Episode 195: Tuition Reimbursement Fails the Workers Who Need It

today Guild works with large employers in this country and increasingly states to help upskill, reskill, and redeploy their workers.

Many businesses

still offer tuition reimbursement.

but one of the problems with tuition reimbursement is that any individual must have that money in their pocket or in their bank account before they can actually go to utilize a program and then they need to wait to get reimbursed on the back end. And that works really well when you have material savings, when your earnings are increasing constantly

And for most

Right.

Americans, that tuition reimbursement model actually doesn't work.

Helping some of the America's largest employers turn education and reskilling into a real business strategy and impact. In our conversation, we explore numerous examples, including how one healthcare organization saved $100 million by creating better career pathways. We talk about the story of a single mother who earned her degree and was promoted to VP just weeks later. Bijal touches on why we believe

The AI revolution makes investing in people more important, not less. This conversation, friends, is about performance, possibility, and the moral courage to invest in people before disruption leaves them behind.

Bijal I'm so excited to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast and tell the story of Guild and the impact it's making in the world.

I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Ashish.

I would say that my story for joining Guild is pretty personal and very much focused on a few things that happened in my own life. And so I'll share a few of those. But

Yeah.

My mom had gotten her education in India and moved over to the US after marrying my husband. My dad, ended up getting a degree in chemical engineering and then they both moved to Houston. And my dad ended up getting a job in oil and gas, and he worked on the shop floor and on the

manufacturing lines for producing drilling equipment for oil and gas. And my mom worked at EDS, electronic data systems as a data entry analyst. My mom ended up losing her job to automation. and she's probably

Mm.

one of the smartest people that I know. And it took her forever to find a new job. And when she finally did, it was because someone in the Indian community

had an opening for a front office receptionist at a doctor's office. And at this point she just needed a job. We needed additional income in the household. And so she took whatever job she could get and that's the job she did for the next almost 30 years. My dad, on the other hand, worked in oil and gas and as I mentioned, worked on the, you know, on the production line and in manufacturing.

And he lost his job three times while I was in elementary school, middle school, and then once I went to college. And watching your parents, you know, lose their jobs and feel like they can't contribute to the household like really hard thing to watch. And I wish that they both had had access to education.

Skilling, reskilling. They're super smart people. They're extremely hardworking. And they just didn't have the means to invest in kind of reinventing themselves or getting additional skills and capabilities to be able to apply for additional jobs. And then I ended up going to college and I went to college. I got really lucky. I ended up going to Penn

through a series of honestly like luck and incredible events and realizing that the school would pay most of my tuition and I wouldn't have been able to go there otherwise. And what I realized and and going to Penn kind of changed changed the trajectory of my life.

Hmm.

it changed the social capital I had, it changed what I thought was possible, it changed what I had access to, who I had access to

what I thought I could learn, how I thought I could learn. I believe everybody deserves that. I believe everybody deserves that kind of access and

Yeah.

that kind of opportunity. and really I wish my parents had that and they didn't. and so it the passion and my own experience with what education and reskilling and skilling could unlock or not unlock is kind of what drove me to come to Guild

well, such a beautiful story. And so true with so many people, right? There is this notion of we learn, till we are in school and college. And you know, for a big chunk of the world, learning seems to stop. and then you work.

Right. And what we know to be true, it's always been true historically, but what we've always known to be true, especially in today's world, is if you're not continuously learning and upskilling and reskilling, I think it's really hard to to hold on, to your job, to really flourish, to really grow. worse, you might lose your job, and that has the huge impact on your well-being and the well-being of others. So

I think that's totally right.

It's really amazing.

I think what you talked about is so true, right? We've historically been in a a society where it's like you go to school or learn things until a certain age and then you stop. And you know, Ashish, I grew up in a family where like nobody really learned how to swim. And literally this summer, I started a swimming class, an adult swim class. and

Yes, it is it's really hard. I was scared of the water. I had a lot of like pent up fear, I think, around getting in the water, what it is like to swim, what it would feel like to put my head underwater. a lot of very elementary things for most people. and one of the things that pushed me to do it, there were two things. One is I'm just surrounded by a lot of people are getting older and they are looking for low impact ways to get

Yep.

workouts and cardio. And I was like, well, I should probably figure this out before it's like too late. But the second reason is I think you think you're not capable of learning things as you get older or that the barrier to entry or the hurdle is too high. And I think one of the best things people can do for themselves is to actually push themselves to learn new things. It's so

That's right.

gratifying. it shows how resilient the human spirit is and how much we're capable of.

and I think in this era that we're living in now it's probably more important than ever.

