2 bridgelearning management. the lms and talent management software market over time looking back...
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Bridge: A New Breed of Employee Experience Platform
One of the most complex parts of HR software is learning.
Learning management systems and related tools make up
the $240 billion corporate training and education market. In
today’s world of skills-focused strategies, this market is more
important than ever.
This paper will discuss Bridge, a platform developed by
Instructure, a company that leads the market in educational
software for educational institutions. Through a series of
strategic decisions, Bridge has become one of the most modern
employee-focused HR platforms, built from a foundation in
learning management.
The LMS and Talent Management Software Market over Time
Looking back only a few decades, learning management
software companies like Cornerstone, Saba, SumTotal, and
Plateau were the darlings of investors and HR departments.
These systems were originally purchased to store and
manage a company’s entire catalog of training and online
learning. Over time, these systems grew into integrated talent
management systems.
During the early 2000s, when the internet was new and
companies were focused on growth, these platforms became
what we call “prehire to retire” systems, designed with the
intent to manage all the various HR practices of recruiting,
learning, performance management, succession, and
compensation. Growing from their roots in the LMS market,
they became highly complex systems that managed the end-to-
end talent practices for companies.
As companies started to buy these integrated systems, they
consolidated their prior generations of systems. At the same
time, vendors like SAP and Oracle got into the market through
the acquisitions of SuccessFactors (which had acquired
Plateau) and Taleo (which had acquired Learn.com). Today
most big companies have one of these systems, which now play
the role of “talent system of record.”
Since then, however, the world has radically changed. Today
companies operate more as networks than hierarchies. People
change jobs much more frequently so there is a constant need
for onboarding, employee transition, and career development.
And workers are so busy with other work-related digital tools
they don’t have time to use clunky HR software that doesn’t
make their work lives better.
In fact, almost everything in the talent software market
has changed. Now we need tools that manage continuous
development, coaching and performance; we need platforms
that are so useful managers and employees use them every
day; and we need HR software that is integrated and data
driven so AI can help recommend how to better develop
ourselves, how to better coach our teams, and how to better
improve team performance.
These management and organizational changes have come
Human Capital Trends research, and we found that only 6% of
company leaders believed their organizations operated as a
“network.” Today that number is over 35%, as more and more
leaders realize that collaboration, mobility, and continuous goal
alignment and development is the way they get things done.
Today’s Talent Software Market
As the economy has grown since the 2008 recession, a veritable
army of startups has been building tools to make this world
better. Hundreds of vendors now sell continuous performance
management tools, learning experience platforms, survey and
employee voice platforms, wellbeing tools, and new tools for
coaching, manager development, and diversity and inclusion.
so they are viewed as useful systems that people want to use. Of
course, they are mobile enabled, highly interactive, and designed
in a new way -- with graphical interfaces, recommendations,
chat bots, and social networking built in.
What happened to the older talent management systems?
These vendors have struggled to keep up. Most of the
traditional LMS and talent management players have added
themselves with systems that are functionally rich but hard to
use and less relevant than ever before. It’s time for a new breed
of integrated talent management platforms to arrive.
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And, by the way, while all this has been happening, companies
picked up on the idea of reinventing the employee experience.
After all, these various talent practices (like performance
reviews, succession plans, career models) are important,
but what people really want at work is a great onboarding
experience, an easy way to transition from project to project,
and a talent experience at work that feels engaging, growth-
oriented, and tailored to their individual desires.
Enter Bridge
Bridge, through a relentless focus on understanding what
its customers need, has built a next-generation learning and
performance platform based on a robust and complete learning
management system that integrates most of what companies
need. While companies like Workday, Oracle, SAP, and ADP have
continued to advance their platforms, none has really integrated
all the new management approaches into one easy-to-use
system at a price that mid-sized growth companies can afford.
How did Bridge get here? It’s an interesting evolution, and
dominate the enormous market for school and university
training and education, the company realized that the
corporate LMS market was ripe for disruption. So in 2015, the
company launched Bridge, a next-generation LMS.
Bridge (I am calling the company Bridge because it is a
separate business within Instructure) then aggressively sold
the product and gained recognition as one of the hottest new
learning platforms in the market. After reaching more than 800
customers around the world, the company did a massive study
to understand what their customers really needed. They found
something odd.
