Events

INTRODUCTION

We recently launched new research on C-suite and people analytics (PA). This research aims to:

• Explore the types of challenges that PA can help address for C-suite leaders
• Highlight ways PA leaders can build successful partnerships with the C-suite
• Gain credibility to continue providing value in the future

To brainstorm this further, we invited a group of leaders to participate in our roundtable on this topic.

Our purpose is to better understand how people analytics can support C-suite execs to address talent-related challenges.

Our roundtable discussion focused on 4 key areas:

• Challenges. How can PA be of value to the C-suite and help them address challenges—both common and novel?
• Metrics. What kind of metrics should PA leaders focus on? How can they best drive change within the org using metrics?
• Partnership. How can we build a strong partnership between PA and the C-suite?
• Culture. How can we create / reinforce a data-driven culture to propel change in our org?

Mindmap of C-suite and PA Roundtable

The mindmap below outlines the conversations that transpired as part of this roundtable.

Note: This is a live document. Click on the window and use your cursor to explore it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

We had a very enriching conversation. The discussion highlighted ways people analytics can actively contribute to help address C-suite challenges, practical steps to gain credibility, and strategies to create a lasting impact. More broadly, participants expressed their ideas on 2 fronts:

• Strategies and practical steps for PA to showcase its value to the C-suite and the broader org
• Factors that PA needs to consider to maintain a strong relationship with the C-suite

Participants expressed ideas for PA to show its value and to gain influence among C-suite members—and sustain that for the long term.

A few key takeaways stand out from the discussion:

1. Metrics can serve as a conversation starter with the C-suite
2. Certain skills are key for PA leaders to influence the C-suite
3. Structural inefficiency can be a barrier to value delivery
4. Incremental steps can build credibility for PA
5. A strong partnership with the C-suite requires a balancing of priorities

The following sections offer an overview of each key takeaway.

Metrics can serve as a conversation starter with the C-suite

A frequently mentioned insight shared by participants was around using metrics as a means to spark conversations with execs about high-impact issues, rather than just providing metrics for the sake of providing them.

PA teams should lend themselves to decision-making instead of focusing on measurement.

Participants shared how the C-suite often becomes amazed by some of the simpler descriptive, tablestakes metrics: These can help PA get a foot in the door and gain the C-suite’s attention. Providing high-level descriptive metrics can lead to conversations with C-suite leaders intrigued by the “catchy” numbers which, in turn, will more likely engage them in dialogue with PA when they’re making important people decisions. As one participant explained:

A portion of the people analytics meetings with the C-suite should be about the high-level metrics and numbers. The more these metrics lead to questions, the more likely it paves the way for meaningful conversations.

Although these descriptive metrics can help PA get a foot in the door, participants agreed that they’re mostly useful in attracting the C-suite’s attention. The next-level metrics—that provide more value to the C-suite—are usually the same tablestakes, descriptive numbers but presented with more granularity.

PA can provide more value to the C-suite by linking tablestakes metrics with operational performance and business goals—by breaking down descriptives via different employee groups, etc., and using an intersectional framework.

When it comes to specific metrics, some of those that participants routinely share with their execs include:

• Tablestakes metrics—
  • Employee engagement
  • Turnover and retention
  • Recruitment metrics (e.g., headcount growth, hiring goals, current openings, etc.)
  • DEIB metrics
• Next-level metrics—
  • Objective data on employees
  • Operational performance metrics
  • Intersectional and group-specific metrics

Certain skills are key for PA leaders to influence the C-suite

During the discussion around ways PA can help address C-suite challenges, the conversation pivoted to highlight some of the skills that PA leaders need to enable them to better influence the C-suite. Some of the skills mentioned during this conversation include:

• Storytelling
• Courage
• Political skills / astuteness
• Relationship-building

C-suite leaders often don’t have enough time to dig into complex data and analyses—and here’s an opportunity for PA leaders. The following ideas from roundtable participants highlight the use of these 4 skills with the C-suite.

• Participants mentioned the need for PA leaders to be able to tell stories to facilitate communicating with the C-suite, apart from just presenting data. Storytelling can:
  • Convey data-driven insights in a more appealing way
  • Help C-suite leaders better understand the relevance of people data in making important decisions

As one participant stated:

“Storytelling is a way to see the forest through the trees—combatting anecdotal truths with data.“

• Participants highlighted the importance of PA leaders being courageous to more strongly call out significant findings when faced with doubt. This skill is especially useful, for instance, when leaders question the integrity of data and pose doubts about the findings.