Yeah. And talking about aging, I think one of the biggest things that research finds is those who continuously learn actually, our brain, just like our physical, those who work out, who strength train or cardio, age is just a number, right? You can actually have a much higher lifespan.

Combined with a high health span, same is the story about our cognitive. If we are learning, if we are pushing our brain, we're picking something new all the time, we actually reduce cognitive decline. We reduce the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. and it is it is something that really I think I feel it should truly be you know, it should be a right of everybody to be able to get the resources to actually continue learning. It shouldn't, and it should to a large extent be an obligation.

for companies to be able to create those kind of opportunities for people.

I think that's right. I think if you look at, Singapore is a very small country, but if you look at what Singapore does for their citizens and for the individuals who live there, they are very focused on how do we fund continuous learning for our employees or for our citizens so that they can continue to grow and thrive.

Yeah.

I think there's obviously different models and they vary by geography and country. but they took a very innovative approach for how they were gonna make sure

That their society had a continuous learning mindset.

and that's where your platform comes in. So for our listeners who might not be familiar with Guild, I have to say I didn't know about Guild till about four or five years ago. talk to me a little bit and you know, just explain to those who are listening what is Guild, what's the problem that you all are trying to solve in the world with it.

I'll talk a little bit about what Guild is today, and then I'll back up and share a little bit more about our origin story because I think it's helpful

Please.

on the evolution. today Guild works with large employers in this country and increasingly states to help upskill, reskill, and redeploy their workers. and we do that through broad access, through a broad broad a platform that provides broad access.

To education, skilling, and career pathways. And our work is very much focused on how do we make sure we help people understand what the pathways are inside of their organization, how they might get from point A to point B, and how do we use what has historically been a benefit inside of the business, which are education benefits, and redeploy them in a way that is both good for the employer but also good for the worker.

and so that is where our business is today and what we focus on. the origins of the business, and the credit goes to the founder of Guild. there's actually two co-founders, Rachel Romer and Britt Stitch. And the credit goes to the two of them who saw a need in the market. So historically, employers did provide access to education benefits. It came in the form of something called tuition reimbursement. Many businesses

still offer tuition reimbursement. I think your prior company offers tuition

Uh-huh.

reimbursement. but one of the problems with tuition reimbursement is that any individual must have that money in their pocket or in their bank account before they can actually go to utilize a program and then they need to wait to get reimbursed on the back end. And that works really well when you have material savings, when your earnings are increasing constantly

And when life doesn't get in the way. And for most

Right.

Americans, that tuition reimbursement model actually doesn't work. And so what we ended up realizing is that tuition reimbursement disproportionately benefits those who could probably already access education themselves and actually discriminates against those who probably need it the most. That's changing now because of what AI is doing to disrupt knowledge workers

Yep.

and the workforce more broadly.

but the core bones of that then led to us creating a pretty innovative model where employees don't have to incur out-of-pocket costs. we have a win-win-win model, which means that employers pay as you're successful. learning institutions get access to learners and workers who are motivated and excited to complete programs.

and we are in the mix to help make sure that folks get supported along the way through our support and coaching services. And so it's been a really great evolution for the purpose behind ensuring that access to opportunity exists everywhere and not just in silos or pockets.

It is so true. I'd never thought about it this way. in a in a world where people don't have, I think the number is either thirty or forty percent of the working Americans don't even have four hundred, fifty or five hundred dollars in their bank account to cover, you know, if the car breaks down, how are they gonna pay ten, twenty thousand dollars towards a degree and then wait for six months? right, to to get reimbursed or longer.

if you don't go into a degree program, you know, a high fidelity credential program. So there's a lot of shorter form programs that you can take. They still cost several thousand dollars. And your stat is right.

