Yesterday’s post detailed information about why you should offer postsecondary education benefits to your employees, and today’s post will outline more information on how to do this. 
Form Strategic Partnerships
Form partnerships with colleges and universities that have postsecondary education opportunities that are relevant to your organization’s goals. For example, you might want to partner with a certain college for your managers’ leadership or project management training.
You might even be able to negotiate a discounted rate for continuing education, certificate programs, etc., if a large number of employees take certain courses, or you may be able to partner with institutions for curriculum requirements and learning materials that are covered in each course or program. These partnerships can provide multiple ways to customize your employees’ education to the needs of your organization.
Provide Diverse Benefits
It’s important to offer postsecondary education benefits that can fit different employees’ situations, as employees will come to your organization with different education levels and backgrounds and will have different future educational needs and requirements depending on their career paths and interests.
As such, some employees might appreciate student debt repayment options for current loans, while others may appreciate reimbursements for future graduate-level education; still others might want direct payment options for certificate programs. So, before offering your employees postsecondary education benefits, make sure you understand what will benefit them the most to avoid the risk of your initiatives’ yielding low returns.
Track Data and Outcomes
When offering your employees postsecondary education benefits, track their educational progress, and monitor their performance results. For instance, some programs might require employees to routinely submit their test scores or grades before they’re reimbursed for course materials and tuition, while others might require employees to complete a project after finishing certain course work to gauge whether they can be reimbursed.
You’ll also want to track which postsecondary education benefits yield real results for your organization, such as higher levels of employee productivity and engagement. For instance, one certificate program might lead to more productive managers, while another may not seem to make managers more productive at all.
In the end, you won’t want to offer postsecondary benefits that don’t improve employee performance or engagement or that don’t lead to a healthier organizational bottom line.
Promote Benefits to Employees
Currently, only around 5% of employees participate in tuition assistance programs offered by their employers, which is generally because employers don’t track their postsecondary education benefits programs and the outcomes and returns those programs yield and, therefore, don’t promote them. But if they did, they would most likely want their employees to take advantage of these benefits. Ultimately, if you want to have successful postsecondary education benefits programs, promote them via e-mails and bulletins, and ensure your managers and leaders are also recommending them so your employees are aware of them.
If you decide to offer postsecondary education benefits to your employees, keep the above information in mind to ensure these benefits continue to yield real results for your organization and its employees.