Sometimes conversations with C-suite execs become circular—and courage is needed to bring attention to the situation and get to the truth.

• Political astuteness. Often, PA leaders need to manage a variety of stakeholders while influencing the C-suite’s decision-making. Understanding the “lay of the land” and using that to the PA function’s advantage is becoming increasingly important for PA leaders—to enable them to push up the chain of command and provide value through data.
• Relationship-building. Along with political astuteness, PA leaders also need to have strong relationship-building skills—empowering them to be better informed of what the C-suite considers as their biggest problems. This puts PA leaders in a better position to more accurately provide the insights needed by C-suite execs.

Structural inefficiency can be a barrier to value delivery

Among the many factors discussed in PA influencing the C-suite, participants indicated org structure as being critical. The appropriate placement of the PA function within an org is crucial for developing prominence, credibility, and sponsorship. Participants also highlighted that direct communication, feedback, and alignment with the C-suite are some of the outcomes of an ideal structural placement.

The proper placement of the PA function within an org can enhance the value that analytics can provide to the org, instead of being hidden away due to poor org structure.

One of the challenges of effectively building partnerships between PA and the C-suite is often the lack of open communication channels. Participants mentioned that navigating different functions (e.g., HR, finance, etc.) to get the information to the C-suite can create barriers and difficulty in providing value: It increases the chances of receiving inadequate information or data being interpreted out of context. Combatting this org structural inefficiency is key to successful PA and C-suite partnerships.

If information has to go through several functions to get to the C-suite, then this delivery system increases the likelihood of creating a bottleneck along the way.

Our discussion highlighted the need for direct communication channels to equip everybody with the people insights they need—without blinders—to make informed decisions.

Incremental steps can build credibility for PA

Throughout the discussion, participants mentioned several ways that PA can build credibility in order to help and influence C-suite challenges. Specifically, the need to take incremental steps was called out. Some of the basic steps that PA functions should focus on include:

• Figuring out the capabilities of PA (as more than just a reporting function)
• Becoming familiar with business needs and org goals
• Building out use cases to demonstrate the value
• Addressing data skepticism, myths, and anecdotes with facts
• Providing consistent results to build trust

When PA considers itself as a reporting function—taking orders and requests, they’re likely to be less influential. People analytics is brought into important company conversations when PA is clearer about their capabilities and proactively takes actions to solve C-suite challenges.

Having a clear vision of what PA provides—both now and for the future—helps PA move beyond being just a reporting function.

Participants also mentioned the need for PA to proactively understand the org's goals and to put that into context (for the C-suite) to help support business needs with important data and insights. PA can start small by building out specific use cases (e.g., providing managers with critical team productivity data) and enabling individuals to be data champions to demonstrate the value of analytics. As one of the participants stated:

PA has a reputation for sounding like witchcraft and wizardry—PA needs to debunk this stigma and enable individuals to be data gladiators.

People analytics can also build credibility by addressing any data skepticism and myths that hinder progress by providing quality data.

One participant shared an example of how they were able to dispel skepticism around their work policies by providing data which addressed leadership concerns that people weren’t productive working from home. Similarly, the PA function was able to offer concrete data that showed the risk of losing 33% of their female workforce if they didn’t offer a flexible work policy.

Consistently providing critical data that helps the C-suite make important and tough decisions can help in establishing and maintaining credibility.

A strong partnership with the C-suite requires a balancing of priorities

The roundtable discussion also touched upon the need for PA to be clear and transparent about their priorities in order to build a strong partnership with the C-suite. One way to do this is by pushing back on some of the low-value and low-impact requests from HR. The key to that, as one participant explained, is using the “push” approach—which involves PA identifying a key business issue and creating a cadence of sharing insights on it with the C-suite.

This approach can help build a lasting relationship instead of a delivery model that relies on a “pull” approach—waiting for the C-suite to pull PA into conversations or decisions—which isn’t realistic. As C-suite grapples with many competing priorities and challenges, they don’t know when, where, or how PA can provide value.

The push approach can be successful in building a strong partnership with the C-suite: PA identifies their internal customers and then asks those people questions they themselves might not be asking, thus increasing PA’s impact.

However, as some participants noted, push approaches can also build mistrust among C-suite execs. Finding the balance between push and pull approaches may be key to maintaining credibility and trust. As one participant offered, regarding C-suite execs:

PA should regularly ask, “How much do we want to push?”

