Fostering an employee growth mindset at Taboola

Taboola is the world’s leading discovery and native advertising platform, serving 360 billion content recommendations monthly through exclusive partnerships with top publishers. As a growing company, Taboola knew they needed to implement an employee learning and development program and set forth to find the perfect solution for over 1,700 Taboola employees.

With a rapidly growing employee base, Taboola sought to introduce an L&D program that extended beyond managers and executives to address the challenges that employees were facing. Taboola’s L&D programs are overseen by the Talent Development team. In their search for the right solution, the team was looking for a platform that mirrored their own approach to growth, seeing it as a mindset more than a challenge.

Finding the right solution was a difficult task. Many of the development platforms were not scalable enough for Taboola’s rapid growth, ambitious L&D programs, and requirements of automated processes such as onboarding and expert-employee matching. Some of the experts might have been good if they were conveniently located near Taboola’s headquarters in Tel Aviv and New York City or its satellite offices around the world.

After an initial pilot with a coaching platform, Taboola decided to give Growthspace a try and run a 100-participant program focused on driving growth and development in the R&D department. Following the program’s success, Taboola implemented Growthspace for the organization as a whole, replacing the coaching platform. Now, Taboola was ready to provide its individual contributors and first-level managers with unique upskilling programs.

Growthspace’s comprehensive onboarding process, coupled with the involvement of participants’ direct managers, ensured that programs focused on the right skills for each participant. The AI-based algorithm closed the loop by matching each employee with the best-fit expert to help achieve their specific professional goals.

As part of the Growthspace methodology, feedback was automatically gathered from both participants and their managers in the middle and at the end of a program. The L&D team had access to oversee employees’ progress through a dedicated dashboard so they could ensure individuals were on track, and further optimize future programs based on their invaluable feedback. Managers also had access to a dashboard where they could track their employees’ progress. The time saved by the platform on launching and managing programs, and gathering feedback, allowed Taboola’s L&D team to focus on more advanced talent mapping, such as identifying rising stars and exemplary employees who were prime candidates for professional development. Since then, the company has had around 330 participants go through a Growthspace program and has increased the number of seats available for additional employees to participate.

• The six- to eight-week programs, called sprints, produce significant improvements in a short period of time.

• The real-time dashboard gives admins visibility into participants’ and programs’ progress and tools to ensure they are on track.

• The admin dashboard offers easy visibility and automated alerts to ensure no participants get overlooked during sprints.

• A pool of 2,000+ experts who speak 50 languages and cover 80+ areas of expertise means each employee is matched with the best-fit expert to achieve their professional goals, no matter where they are in the world.

• The automatic gathering of feedback and the flexibility of the metrics measured mean L&D teams can measure the value of their talent development efforts and prove their impact on the business.

• The platform’s scalability allows every employee to enjoy a personalized 1:1 experience no matter how big the company is.

Taboola (NASDAQ: TBLA) is the world’s leading content discovery and native advertising platform that recently launched publicly on the NASDAQ. Taboola is a global organization with resources spread across 24 sites worldwide and more than 1,700 employees. Taboola continues working on new technologies that will help people find what’s interesting and new wherever they are.