Industry partnership: Telstra

In 2019 Telstra established a partnership program with UTS and four other leading universities, signing Memorandums of Understanding to jointly develop the technology skills and capabilities Australia needed for the workplaces of the future. 

Telstra’s Chief Executive Officer at the time, Andrew Penn, noted the partnerships’ potential for building Australia’s technology talent. 

“As we confront the realities of a workforce that is changing faster than ever before, we must think hard about the talent pipeline for our current and future business needs,” said Penn. 

Professor Glenn Wightwick, UTS’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Enterprise), said the partnership between UTS and Telstra would involve strong collaboration, including support for “the upskilling and reskilling of their existing workforce”.

Leveraging UTS’s data science expertise  

One of the main ways Telstra recognised it could support industry sustainability was through its own workforce. 

Following a major restructure, the company identified a substantial opportunity to help its customers with a range of technology services, including the gathering and analysing of data. 

As the leading data science university partnering with the company, UTS worked with Telstra to develop a solution that would meet their needs.  
“Data underpins most, if not all, decision-making in Australia today,” said Professor Wightwick. 

“It’s also a skill in high demand – but without adequate supply. Through our partnership with Telstra, we are delighted to contribute our research and academic expertise to support skills development.” 

It’s a sentiment echoed by Telstra’s Alex Badenoch. 

A new form of learning – UTS’s first microcredentials 

To upskill its people, Telstra’s learning and development team wanted to create short forms of learning. In terms of their needs, they were clear. They wanted accreditations and external validation of employee skills. 

Academics from the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT worked closely with Telstra to unpack these needs and translate them into a curriculum. 

After several months of collaboration, the two organisations developed three industry-leading short courses, covering data analytics, data engineering and machine learning.

These were UTS’s first microcredentials, marking a significant milestone for the university in its enterprise learning capabilities. 

Alex Badenoch welcomed the development. “We have been advocating for innovation in curriculum design and delivery, particularly to support the continuous learning or reskilling of those already in the workforce.

“Microcredentials are a great example of this and it’s encouraging to see the government also recognise the importance of these qualifications.”

Focusing on enhanced learning, the courses combined weekly live online tutorials with Q&A sessions to support interactive self-paced learning.

While the courses were co-designed with Telstra, they are not Telstra-specific in their subject matter. Course content incorporates a range of topics, ensuring the skills Telstra employees acquired were applicable over a variety of platforms and client needs.

Rapid reskilling to achieve benefits at scale

When Telstra first identified this opportunity, it wasn’t a handful of employees or teams that needed upskilling.  It was more than 1,000 team members. That meant moving quickly. 

After the initial intake, UTS engaged Telstra staff members in a rapid rollout of eight-week courses. UTS simultaneously taught groups of participants across multiple countries to meet the company’s timelines.

Since the microcredentials were launched in 2021, more than 2,500 Telstra team members have been upskilled. These team members apply their new skills every day as part of the organisation’s expanded offerings.

These courses were – and continue to be – offered simultaneously to the general public, facilitating peer-to-peer learning for Telstra staff and external learners across multiple industries and sectors. 

Increasing data literacy through a culture of learning

For Telstra, the microcredentials not only facilitated the rapid reskilling of its technical workforce – they enabled the organisation to develop a capability baseline. 

By benchmarking data skill levels within the company, Telstra has since been able to identify other measures for organisational uplift in this critical area.

These include co-designing a separate course in data literacy with UTS. Developed for employees from non-technical backgrounds, this microcredential introduces people to data literacy fundamentals.

Taken together, these upskilling initiatives have made a significant contribution to the learning culture of the company. 

As one of the country’s biggest employers, demonstrating a commitment to employee development has helped solidify Telstra’s reputation as an employer of choice.