and standardized to increase job mobility by allowing for more lateral, diagonal, and both ascending and descending moves, giving employees greater control over their own career. This approach, which is often found in start-ups, was combined with the long-term plan to eliminate silos like marketing and finance and instead have small mixed teams work on concrete projects for specific amounts of time.
AT&T redesigning its approach to talent as a means to adapt to the accelerating changes to jobs brought about by technological advances. A programme entitled Workforce 2020 (WF2020) sets out to reskill the workforce for newly created roles, with a focus on instituting a culture of lifelong learning, enhancing job mobility and developing skills with a focus on those skills that are interchangable. A new career profile tool showcases relevant insights about potential career development trajectories for workers, highlighting new-job requirements and relevant reskilling opportunities. Through the portal employees are provided with better transparency on the internal job and skills market and the range of possible career trajectories within AT&T. The programme is not limited to providing information on potential career trajectories but complements those insights with relevant reskilling opportunities, online courses comprised of both shortcycle duration (nano) degrees as well as longer-cycle reskilling opportunities (online masters programmes). AT&T worked in partnership with online learning providers such as Udacity to create relevant course materials and design appropriate pay plans.