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72 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise

TELUS recognized that moving from formal learning to acquiring knowledge
through employee collaboration and participation required a shift in company
culture. “This is not a scenario in which we can flip a switch and have everyone
change their work habits overnight,” observed Dan Pontefract, Senior Director
of Learning for TELUS. To encourage acceptance of and participation in the new
social learning processes, the company set up an internal site showing tangible
examples of the new collaboration tools and launched a wiki to facilitate employee
discussion. Pontefract includes information about the new learning initiative on
his blog to help prepare team members for the shift.
The new SharePoint system gives TELUS team members much faster access to
the specific skills and knowledge areas where they need help—they don’t need to
wait for the next formal learning class. Instead, team members can immediately
reach out to colleagues who have expertise in a specific area, or they can read
wikis and blogs, watch videos, and participate in discussions to find answers.
Implementing SharePoint reduced the TELUS learning budget to $21 million
in 2010. The company was able to trim this budget by 20 percent the following
year as it continued its shift to informal and social learning. Further cost savings
will occur as the new learning solutions take hold. In the TELUS three-year plan,
formal learning will comprise just 50 percent of the total learning budget.
Sources: Sharon Gaudin, “Telus Links Social, Traditional Training,” Computerworld, March
27, 2012; “TELUS Telecom Company Embraces Social Computing, Streamlines Formal
Learning,” www.microsoft.com, accessed April 5, 2012; Barb Mosher, “Sharepoint 2010 Case
Study: Informal and Social Learning at TELUS,” CMSWire, June 30, 2010, and www.telus.
com, accessed April 6, 2012.

he experience of TELUS illustrates how much organizations today rely
Ton information systems to improve their performance and remain
competitive. It also shows how much systems supporting collaboration and
teamwork make a difference in an organization’s ability to execute, provide
superior customer service, and grow profits.
The chapter-opening diagram calls attention to important points raised by
this case and this chapter. TELUS is an “old” company that wanted to continue
changing with the times and remain customer-focused. It also needed to find a
way to capture and preserve employee knowledge and expertise as 40 percent
of its workforce neared retirement age.
TELUS management decided that the best solution was to deploy new
technology to move from a formal learning environment to one in which team
members contributed to and obtained knowledge from colleagues. The company
implemented Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as a company-wide platform
for collaboration, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge transfer, and it took
advantage of the software’s new “social” tools to facilitate employee collabora-
tion and engagement. TELUS now relies on its internal enterprise social network
for much of employee learning and problem-solving, and SharePoint integrates
all of the ways employees learn and share knowledge—formal training classes,
podcasts, blogs, wikis, videos, and corporate social networking. The company
more effectively shares institutional knowledge and has reduced its costs.
New technology alone would not have solved TELUS’s problem. To make the
solution effective, TELUS had to change its organizational culture and business
processes for knowledge dissemination and employee learning.
Here are some questions to think about: How are collaboration and employee
learning keeping TELUS competitive? What are the benefits of each of the
collaboration and social tools discussed in this case?

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