Yeah.

The average American has less than three hundred and fifty dollars in their bank account.

Yeah. So really beautiful origin stories. and so if you're a company, right? If you're a company CEO listening to this, how does the program actually work, Bijal And they say, Wow, I'm I think I would like to make this. I offer tuition reimbursement, but I would like to actually harness the power of what Guild does. what does what does that look like?

Yes.

I love this question. I love bringing things down into a pragmatic place. So you probably do have a tuition reimbursement program. I think it's something like 90% of employers in this country have some form of tuition reimbursement. how it's being processed can vary widely, but there is some form of this that probably exists inside of your business. the way that it works for us is we very much

start with what business problem the employer is trying to solve. Our goal is to make sure that the access to this benefit both drives business outcomes, but also drives worker outcomes. And you can only do that if you better understand the business problems that an employer is trying to solve. And so we start with what are those business problems and how do the talent problems line up.

Or the opportunities line up to what those business problems or business outcomes are. and then we use that talent strategy to then determine how are we gonna go about offering a set of programs, a broad array of programs, or a very narrow set of programs that actually drive the business outcomes you are looking for. And so we work with employers who offer five programs in their catalog because they have very specific.

Critical jobs they want to fill inside

Mm-hmm.

their organization. And they want as many workers to go into those pathways as possible. And then we have other employers who are like, I'll offer 300 programs or 500 programs to my employee base because I really just care about them learning, upskilling, reskilling. And even if they don't stay at my organization, I know that I invested that in them in a way that they can go get a job somewhere else.

And in some future way they'll contribute back to my business. And so it kind of depends on both the ethos of the business, I would say to some degree the culture of the business, and then what their willingness is and their ability is to spend on their employees. but we really do start with what's the business problem you're trying to solve, how does that ladder up to what the talent strategy is, and then how can we unlock that talent strategy with the work that we do as an organization.

So can you bring it to life for me in the example of a case study of an employer? and you know, what were they solving for? What was the business challenge? What was the program like? And in the end, what was the net benefit from this investment that they were already making or were already making available that resulted for it?

Yeah, I won't dive into the full stack of one

Yeah.

employer because they also view this as kind of proprietary to their business and what they're doing. But what what I can do is kind of talk through examples of different types

Sure.

of organizations and what they do. so let's say let me j I'll give you kind of a broad range. You know, we work with companies like Target, Disney, UC Health, JP Morgan Chase, Hilton, Pepsi, Tyson, Walgreens. You can see the spectrum. We cover

70% of the industry is covered by the US economy. And so you

Wow.

could be a health system that needs our help. you could be a large telecom company that needs our help. You could be a leading automotive manufacturer in this country and use our services. and so we really do cover the gamut of the types of employers we work with.

but what would happen first is we would sit down with one of those three archetypes and say, what are your business problems? If you're a health system, your biggest problem is probably twofold. One is you can't retain the healthcare workers you have in seat today. And two, you can't

Yep, attrition is very high.

Yep. And two, you can't find enough healthcare workers to fill the critical jobs you have in your organization.

Which then means you can't service the beds that you need to service because you don't have the shift coverage that you need. and so we would work with that healthcare employer to be like, what are the pathways that are most critical to you? How do we make sure we drive a program that's gonna deliver retention? and how

Mm-hmm.

do we also make sure that that retention leads to filling those critical jobs? So for one healthcare employer in particular, we improved retention rates among nurses.

Which is one of their most critical roles,

Sure.

in a way that ultimately ended up reducing their contract labor costs and allowed them to save a hundred million dollars. And all because we designed a program that helped people clearly see pathways from where they were today into nursing, and along that journey that both led to retention as well as filling critical jobs.

that's a true win win win, right? Like it enables people to be able to get into that role. It solves a challenge, right, for the business. and you probably helped fill seats for a university as well, right? Like who actually has great programs, you know, enrollment is down across many universities and they're trying to like cut staff or like faculty and figure out what to do. and yet it's right in front of us the opportunity.

