84.51° Achieves Focused, Data-Driven Learning with Degreed

As a leader in data science and analytics, 84.51° prioritized a strong culture of learning in topics that directly impact the company’s data scientists. An onboarding bootcamp for recent college graduates hired into data science roles, for example, was highly regarded and well-supported by the business.

As the data science organization grew, however, these L&D efforts faced critical challenges in scaling and evolving. 84.51° needed to align everyday learning to the company’s strategic objectives.

Obstacles to learning included:

• A fragmented learning ecosystem. Learning content for data scientists was scattered across multiple systems and repositories, making it hard for associates to find relevant resources that they could trust. 
• An inconsistent skill taxonomy. The company’s data science, engineering, product, and client solutions teams used differing terminologies for similar skills, creating barriers to cross-functional collaboration, internal mobility, and workforce agility.
• Underutilized skill data. While associates provided self-assessments of their skills, this data remained largely untapped, limiting the learning team’s ability to identify skill gaps, prioritize development initiatives, and measure progress effectively.
• A need for targeted learning guidance. Broad-based learning communications did not provide associates with specific role-based learning guidance, making it difficult to navigate available opportunities and align learning efforts with business needs.

“We realized we had the tools and culture to do so much more with learning, but the fragmented systems and lack of actionable data made it difficult to create meaningful impact,” said Michael Carrico, Data Science Learning & Development Director at 84.51°. “We needed to embrace our company’s own data science DNA for L&D—to articulate what skills we need to develop, get really clear on roles and responsibilities, and then tie learning directly to our new insights.”

The company was already using Degreed largely as a front door to enterprise learning. But the learning team—recognizing the importance of data to a company like 84.51°—knew the platform could enable much more.

84.51° reimagined its approach to data science learning. To align learning with existing and emerging corporate strategies, data science sunset homegrown, siloed learning systems and supercharged its engagement with Degreed. This meant unlocking the power of skill data, overhauling and unifying skill taxonomies, orchestrating more effective learning plans, boosting engagement and collaboration, and increasingly measuring change.

Aligning Learning with Corporate Strategy

To help associates meet business goals—and to further help them prioritize their development—84.51° introduced quarterly learning themes tied directly to corporate priorities. Each focused on a key business objective, such as reducing cloud costs or adopting new AI technologies.

In doing so, the L&D team developed targeted learning plans within Degreed for practitioners and leaders. For example, leadership-focused sessions on financial operations were designed to equip decision-makers with strategies for optimizing cloud-based cost dashboards. To drive engagement, data science introduced 84.51° Degrees, a gamified badging program that incentivized participation and reinforced key learning outcomes.

Unlocking the Power of Skill Data

Using the Degreed API, L&D unlocked powerful data-driven insights, enabling the development of tools for analyzing skill ratings and building role-specific learning Plans. Calibrating associate self-ratings against newly established internal benchmarks gave managers a clearer comparison—and more actionable view—of skill levels across teams and roles.

L&D also implemented targeted learning communications based on individual skill interests and gaps. For instance, associates who identified “Apache Spark” as a priority skill received curated learning recommendations. In addition, L&D used skill data to identify internal subject-matter experts, to advance peer-to-peer learning, and to strengthen knowledge sharing across the organization.

“Whether you want to upskill in Spark, or if you’re a new hire, or if you want to shore up your technical foundations or switch from, say, the client side or the engineering side of the business, we can now say ‘These are the building blocks to do it,’” Carrico said. “And we can surface that same training everywhere. So you get that consistency of content regardless of what your end goal is.”

Overhauling and Unifying Skill Taxonomies

84.51° refreshed its skill taxonomies across major functions—including data science, engineering, product, and client solutions.

L&D first identified inconsistencies in skill naming and categorization that created barriers to career mobility. The team then standardized skill language to reflect both internal needs and industry benchmarks—to enable employees to communicate their expertise internally and externally in ways that match industry norms. The revised taxonomy was then loaded into Degreed and tied directly to learning Pathways, ensuring employees had clear development plans for every key skill.

“L&D can’t know everyone anymore,” Carrico said. “Now that we have this information, we can be more targeted in our communications and then track that targeting on the back end. We can do much more, intelligently, and at scale.”

Orchestrating Learning Plans

L&D used Degreed to design and deliver more contextualized and relevant learning experiences tailored to specific skills, roles, and business needs. The team developed structured learning journeys combining internal expertise and external best practices. For example, foundational learning in Apache Spark was created as a standalone module and integrated into onboarding programs, to ensure new hires built critical skills from Day One.

To enhance relevance, L&D worked closely with Degreed Professional Services learning experience design experts. This collaboration informed a strategic shift; 84.51° prioritized developing proprietary content on company-specific methodologies while curating external resources for broader industry knowledge. Furthermore, the company digitized new-hire programs to ensure a consistent and high-quality onboarding experience, closing gaps where off-cycle hires had previously received less structured training.

Building Engagement and Collaboration

84.51° paired Degreed tools with creative strategies to encourage engagement and collaboration.