First, the need for continuous skilling and career development
had dramatically increased. Almost 80% of their customers
believed that skilling and development were their most
important competitive advantage. While most of these
companies had learning platforms and various learning tools,
less than a third of those surveyed believed they really had
a learning-driven culture and easy-to-use set of processes
to actually help employees develop and grow. They all felt
learning had moved from a “push” model (driven by HR) to a
“pull model” (driven by employees and managers), and their
systems and tools had fallen behind.
The Bridge product team saw an opportunity, so it went on
a two-year crusade to build the platform that would address
this need. How could Bridge rethink the entire platform
for employee development and growth, with a focus on
the company as a network, people working in teams, and a
continuous and agile model of goal setting, development,
career management, and learning? And how could they build it
as a journey-oriented system that was easy to use, data driven,
and highly useful for employees, managers, and leaders?
The result was the Bridge’s integrated and personalized learning
and performance platform. Today, Bridge is perhaps the most
truly integrated, visually compelling, easy-to-use talent system
on the market. Bridge includes tools for social networking and
team management, goal setting and continuous performance
management, engagement surveys and analytics of team and
company feedback, self-assessment and career development
-- and of course, an extensive set of features for learning,
knowledge sharing, practice, and compliance.
In a way, Bridge is a world-class LMS, coupled with a next-
generation platform for employee communications and
collaboration, team management, employee engagement,
performance management, and all aspects of career
development and job mobility. What do we call it? I think it is a
learning-based talent experience platform – a new category in
the learning market.
Where Does Bridge Fit?
The HR software market is complex and very crowded. No
company has only one platform, and organizations buy and
build new tools over time.
As Figure 1 illustrates, companies buy and adopt different HR
practices and tools as they grow. Since all companies have a
payroll and core HR system, they often try to buy these talent
experience tools from their core vendor. While most core HR
vendors have many of these tools, they are often lacking in
functionality and not central to the vendor’s mission (running
payroll and managing the core employee systems, taxes, and
compliance are quite demanding). So companies buy more and
more tools over time.
Unfortunately, since vendors tend to focus on one domain, this
means companies end up with a Frankenstein tapestry
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of systems. By the time a company has grown to thousands
of employees, it likely has a core HR system, a learning
management system and series of learning tools, a tool set
for employee goals and reviews, a platform for surveys and
employee voice, and a variety of tools for career planning,
management development, knowledge and skills sharing, and
collaboration and team management. If you include tools for
average company winds up with more than 10 systems of record.
Bridge, as the chart above shows, covers almost all of these
areas (with the exception of recruitment, which is a highly
complex set of technologies) in an integrated platform focused
on manager and employee development, engagement, and
collaboration.
The Benefits of a Bridge-Type Solution
Every HR software buyer struggles with two big issues: First,
functional depth for a system that comes from one of my core
vendors? And second, how do I stitch together the variety of
tools I buy so they deliver an integrated employee experience
and people really see value out of using them?
Unfortunately, as HR departments buy more and more tools,
there is a continuous need to roll out each newly acquired
system and encourage employees to use it. In today’s world,
where employees are overworked and already overwhelmed
with emails and messages, an excellent new system may not
get adopted simply out of user fatigue.
Bridge solves these problems. While the platform is still
relatively new (although the learning functionality is very
mature), it is designed to create a completely integrated
experience for employees, managers, and HR. Going well
Bridge is graphically elegant and gives employees and
managers a timeline-based view of all their talent, coaching,
performance, and career activities (see Figure 2).
Bridge includes a compelling and integrated social platform
project teams (see Figure 3).
Bridge is best suited for fast-growing companies which
have a focus on growth, development, and a data-driven
approach to career development, employee engagement, and
organizational growth. While it includes a world-class LMS, it
goes much further by delivering a complete talent experience
for both employees and managers, complete with analytics and
a myriad of reporting and content management tools for HR
(see Figure 4).
