For institutions of higher learning, the instruction they provide to their employees is just as vital—if not more so—as the education they provide to their students.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) rolled out programming in 2024 that proved to its workforce, and the students that workforce supports, that it has exactly the learning and development (L&D) they need. Programs focused on providing employees with personalized development and career growth, and the opportunity to learn how to lead effectively. The previous year also saw a strengthened focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and additional training to support employees’ use of SNHU’s Student Information System. A focus on the institution’s core values underpinned all these training achievements.
ELEVATING LEARNING
SNHU considers professional development for its workforce to be central to its ability to serve its students. “Providing comprehensive professional development opportunities is a critical component for SNHU to achieve its business goals. It is only through exceptional support of our people that we can offer extraordinary support and education for our students,” says Vice President of Talent Development Philip Nazzaro.
One of the ways SNHU focuses on the development of its workforce is through its Elevate program. Elevate is a learning experience for all individual contributors that aligns with university core competencies, promoting career growth and enabling effective leadership at all levels. Participants select from a series of nine core competency learnings that are customizable to their individual needs. As they progress through modules, they earn core competency badges, which support opportunities for advancement.
Additionally, individuals can choose to engage in career development exercises to further their personalized development. Once a competency is chosen, participants pick from tailored eLearning courses and complete one instructor-facilitated learning as a capstone to the competency learning.
Leaders have access to resources to help them best coach and support their team members as they participate in Elevate. Badges are only awarded after a minimum 30-day observation period by the leader during which a participant must demonstrate the core competency behaviors on the job. The self-service career planning suite helps connect participants’ passions with fulfilling work and conduct personal gap analysis between their current skills and those needed for desired roles. Participants then can craft a strategic plan to build the necessary skills.
In fiscal year 2024, 1,788 employee learners engaged with Elevate, earning a total of 1,268 badges. Elevate achieved a +65 net promoter score in FY’24. “The Elevate program has been a major component of our employee engagement success as evidenced by surpassing our FY’24 Great Colleges to Work For goal by three points, achieving a +89,” points out Associate Vice President of Talent Development Kerri Kellan.
TECHNOLOGY TRAINING SUPPORT
Another example of how learning helps SNHU achieve its business goals is its Genesis Training Program. “A Student Information System (SIS) is the backbone of a university’s technology architecture. Every technology system within the university’s ecosystem depends on the SIS to some degree,” explains Director of Centralized Systems Training Danielle Mullin. “The SIS, which is required to run an accredited higher education institution, draws from multiple technologies and is the single place where all student data comes together.”
In FY’24, SNHU culminated a multi-year effort of migrating from its old SIS to a new technology platform. “Essentially every business unit across the university was affected,” Mullin says. “This was a major change requiring a massive training effort that upskilled and reskilled team members to learn new business processes within a new technology ecosystem, while seamlessly providing an exceptional customer experience to our current and prospective students.”
#3 SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY
The Genesis Training program is a blended learning experience combining instructor-led training, self-directed learning, toolkits, and ongoing coaching support. Prior to launching the new SIS, formal learning experience, practice, and job aides were provided to address challenges that arose during launch. A series of targeted “hyper-care” supports were produced in addition to ongoing coaching. Evaluation of the learning included robust feedback loops from participants in terms of both Level 1 experience and learning transfer that resulted in more than 50 smaller projects to refine the learning and maximize retention and transfer of the learning.
“Ultimately, the success of the program is measured by the impact on the employee’s ability to use the new skills,” says SNHU Chief Experience Officer Sue Nathan. “The combination of initial training, coaching, and rapidly created training to address emerging needs empowered our people to effectively support current and prospective students in the new system. Even with all the challenges that come with an effort as large as the conversion of an SIS, we exceeded our new start goals at SNHU with FY’24 enrollments increasing 14 percent over FY’23.”