It's totally in front of us. I do think academic institutions and learning institutions need to innovate and keep pace with what the workforce needs. I

Yeah.

think that's probably one of the biggest challenges to solve, but we are bringing the demand to the table in an aggregated way and being very clear about what these workers need and what their employers need in a way that I think is super helpful for even learning institutions because otherwise the demand is fragmented and the sign

making sense of signal versus noise is really hard. And in this way by aggregating demand, you actually are making it much easier to be like, there are a set of employers, not one employer that you're beholden to, that is really interested in these types of programs. And here's what needs to happen to make them available. I'll give you a really good example. We work with Walgreens. There's a 5,000 person pharmacy shortage in this country.

there is a very obvious answer to getting more pharmacists. It's to take pharmacy techs who are already working inside that pharmacy and build a pathway to them becoming pharmacists. well, those programs don't really exist in our country, and learning institutions are happy to create programs, but not if the supply is or the demand is going to be lumpy.

Not if the demand is going to be here one day but go away the next day, and not if the demand is concentrated in one organization because it puts a lot of risk in their business around

Sure.

capital deployed, building new programs, etc. And so we were able to go RFP, the first of its kind program in this country that helps people go from pharm start into pharmacy pathways. and we got our learning institutions involved and said we can generate demand.

there's a need for this across employer types. and we want to work with you on this. We also brought a leading pharmacy retailer to the table so that they could participate in the process of designing this program so that we actually delivered outcomes. And it hasn't been perfect. we have had to learn along the way where are the gaps in pharmacy tech's competencies and capabilities. How do we bolster their math and reading?

so that they can successfully complete programs to actually be on a pathway to becoming a pharmacist.

You know what I love about that example, that you highlight, Bijal is there are so many jobs, there's so many gaps that exist, right, today. There are skill shortages. there are real challenges that companies are struggling with. And I think there's a real opportunity to kind of rather than say this is how it is, I see it in data centers, right?

Yeah.

I see it in manufacturing jobs.

I see it in in this in the trade and the skills area so much. And I think this notion of any place where you're like you don't have enough people, I think the trained people to go do this, I think it's an invitation to step back and say how as an industry might we solve this challenge and how can actually Guild act as hey, come help us figure this out as an industry tying with universities and actually even can we create a solve where none exists today?

Or where individuals solving for it on their own.

And it's our one of our favorite things to do. I just gave you that example of pharmacies, but we also have a shortage of advanced maintenance technicians in this country to talk about

Sure.

advanced manufacturing. and we in order to get people into those jobs, they need a specific type of training that combines their electrical chain training with robotics training, or they need hydraulic training because what is required to

service maintenance on an advanced manufacturing line just requires more technical capabilities. and you can't go find those people. They don't exist because we're hit entering a new era of manufacturing. And so the only option is to build. if you think about like build partner buy, like you need to build these capabilities. And you also need to work with these institutions to build them. I think

Aggregating demand and then figuring out what the solve is is probably one of the most efficient ways to help actually move both learning institutions in this country forward, but also help employers fill critical roles and redeploy workers. We're we're spending a lot of time in the macro headlines talking about AI disruption, workers getting laid off, the mass amounts of layoffs that's maybe coming, probably coming. And

What I think is there are very pragmatic things we could do tomorrow to help solve these and help learners actually redeploy into new areas of an existing business or into new businesses.

Mm-hmm.

But it does require the infrastructure and kind of collective action to come together to help make this happen.

So I'm sure you have hundreds of these stories, if not thousands. bring to life this concept of an impact it can have on an individual through a story of a learner who went through a program like this that changed their life.

Yeah, I'll give you two stories because we focus on, you know, we offer a wide variety of programming. And I think sometimes people get fixated on like a degree or not a degree. And I we offer actually a wide variety of learning. And so I'll give you two very tangible examples of learners

Hmm.

and what it's done for them.

