Case Summary: AT&T, Retraining and the workforce of Tomorrow

(Submitted by: Rishabh Jain | PGP36380 | Section H)

During the late 2000, telecommunication industry experienced drastic changes. This led AT&T’s
management to drive a major change to counter one of the biggest logistical challenge that the
industry had ever seen, which is to retrain 100,000 workers by 2020. The case initially describes
on how AT&T designed and executed this massive program of retraining 100,000 workers. It
started with discussion on the technological forces that forced the firm to change its strategy during
2010s in response to the treat of its workforces’ skillset becoming obsolete. Later the case talks
about the initiative “Workforce 2020” that was adopted to address the issue at hand. This initiative
intended to transform the skillsets by taking measures such as reinventing job roles, developing
new educational tools, creating an agile ecosystem to foster innovation etc. There were mixed
arguments in favour and against of this Workforce 2020 model which were discussed. The case
then describes the early results and the model’s implication on the society. Later, it was rebranded
from workforce 2020 to “Future Ready” which signifies the commitment of the firm to retrain its
workforce beyond 2020.

The following were the problems with the transitioning to the subject model as discussed in the
case:
1. Fundamentally different skillsets to what the firm was doing at that time
2. Retraining such a huge workforce was the biggest logistics challenges that the firm faced
3. Cost of the solutions proposed by consultants was huge. Hence they needed to create the
program itself and promote it internally.
4. Spending too much money wasn’t the right choice as the industry they were operating in
is high price sensitive

The designed solution of Workforce 2020 program focussed on the six broad areas including IP
networking, big data and software networking which were laid in following six steps:
1. Incentivise better performance by reinventing existing roles and updating talent practices.
2. Career roadmaps for employees for evaluation of potential opportunities
3. Collaboration with educational providers like Udacity for creating curriculum
4. Developing ed-tools to track and upskill employees
5. Providing opportunities for alternative talent platforms to add retraining efforts
6. Cultivating an ecosystem to integrate retained workers and maximise innovation

Though the management highlighted the company’s relationship with union workers as
competitive advantage but it closed many call centres, resulting in 16,000 job loss. They were
relying more on low-wage contractors instead of investing in its workforce. Also, this initiative
hardly focusses on the frontline workforce who serves customers and maintain integrity of the
network on daily basis. Some workers had apprehensions that it is only for managers and is not
transparent to all. Many older employees expressed scepticism with respect to the time for their
re-training and stated that the top leadership is overestimating the rate of technological change.
Those who weren’t able to keep up with the requirements were laid off. There were comments by
few workers that the initiative was to mask the plan of cut in the headcount using the pseudo
policies. Many interns were of the view that the firm wouldn’t hire them after the program will
end.