Equifax Invests in Learning to Drive and Develop Talent for Cloud Innovation
Building the Equifax Cloud™ – a cloud-native infrastructure tailored to highly regulated data workloads – has taken a $1.5 billion investment and a heightened focus on top talent. When modernizing a company’s technology foundation, having an upskilled workforce on the pulse of cloud trends is as vital as the quality of the tech and security stack itself. With that in mind, Equifax has grown and evolved a one stop resource for skills development, engagement and learning across its Product, Data & Analytics and Technology teams.
Coined PDAT University, the Equifax learning hub houses leading-edge educational and learning content targeting Product, D&A and Technology professionals. It serves as the gateway to the company’s full suite of learning resources, including Equifax CLIMB, an enterprise eLearning platform with access to more than 40,000 content offerings, and the Equifax Leadership Institute, a hub for leadership skill development. It also connects to a Product Management training journey, to support the company’s growing pace of product innovation, and Data & Analytics University, a curated knowledge base for data scientists and data professionals.
Boosting Workforce Engagement
The learning platform offers onboarding content, role-based learning tracks and cloud education including access to Coursera and Cloud certifications. Holistically, the high-tech learning program has resulted in more than 1,000 cloud and high-tech certifications. More than 80 live learnings sessions were delivered for Data & Analytics in 2022, including several with prominent guest speakers.
“We designed a diversified learning program to bring even more agility to our Cloud-native, Product-led workforce,” said Bryson Koehler, Chief Product, Data & Analytics and Technology Officer at Equifax. “So many of our customers are undertaking digital transformations of their own, and I’m excited to share our learnings on how we upskilled our people for our future-state business. Evolving your culture is just as vital as upgrading your technology, and sharing those lessons with our customers is a true sign of partnership.”
Equifax has seen the investment in employee education and development pay off, and recent research supports that. A recent study commissioned by Paychex showed that employees are 63% more likely to stay with employers who provide better learning opportunities to enhance their skill set and advance their careers. In addition, while investing in learning and development is in itself important, the research shows that it's even more important for employers to provide development opportunities tailored for their teams. Participation in learning programs is a key indicator of engagement, and in 2022 Equifax employees participated in more than 140,000 hours of training.
“We built our high-tech learning program to drive and develop our team, so we can support their growth and set them up to tackle our business goals in a fast-moving marketplace where skills are a real differentiator,” said Gail Wetzel, Vice President, Data & Analytics at Equifax. “The engagement we have seen from employees has been tremendous. People love the mix of digital content and live learning sessions, including guest speakers from leading companies in the telecom and software industries.”
Diversified Learning Paths
PDAT University’s guest speaker program gives Equifax employees access to some of the leading voices from across the industry. Most recently, Data & Analytics hosted sessions with the Chief Data Scientist from a major telecom company and the Head of Data Science from a leading software company. Content is also fueled by the Equifax Academic Partnerships program, which spotlights research and professors from leading institutions including Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State University and the University of North Carolina.
PDAT University offers a wide array of options and learning tracks. The Product Management Journey enables product team members to have a common understanding and language to grow collaboration across product teams. The journey for an employee that commits to spend an average of one hour a week, can have six courses completed in six months. Courses include Intro to Product Management, Innovation & Creativity and Building & Leading Teams. For those with a focus on Data & Analytics, curriculum is available in Data, Analytics, Governance, Innovation, Platform and Special Topic modules.
Equifax’s emphasis on enabling employee growth and driving strong performance and innovation has fueled the company’s growth track. With 12 acquisitions in 2021 and 2022, totaling more than $3.5 billion, Equifax is pulling a steady stream of differentiated data assets into its product portfolio. Cloud-certified team members with expanded skills sets play a key role in integrating and innovating, leveraging new and unique data assets. Based on this and activity across the company, it's easy to understand the company’s investment in employee engagement with a wide array of learning paths and programs.
For more information on career growth at Equifax, visit Equifax.com.