CONTINUED EMPHASIS ON DEI
At a time when many organizations are pulling back on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, SNHU decided to keep moving forward in this area. “SNHU is dedicated to being an employer of choice, where our people feel a sense of belonging, are cared for, and can thrive. A major component of our support is made through investments in our employees’ ongoing development,” Nazzaro says.
SNHU spent several years continuing to grow its offerings in the DEI space, including annual performance goals to not only complete DEI learning, but to also demonstrate the transfer of the skills and behaviors into the workplace.
Several years of foundational DEI learning programs now are leading into the development of large-scale DEI programmatic learning and support. “This work has required the investment in positions dedicated to DEI learning, as well as building and expanding partnerships with outside organizations. These investments have helped us launch a new inclusive hiring manager learning experience,” Nazzaro says.
REAFFIRMING CORE VALUES
SNHU is in the middle of a transition from an “expert culture” to a “learning culture.” In support of that, many of the institution’s offerings currently blend centralized learning, learning supports for leaders to be facilitators and coaches, and experiences that drive “greater reflection in action” for all team members. One example of this last year was its approach to Core Values learning.
The launch of SNHU’s new, human-centered Core Values was a major undertaking. The efforts to establish the conditions for the culture change were conducted by a cross-functional team led by leaders on SNHU’s Talent Development team. These results then were distilled by another cross-functional team led by Talent Development, that authored the new Core Values, which were approved by leadership. “This was just the beginning of the culture change journey for SNHU,” Kellan notes.
In support of this large-scale learning and change management effort, SNHU combined formal training experiences, communication, sponsorship coalitions, and leader-led learning to help people breathe life into these new Core Values by using them every day. After formal learning for all team members, leaders were trained with a “meeting-in-a-box” toolkit designed for them to tailor and facilitate learning on how to leverage the Core Values specific to the unique needs and circumstances of their team.
“This took learning in a more leader-led and personalized direction by positioning leaders to help the transfer and integration of the formal learning into their work,” Kellan says. “This also reinforces the idea of leaders being seen as ‘people developers.’”
LEVERAGING AI AND MORE
In 2024, all SNHU employees were enrolled in a Foundations of Artificial Intelligence training program. This multi-session, self-paced learning was augmented by an instructor-led training facilitated by SNHU’s vice president of AI. “These learnings helped ensure that all team members understand basic principles of AI and the university’s strategic approach to leveraging it,” Nazzaro says.
The institution also piloted a comprehensive AI learning experience entitled Generative AI: from Concept to Creation. Through a series of self-directed learnings, participants learned how to leverage AI through interactions that also were created and facilitated in partnership with AI.
Throughout the experience, learners interacted with embedded AI to put the learning into practical application and receive feedback. The experience helped learners craft stronger prompts to create learning outlines, scripts, and eventually, an AI-generated training video. “Learners left this set of experiences significantly more prepared to use AI within their work and with a strong knowledge of how and when to apply AI as a tool,” says Associate Vice President of Strategic Foresight Macy Vadurro. “Results of the experience were exceptional for this program, with 11.7 percent of learners proficient in AI pre-training and 85.5 percent proficient in leveraging AI post-training.”
Nazzaro stresses that Learning continues to be a critical driver of business success because it has the highest impact when it is embedded in the organization’s business strategies. “For 2025, we are developing an SNHU Skill Strategy that will have a fundamental impact on our approach to learning and will build on the FY’25 new Core Skills learning experiences,” he says.
SNHU also is reworking its leadership development program ecosystem. Starting with an updated Vision of a Leader, outlining what the institution believes leadership is at the various stages of vertical development, the Learning team next will create experiences to support leaders at the stages of growth on their journey toward that vision.
Other future-focused initiatives at SNHU include the redesign of its performance management system to a performance excellence system that is linked to ongoing development, rather than annual performance ratings. “This enhances talent mobility through upskilling, and helps leaders develop the skills to leverage data to drive organizational and team decisions,” Nazzaro says. “All of this is supported by a fresh look at our Learning governance so we can be as agile with our learning resources as we need to be to support our business strategy.”