The first is a woman who worked at one of our financial services institutions that we service. she was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. she came here and English was a second language. She actually started college and then dropped out of college. she's a full-time job, a single mom. and one of her

mentors had said to her, like, hey, if you want to continue to grow, being able to demonstrate your ability to master multiple competencies would be really valuable. And so it'd be great if you could go back and get your bachelor's degree, which she had never completed. And so she went through Guild. she found a program that aligned with kind of where she was trying to go inside of her employer, as well as one that aligned with

what she hoped to do next. And

Mm-hmm.

she had to balance being a single mom, working a full-time job, and getting her degree. And one of the greatest things about her going through this was one, she was like, it renewed my confidence in I can do this because I had failed previously trying to do this. the second thing that

Wow.

happened is she earned her degree this past June and she got promoted three weeks later.

into a VP job. and it's like such a material impact. And one of the things she said is like a degree is not just a paper. People talk about it as like, you have this piece of paper. And she said, it's not that. It's a confidence builder and it helps, it holds what I was capable of doing. It is a signal of what she is capable of doing. And I think sometimes we lose track of why people need that.

Why it matters, what that degree represents for people. And so that's one example that I think is very tangible of someone

Yeah.

taking on an opportunity. The second example I'll give you is of a woman who she actually worked at one of our healthcare partners. And she is someone who really wanted to get into a patient facing role inside of the organization.

and she really wanted to become a medical assistant inside of the cardiology division at this employer partner that we work at. She wanted to do cardiology because her mom has cardiac issues and she was like, if I learn this, I can both be helpful to my mom and

Wow.

I can actually pursue this. And so she completed

what we call a med certs program. So a medical assistant certificate program that gives her the ability to become a medical assistant. It allows her to know the terminology and diagnosis and to like show up at the job confidently. And so it's great. After finishing this program, she moved into a higher paying MA role, which means her salary went up and she gets to contribute faster towards

something that is super important to her, which is becoming a fully licensed medical assistant. So those are two examples, two very different industries, and two clear impacts of confidence that it builds for the employee, wage gain that happens because someone goes through these programs, and contributing into the business in a way where now that medical assistant can help service more patients, which drives more revenue for this employer partner.

I love both of those stories because they show the power when someone says, I believe in you enough

Yes.

to truly invest in your future.

And let me make it available to you here and now, right? Rather than you have to leave your job, you have all of these things that get in the way, right? In particular, your story of the single mom. There are so many individuals, right, who are kind of navigating such complicated situations. They're stuck in these jobs that you know are dead in jobs because they don't have the resources and the ability to kind of invest, right?

I think about my mom. She was a front office worker for the next basically 25 years of her career. She knew every medical code. She could tell recite to you what code it was as fast as possible because she was capable of doing way more than that. And kudos to the doctor who gave her a job. we needed it as a family, and we will always be grateful.

Yeah.

But she also was capable of so much more.

and probably could have become a professional medical coder and made way more money than she made doing the front office job she had, but didn't have access to a pathway. not just like didn't know how to get there is the first problem. And then the second would have been funding. How do I fund getting this done? knowing that I don't have the resources myself.

Well, it just brings it to life for me and a massive opportunity, right? So two people, one of I think you might know both of them, but of course Angela, right, and I collaborate a lot around the win-win workplace pieces. But somebody else who I've really loved the work of and we are collaborating quite closely now is Zeynep Ton at MIT. Right.

I love Zeynep yeah.

And so this if I think about this notion of

There are forty fifty million Americans making nineteen thousand seven fifty from their primary employer. They're stuck in these two, three jobs. There are many of them, single moms, single parents, trying to just put food on the table. And they're stuck in this because they don't have the time or the resources, right? And they are these all these frontline jobs which have high attrition. And I think what an opportunity to actually be able to cross skill, train people up, give them pathways.

So that they can actually move up, they can move into different roles. You're gonna keep them around and it's truly a win-win environment, right? And so, if there's any people who are listening who are QSRs, deploy a frontline, look into this as an opportunity. You have a nutrition problem. Look at this as an opportunity to actually upskill, reskill, implement some of these systems that allow you to really solve a business challenge, but by actually helping the people who work in your place flourish.

automated ticketing systems and didn't need data entry analysts to be taking paper tickets and compute and putting them into a system. We are in like a new era of automation and agentic workflows,

Yeah.

which means that workers will get disrupted. And the best way to prepare them is to make sure that they have the skills and capabilities before they leave your workforce.

so that they can be redeployed and hired into other industries and other jobs. and I think that conversation isn't happening enough. and so even

Yeah.

if you don't have a problem with attrition of your own workforce, if you are thinking about resizing your workforce, if you are thinking about not growing the size of your workforce, which I've heard many CEOs say, there is something you can do to help make sure that Americans can transition.

