The company: Guild Education
Guild Education is a female-founded, Certified B corporation that’s on a mission to educate America’s workforce. Guild seeks to do well by doing good, offering a full-service platform that lets companies connect their employees to amazing education benefits.
Why you should pay attention
Companies like Walmart, Disney, Discover, Lowe’s, and Chipotle have already realized jaw-dropping results with Guild’s end-to-end platform for education benefits and tuition assistance. (Disney reports record-breaking engagement with its Guild offering, while Chipotle reports 90% higher retention among employees who participate in the education benefits program. Whoa!)
The details
There are 88 million Americans who need upskilling or reskilling in order to compete in the future of work (64 million of whom haven’t completed college). Those were some of the facts compelling co-founders Rachel Carlson and Brittany Stich to shake up the traditional model and create a business for change. The resulting company, Guild Education, tackles the problem by helping Fortune 500 companies provide debt-free pathways to college for their employees.
Why we’re obsessed
Guild turns the traditional tuition reimbursement model on its head, reimagining a system that’s well meaning, yet antiquated and ineffective. To do this, Guild connects companies to a network of nonprofit, accredited universities and learning providers curated to provide the best outcomes for working adults. Their innovative tuition assistance model allows students to pursue associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees, as well as a wide variety of certificates and credentials without having to pay *any* upfront costs. (Students can also participate in English as a second language, high school completion programs, and college prep.) By removing that initial cost barrier, Guild’s model allows more employees to take advantage of the benefit + helps more employers realize a positive impact.
How it works
First the Guild team works with individual companies to build a customized education program and benefit policy that supports the company’s strategic goals, including objectives for recruitment, retention, and upskilling. Once the program is in place, Guild offers a team of coaches that works with individual employees to identify the right programs for them, then help with enrollment, coursework, and accountability. Completing the circle, Guild’s automated platform features dashboards and analytics to help companies track engagement, performance, retention, and overall results.
Get involved
Ready to reimagine your company’s education benefits and increase employee retention, engagement, and success? Great idea – Get in touch with Guild Education now.
