Why Would a Company Fund STEM Skills Development?

Editor's Note: Phil Preston recently sat down with Milinda Martin of Time Warner Cable to discuss the company's Connect a Million Minds program. This is the second post reflecting this conversation. In case you missed it, you can read the first post here.

By Phil Preston

From the business perspective, what motivated Time Warner Cable to invest heavily in STEM skill development through their Connect a Million Minds program? I asked their VP of Community Investment, Milinda Martin, how it fits in with the business agenda.

Phil Preston: I realize the timeframes are long, but have you developed any specific business metrics to measure the benefits of this initiative?

Milinda Martin: We have held three customer and non-customer studies over the course of our five-year commitment: in year zero (baseline), halfway through and just recently, as we near the end of the official commitment. Note that we are continuing our commitment: We now call it “one million and counting” because we are still not where we need to be regarding youth and STEM.

Those studies have shown, emphatically, that both our customers and the general population have a better impression of TWC as a result of Connect a Million Minds. And the greater the engagement with our Connect a Million Minds platform, the greater the individuals’ perception of our company. Our first wave of middle-schoolers are just now graduating from high-school, so it is too early to say if we are seeing results in terms of hiring/candidate skills, but we know that, in aggregate, we have engaged more than 5 million youths in hands-on STEM activities at some point. This figure includes all of the youths engaged through our nonprofit partners because not all go through the formal process of taking the Connect a Million Minds pledge.

PP: What challenges or successes have you had making linkages between social outcomes and business benefits?

MM: One of our successes has been around connecting our nonprofit partners with our commercial services group. We know that for kids to succeed, they need to have access to the Internet, which is why digital literacy and broadband adoption are also core issues for us. By providing a nonprofit partner with the fastest Internet speeds, at prices that trump the competition, we know that we are giving them and their young people, high-quality access to the online world. This helps not just with homework, but also in learning technology skills. In NYC, for example, we have created 15 Learning Labs in low-income neighborhoods to ensure that all young people have internet access and technology learning. These partnerships are good for our commercial services group, as well as for the nonprofits, and of course, the community at large.

One bonus outcome for Connect a Million Minds is our ability to help our own employees and their families. We have a highly diversified workforce, and we know that we need greater gender and ethnic diversity in the STEM fields. By engaging our employees in Connect a Million Minds, we are helping them connect their own children with hands-on STEM. We see that enthusiasm in our employee volunteer opportunities, where so many times, the field technician will volunteer at the event, and his/her whole family will attend the event, courtesy of TWC.

PP: How immune would you say the program is to a change of management, poor economic environment, business adversity or cutbacks?

MM: We made this a five-year commitment in 2009 and publicly stated our dedication to it, regardless of economic or internal change. I am proud that we have delivered on it, even with the retirement of our former CEO at the end of 2013. We have certainly seen tremendous change in our industry during those five years, with the advent of “TV Everywhere” platforms such as HBO Go, and a huge increase in both the need and the speed of Internet service. Throughout all that change, we have remained steadfast in our support of Connect a Million Minds, and we remain steadfast today. While we have passed our '1 million minds' milestone in terms of pledges, we know there is still tremendous work to be done around STEM engagement and education. We are committed to our nonprofit partners and the work to be done, and are actively planning for 2015 now.

PP: Is it possible to gauge tangible benefits from employee involvement, such as personal growth, their care factor at work or productivity?

MM: We launched our official volunteer platform in April 2014. While we have offered all employees 12 hours of paid volunteer time off since 2010, we did not have the online tool to really capture those results and measure the impact. Through a partnership with VolunteerMatch.org, we now have an online platform that makes it easy for employees to find a volunteer opportunity near them, and for us to capture data. We are just beginning to gather enough data to analyze volunteerism as a determinant of employee engagement and retention. Our initial results are proving what we knew anecdotally: If you support employees in their community passions, they will pay you back with loyalty.

PP: How many employees in total have been involved with this initiative?

MM: We hope that every employee has had a chance to be involved with Connect a Million Minds. We offer multiple touch points so, whatever their preference, there is a way to engage: volunteerism, pledging, board service, the Connectory, or by seeing the effect of Time Warner Cable in their community through public service announcements and internal communications. We see some of our strongest engagement with our front-line employees, and there is nothing more gratifying than seeing our technicians – those who lay the cable that delivers video and Internet to your home – volunteering to deliver a hands-on STEM experience to local young people.

While we do not measure involvement with Connect a Million Minds directly, we do have 'community' as one of our values, and it is part of every employee’s annual performance review. To receive the highest performance appraisal, an employee must give back to their local community. We feel that is the true mission of Connect AaMillion Minds: Together, we can make a difference with young people.

PP: Thanks Milinda for sharing your insights into the initiative and the corporate context around it.

What we learn from conversations like these is that there can be significant value attached to well-structured community initiatives. The timeframes involved are much longer than the corporate reporting cycle, therefore it takes vision and leadership to put them in place, and excellent communication skills to bring various stakeholder groups along with you.

Is Connect a Million Minds a philanthropic pursuit? A community and stakeholder management strategy? A shared value initiative? Arguably, it has elements of all three, and the more we talk about the linkages between social outcomes and shareholder value the better we, as a society, will get at it.

Image credit: Connect A Million Minds website

Phil Preston helps employees and businesses devise community engagement strategies. He can be contacted via phil@philpreston.co or followed @PhilPrestonTwit