next-generation talent management system. It is employee
focused, integrated, and designed for the organizations of today
(see Figure 5). I believe the company will continue to grow
rapidly and has the potential to help organizations of almost
Figure 1: Talent Systems Evolution
STAGE 1 STAGE 2 STAGE 3 STAGE 4 STAGE 5
Startup Growth Expand Scale
• Payroll• HRMS• Recruitment• Finance• CRM
• ATS• Learning• • Employee Portal
• Performance Management
• Leadership development
• Employee Survey and Voice
• Self-directed learning
• Recognition• Coaching• Succession
Management• Manager Dashboards• Talent mobility• Skills sharing• Internal job board• International scale
• Advanced Analytics
• Organized charting and ONA
• Gig work management
• Advanced compensation analysis
• D&I analytics and reporting
• Globalization
1-500 Employees 100-1,000 Employees 500-5,000 Employees 1,000-10,000 Employees 5,000+ Employees
Bridge Target Market
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Figure 3: Skill Communities
Figure 2: Employee Timeline
Figure 4: Insights Dashboard
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Figure 5: Employee Home
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Building Culture through Learning at Chemical Bank
C A S E S T U D Y
Chemical Bank, a division of TCF National Bank and soon
to be merged with TCF Bank in 2020, began using Bridge at
the beginning of 2018. The bank’s 3,500 employees consist
of about 2,000 tellers, and millennials make up more than
half the employee population. Compliance and information
security training is essential in the banking industry, and the
company wanted a holistic, easy-to-use learning system that
would automate its routine tasks while socializing learning and
treating it as a cultural component.
president and manager of organizational development, along
with two talent development partners, a graphic designer
and an LMS analyst are responsible for running the training
programs through Bridge at Chemical Bank. Some of the
accomplishments through Bridge have been:
Manager training.
with checkpoints for competencies, and Bridge offers visibility
into progress, creating more discussion points for feedback
between managers and trainees. This accountability reduced
turnover in Chemical Bank’s leadership development training
program by over 20%.
Mentor training. To address the increased interest in
mentoring, Alex Morgan, vice president of talent development,
created a mentor development program in Bridge. Mentors
receive training on how to create a productive relationship
with their mentees before getting assigned a mentor.
Social learning. The talent development team creates learning
programs around e-learning resources that include Harvard
Business Review content and TED talks. To ensure that
learning is implemented, the team creates checkpoints and
post questions to the groups. This promotes collaboration
around learning where employees can share their perspective,
pitfalls and cautionary tales.
Checkpoint functionality extends beyond learning. Bridge
also functions as a communications tool for other programs
like tuition assistance and employee incentives. The
checkpoint functionality with signature capture helps reduce
the administrative burden for previously cumbersome tasks.
Figure 5: Learning Management System
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every size deliver a compelling and growth-driven experience to
all their employees.
The analytics behind Bridge help the team determine where
people engage the most or where they drop off, resulting in the
creation of better learning content. Reports are exported into
.csv format for the business analytics team to use in Tableau,
where they can create employee development dashboards.
Additionally, insights from Bridge help with workforce
planning. When a managerial position opens up, the recruiting
team can look at progress through a leadership development
program to see how close current employees are to promotion.
With the exception of compliance and information security
training, all learning programs within Bridge at Chemical Bank
are optional. Yet, in 2019, employees completed over 11,000
training modules. “It’s exceeded expectations on all levels,” said
Olsen. “I don't know of any other system where I've seen so
many people want to get on so quick.”
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Bridge Brings the Employee Experience to Life at Mountain America
C A S E S T U D Y
Mountain America Credit Union manages over $9 billion
headquarters in Sandy, Utah, Aaron Brown, vice president of
talent development, oversees training and talent development
for Mountain America’s 2,600 employees.
In the year since Brown joined Mountain America, the human
resources function has reorganized to focus on the employee
experience by developing a new talent philosophy and strategy
to meet needs of the current employment lifecycle. To support
this, Mountain America centralized all its HR technology tools
under one group, which includes HR, talent development, and
internal communications. Workday, ServiceNow, and Bridge
are the primary systems that provide the functionality for
these areas.
Bridge serves a key role in operationalizing performance and
level, Mountain America has developed functional training
programs in Bridge for its employees in sales, branches, and
service centers. For leadership development, the company
uses a combination of off-the-shelf Franklin Covey programs
and customized skills-based development. The adoption of a
70-20-10 model of learning has been a mindset shift for long-
time Mountain America employees, and Bridge helps both
managers and trainees keep track of progress with on-the-job
learning projects.
For instance, one custom project involved identifying the traits
and skills for assistant VPs and creating a training program
around them. The rigor involved in identifying best practices,
with learning cohort groups helped current VPs build their
own skills as facilitators and coaches while Brown’s talent
development team served in a consultative role.