As this major economic transition happens.

I couldn't agree more with you. I think this notion of, many organizations and leaders have forgotten the core premise of why businesses got started, right? They got started to solve a problem, to create value, purpose mattered. and unfortunately, I think people have gotten into a zero-sum game around right, profits over people and purpose.

and there's an invitation, especially as we navigate this current challenge, right? Even if you don't have a nutrition challenge and you're laying people off, think about the role you have to actually give people an opportunity, right, to be able to kind of reskill, to be and maybe they can find it within your own organization. But if not, you're at least letting them off into the world with with a parachute rather than, you know, just dropped from the plane and figured it out.

Yeah, We have employers who offer nursing pathways, who have no business. You would look at their business and be like, Why are they offering this pathway? And their thesis is the following, which I think aligns with Zeynep but and aligns with what you said, which is their thesis is if these individuals go on to get jobs in nursing and they are contributing to the local economy, they will come back as a customer.

into my business. and it drives loyalty. Like you hear the stories of these employees being like, I feel indebted to my employer. I will always be grateful to Chipotle for the investment that they made. Chipotle just celebrated their 10 years of having this program called Cultivate Education. And I posted on LinkedIn about it and the stories I got back

From people to be like, this program changed my life. I was working at Chipotle. I ended up pursuing a bachelor's program that then led to a law degree. And now I do the following. all kinds of stories. I'm now the general manager of a Chipotle store, and here's what's happening. And so just hear these incredible stories of what people have done, or just being grateful back to their employer for investing in them in this way.

Well, my friend, really excited. Thank you for being, really taking the torch forward of scaling this amazing, amazing offering. You know, one of the things we've tried to do in this podcast is tell stories from researchers. So we had Zeynep and Angela on our podcast, you know, research that can actually help us create flourishing workplaces and through that flourishing lives. we've had stories of people who are providing solutions.

And I think this is definitely one of my favorite solutions that you know, companies and employers can bring to their employees in a way that is truly win-win-win, As you said, like this is not a split the pie benefit that is truly a grow the pie benefit. Everybody benefits, communities benefit, employees benefit, of course, you know, employers and the shareholders benefit. So thank you for what you're doing.

we'll end with my last question to you. Imagine if you have a leader who's listening to all of this, right? And they want to build a high-performing organization where people thrive. What are three things you would invite them to start thinking about tomorrow? Or what are three questions you would want them to go and ask somebody else in their organization so they can realize the benefit of this?

I think a few things. One is really understanding what high performance means inside of your organization and getting clear on that, I think is really important. The second thing from my perspective is I think it's really important to show, not tell. And I do think this is a place where leaders get it wrong. Honestly, even I get it wrong sometimes.

Which is like you have to demonstrate what high performance looks like across your organization and then reward that high performance in the right way. And like I think about it even in the context of the work Guild does with employers, which is like I think individuals who show this kind of tenacity and curiosity, like they want to win. and so understanding better, like showing examples of like what it means to win, how people can win.

and what it takes to win, I think is really important. You think about this single mom, she is working full time, she's managing a household and a family, and she's trying to deliver her homework for her degree program. she's firing on all cylinders. that takes a lot of grit and a lot of persistence. and then the last thing I would say that I think is really important is investing in your people.

I think whether that pays off inside of your own organization or pays off in your community or pays off in the long run to their loyalty to you, I think it matters. And I think what you said before is real, which is we have lost sight of the value business can provide to driving our democracy and to creating a society where everyone benefits, and we all have a role to play in that. and business leaders in particular.

I think it's getting harder and harder to focus on that, but finding the moral courage to focus on it, I think is super important.

Thank you, my friend. Thank you for joining. Thank you for the powerful work you're doing. grateful to call you a friend and be in the same state and city with you.

Yeah, same. Thank you.