TELUS Transforms New Employee Training and Onboarding Process With AvayaLive(TM) Engage


BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Jun 12, 2012) -

  • TELUS Collaboration House -- based on AvayaLive Engage -- increases efficiency and satisfaction while lowering costs of training new employees
  • TELUS finds improved employee engagement during onboarding translates to better attitudes towards the company and faster time to full productivity
  • TELUS plans to launch Collaboration House in additional languages based on success in training more than 900 new employees in less than a year

Avaya today announced that TELUS, a leading Canadian telecommunications service provider, has transformed its new employee training and onboarding program with TELUS Collaboration House. The TELUS Collaboration House, built on AvayaLive™ Engage, is driving significantly higher satisfaction, better attitudes and faster time to productivity from new employees with greater efficiency and lower costs.

AvayaLive Engage, formerly known as web.alive, is a web-based, immersive collaboration environment that enables participants to use personalized avatars in a 3D environment to participate in online meetings, distance learning, training and recruiting.

TELUS continues to expand and hire new employees as part of its national growth strategy. With previous methods of training producing less than optimal results, the company needed to find a way to relieve the cumbersome task of scheduling and significant investments in time, travel and facilities.

Using AvayaLive Engage, TELUS built the Collaboration House -- a more cost-effective, efficient means to bring new employees into the company and get them excited and productive early in the employee lifecycle. Since June 2011, more than 900 new TELUS employees have been trained and on-boarded through the Collaboration House and satisfaction rates have skyrocketed. The program has been so successful that TELUS Collaboration House will soon launch a French version for new employees in Quebec.

AvayaLive Engage provides a full range of business tools, including audio and videoconferencing, customizable and easy to use presentation and graphics "containers," document sharing and white boarding capabilities. Participants can join from any PC or Mac located anywhere they can get an Internet connection.

Supporting Quote:
"As a growing company, it's critical that new employees are enthused and ready to work, and that their new employee training is a pleasant experience. AvayaLive Engage has provided the collaborative environment we needed to accomplish this. The new employee onboarding experience has been very positive overall and effective in avoiding the need for group face-to-face meetings."
Andrew Turner, vice-president, Performance Culture, TELUS

Additional Resources:
Visit AvayaLive Engage demo environment -- http://demo.avayalive.com

About TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T) (TSX: T.A) (NYSE: TU) is a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, with $10.5 billion of annual revenue and 12.7 million customer connections including 7.4 million wireless subscribers, 3.5 million wireline network access lines and 1.3 million Internet subscribers and more than 550,000 TELUS TV customers. Led since 2000 by President and CEO, Darren Entwistle, TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video.

In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $260 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 4.2 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Eleven TELUS Community Boards across Canada lead TELUS' local philanthropic initiatives. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition.

For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.

About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in business communications and collaboration, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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Contact Information:

Media Inquiries:
Deb Kline
908-953-6179
klined@avaya.com