Idea in Brief
The Problem
AT&T, the original architect of the United States’ communication infrastructure, now faces a future in which its legacy businesses will become obsolete. It’s racing to reinvent itself for the digital marketplace, and to do that, it needs people skilled in new technologies.
The Solution
Rather than hiring new talent wholesale, AT&T has chosen to rapidly retrain its current workforce of 280,000 employees.
The Program
Workforce 2020 consolidates roles, simplifies performance metrics, de-emphasizes seniority, and gives workers tools for career development. A partnership with Udacity and Georgia Tech allows employees to fill skill gaps through education. Every employee is encouraged to seek out new capabilities, roles, and experiences.
Having built the United States’ telegraph and telephone infrastructure in the last century, AT&T could once claim to be the company “where the future was invented.” But now the Dallas-based firm, like many in the technology sector, faces a future in which its legacy businesses are quickly becoming obsolete. With its industry moving from cables and hardware to the internet and the cloud, AT&T is in a sprint to reinvent itself.