Currently all development goals and one-to-one meetings
with managers are captured in Bridge. In 2020, the company
hopes to move all performance goals into Bridge, as well as
based career paths, thereby moving the company away from a
more traditional ladder framework to a lattice framework. In
addition, the company has been piloting Engage and Practice.
Mountain America’s 2019 goal was to increase utilization
of Bridge by 50%, and halfway through the year, it reached
100%. “Our users really like it,” said Brown. “It's very easy.”
Clearly Mountain America has tapped a previously unmet
need: employees really like learning. Bridge gives them such a
positive experience that they keep coming back.
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Athletic Wear Provider
C A S E S T U D Y
A Canadian-based athletic wear provider* adopted Bridge as
According to the individuals involved in the selection process,
the decision was based on a variety of factors, including:
• A very intuitive interface for both administrators and
learners. “Our employees have to deal with a variety of
systems. We didn’t want to add one more system that
would be frustrating and hard to learn.”
•
gives people an incentive to use, as opposed to being a
detractor.”
• Flexibility. The fact that the Bridge LMS could be used to
track and assess key checkpoints, described as moments
in a new hire’s job at which the employee practices
interacting with customers. “No other system we looked
at could do this.”
• Ease of authoring the company’s own training, along with
But, in addition to the features above, the selection team said
that “Bridge speaks our language. It’s clear the company is
open to innovation and wants to work with us to continually
make things better.”
Currently, Bridge is used by two groups within the company.
The company’s digital engagement group, which has about 30
digital engagement coordinators, interacts socially through
various social channels with customers and prospects. The
largest part of the coordinator role is promoting and engaging
with customers and prospects on behalf of the company,
although employees do handle some questions and problems
that arise during interactions.
Also using Bridge is the company’s guest education center.
Employees in this group handle the lion’s share of customer
interactions by phone or email. This group varies in size
according to the time of the year – ranging from around 200
employees mid-year to up to 700 employees in the peak
months of November, December, and January. Consequently,
the company has to conduct a very aggressive onboarding and
training process each fall.
Employees in both groups tend to be young (in their 20s and
The two groups are using Bridge for all types of product-
related training, as well as cultural training. Online learning
complements the in-classroom training provided at the
beginning of the seasonal hiring push. Bridge is also used to
keep employees up to date on various products and processes.
With the Bridge LMS, supervisors and managers have the
ability to monitor quiz scores to identify potential problem
areas new hires might have and if needed, to provide extra
coaching and supervision.
Recently, these groups have started to pilot Bridge’s
Performance Management product, as the full Bridge offering
combines Learning + Performance, all in one. To date, the
experience has been positive. Those involved in the pilot have
found having tools to collaborate real-time on performance-
related conversations to be very helpful. Employees and
managers alike also like the ability to record the conversations
taking place, as well as the ability to quickly access notes from
past conversations – all in one place.
More than a year into the investment, the company is very
for training are even more appreciative of the Bridge’s
partnership approach and its openness to ongoing feedback.
*This company has requested anonymity.
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About Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin is an internationally recognized analyst, educator, and thought leader focusing on the global talent market and the challenges impacting business workforces around the world. He studies the world of work, HR and leadership practices, and the broad talent technology market.
He founded Bersin & Associates in 2001 to provide research and advisory services focused on corporate learning. Over the next ten years, he expanded the company’s coverage to encompass HR, talent management, talent acquisition, and leadership. He sold the company to Deloitte in 2012, when it became known as Bersin™ by Deloitte. Bersin left Deloitte in June 2018.
In 2019, Bersin founded the Josh Bersin Academy, the world's first global development academy for HR and talent professionals and a transformation agent for HR organizations. The Academy offers content-rich online programs, a carefully curated library of tools and resources, and a global community that helps HR and talent professionals stay current on the trends and practices needed to drive organizational success in the modern world of work.
Bersin is frequently featured in talent and business publications such as Forbes, Harvard Business Review, HR Executive, FastCompany, The Wall Street Journal, and CLO Magazine. He is a regular keynote speaker at industry events around the world and a popular blogger with more than 800,000 followers on LinkedIn.
His education includes a BS in engineering from Cornell University, an MS in engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.