For example, L&D created “Training Day” opportunities, to enable associates to dedicate time to learning with synchronous support from trainers. In addition, the team began using the Degreed Opportunity Marketplace to replace legacy systems for mentorship, functional collaboration, and internal job rotations. L&D also promoted the Degreed browser extension, to get more employees to contribute external content directly into learning Pathways and enrich the company’s knowledge base.

Measuring Change

Embracing a more data-driven approach to demonstrating the impact of learning, 84.51° began to gauge the success of key initiatives. Learning leaders conducted assessments, using both qualitative and quantitative measures, to track progress in key areas such as associate engagement, content effectiveness, and the impact of programs like Training Days, quarterly goals, and badging.

Degreed enabled 84.51° to shift toward a more unified, data-driven, and business-aligned approach to learning among its data scientists—making the organization more prepared to adapt to future challenges.

“We’ve gained a lot of credibility and positive user feedback for the increase in quality of content we’ve put forth and the number of Pathways we’ve been able to produce that follow a higher standard. And we are putting out a lot more of them.” Carrico said, adding the company, using Degreed skill data, now has a more scalable and sustainable way to identify and engage.

With Degreed, 84.51° drove:

Actionable Insights

Dashboards allowed managers to benchmark skills, identify gaps, and connect with internal experts for peer-led learning. In one key 90-day stretch, managerial dashboards received more than 1,000 views by more than 40 data science leaders. 

More Program Efficiencies

The sunsetting of unnecessary systems reduced maintenance hours and employee fatigue associated with solution profusion, boosting associate engagement. Consolidated learning Pathways eliminated duplication, streamlined onboarding, and ensured consistent learning experiences across teams. The company is moving all new hires into active projects faster than ever and saving trainers time because a significant portion of onboarding coursework has become asynchronous.

These efficiencies included:

• 175 trainer hours saved annually for onboarding
• $40,000 in yearly, external training costs saved for one insourced training
• $1 million in technology savings from initiatives enabled by two Pathway-based trainings 

Higher Engagement and Satisfaction

Among the 266 data scientists in a new, 2024 badging program:

• 78% completed at least one quarterly badge
• 90% engaged in at least one badge
• 25% completed at least one badge in all quarters
• 678 total badges were completed 

In a poll, 98% of data scientists surveyed supported continuing the badging program.

Improved Leadership Development

The new curriculum drove badge completion rates across all levels between 70% to 90%. An impressive 81% of data science directors and 78% of data science vice presidents completed at least one badge in 2024.

Greater Innovation

Data scientists embraced badges in AI, data governance, machine learning operations, and more.

Better Risk Management and Mitigation

Data scientists pursued badges in data quality assurance, Spark performance tuning, responsible AI, FinOps, and more.

Workforce Agility

In 2024 (compared to 2023), data scientists completed:

• Two-and-a-half times the number of Pathways
• Three times the pieces of content
• Four times the Pathway minutes 

“With an increasing number of skills and employees, we can no longer count on knowing who is an expert and who needs upskilling in every skill. Skills and skill ratings are allowing us to better identify who can teach and who needs to learn,’ Carrico said. “In addition to strategic, company-wide priorities, we are now considering skill-specific needs and initiatives based on ratings and focused skill data coming directly from our employees.”

For senior data scientist Haley Mull, the Degreed Pathway-based “Spark Savings Supporter [badge] was incredibly useful for understanding how I could better optimize some of my jobs and how to track their spend/efficiency.”  Austin Herman, data science director, echoed this sentiment, saying that as a result, “I’ve been able to really drive down my team’s cloud spend.”

The 84.51° L&D team envisions a near future in which its Degreed-powered approach to better learning extends to all business functions including Product, Client Solutions, and Engineering, giving the company the muscle and mechanics to be ready for waves of change. This is key as artificial intelligence (AI) transforms all industries—especially data science—affecting not only the knowledge base 84.51° employees need to stay current, but also their growing mandate to embed AI into the company’s products.

“I have in my brain some AI use cases that I’m going to try to turn loose here,” Carrico said, adding the potential applications for retail are enormous, requiring constant agility. “I expect Degreed will be able to help with that.”

Future initiatives are likely to include:

• Role-based learning journeys: Developing role-specific Plans tied to the company’s skill taxonomy and powered by their Pathways for upskilling and career mobility.
• Mentorship programs: Using the Degreed Opportunity Marketplace to foster cross-functional mentorship and experiential learning.
• Further measuring ROI: Strengthening connections between learning initiatives and measurable business outcomes, such as productivity and cost savings.

The 84.51° badging program is expected to expand significantly. Leaders across the company have seen it succeed as it’s been centralized in Degreed, and they’re creating their own badge structures, Carrico said. “And as we think about the insights side of data science, if our client side is coming up with strategic thinking and retail acumen and commercial acumen, the entire organization can piggyback off that.”

“And so rather than us all having each of our own badges, we’re just going to share badges where it’s applicable. It’s encouraging a lot more collaboration between our cross-functional teams. It’s getting that consistency that I had pushed for in the taxonomy to come to life.”