Throughout the discussion, participants also mentioned other strategies that can go a long way in building a partnership with the C-suite, including:

• Using business language
• Keeping insights succinct
• Providing actionable recommendations

A SPECIAL THANKS

We're extremely grateful to the attendees who enriched the conversation by sharing their thoughtful ideas and experiences. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback at [email protected].

We've been witnessing rapid growth in the amount, types, and sources of learning content. There’s more learning content everywhere—inside and outside orgs; online and offline; on desktops and mobile devices; and in learning systems, shared folders, browsers, email, and chat platforms.  

It’s chaos.

L&D must help employees navigate this chaos, so they can find and consume the content that builds skills and drives outcomes that matter to the business. This infographic highlights key insights from our report, Learning Content: Embracing the Chaos, which introduced a new learning content model that helps learning leaders—and employees—make sense of the chaos. 

Click on the image below to get the full infographic. As always, we’d love your feedback at [email protected]! 

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movements, people analytics had an unexpected opportunity to shine. Technology played a more important role than before as people analytics team looked for ways to scale and provide deeper insights to leaders on their workforce, the majority of whom were working remotely. Our goal is to help people analytics leaders succeed in that endeavor and prepare for 2021.

Through this research, we wanted to understand:

• How did the people analytics tech vendor market change in 2020?
• What are the newest capabilities leaders need to know about?
• What should leaders be thinking about when making (or expanding) a people analytics tech investment?

This study is a culmination of nearly a year of qualitative and quantitative research, that included an online poll, a vendor survey, a customer poll, and over 40 vendor briefings and demos. This flipbook highlights the changes and trends from this year, the different capabilities offered by the vendors, and the questions potential technology buyers should consider before making or expanding their tech investments. We also suggest readers check our interactive, evergreen people analytics tech tool, for current vendor information.

Key Takeaways

1. Forward-thinking L&D functions make the chaos of learning content work for their orgs. Being overwhelmed by the surging quantities, types, and sources of learning content is yesterday’s news—but still today’s problem. Learning leaders are embracing the chaos and moving from providing content to enabling it, with an eye toward making more content available to all employees.
2. Learning leaders should ask 2 questions about learning content: 1) Is it specific to the org? 2) How long is its shelf life (How durable is it)? Thinking in these 2 dimensions—specificity and durability—can help L&D functions clarify their learning content strategy and priorities.
3. We developed a new model for learning content. From our conversations with forward-thinking learning leaders, we identified a model that breaks learning content into 4 categories (defined by the 2 dimensions of specificity and durability). This model can form the foundation of a learning content strategy that’s clear on priorities, roles & responsibilities, and areas of focus.
4. There are distinct actions L&D functions can and should take to improve their learning content strategies—and those actions change based on the 4-category model of learning content introduced in this report. We provide some suggestions for immediate and longer-term actions to take, as well as examples of real orgs implementing these ideas, to help learning leaders organize the chaos and better manage learning content overall.

Why Talk About Learning Content Now?

We’ve been witnessing rapid growth in the amount of learning content available to employees. This growth started decades ago, but it’s recently turned from a trickle to a flood. There’s more learning content everywhere—inside and outside orgs; online and offline; on desktops and mobile devices; and in learning systems, shared folders, browsers, email, and chat platforms. Is it any wonder that employees are overwhelmed and exhausted by the sheer volume of all that’s available?¹

Employees are overwhelmed and exhausted by the amount of learning content.

Employees feel like they’re drowning—and it’s L&D’s job to help them find and consume the content that builds skills and drives outcomes that matter to the business . To do this, L&D functions need well-crafted learning content strategies that support org learning and business strategies.

A learning content strategy should help L&D functions answer questions like:

• How will we decide what learning content to bring into the org?
• How will we identify—and help employees identify—learning content that’ll support our business and learning strategies?
• How and when will learning content be updated? By whom?
• How will we make the right learning content easily available to employees?
• What can we do immediately and in the longer term to improve employees’ ability to find and consume the learning content they need?

In this study—which included a lit review, roundtable, and interviews—we explored these questions. Through this research, we sought to identify the leading practices that orgs are using to help employees sift through the volume of learning content to find what’s right for them, when they need it.

L&D functions need well-crafted learning content strategies that support org learning and business strategies.

In the next section, we introduce the trends we uncovered as part of this study.

What’s Happening in Learning Content?

In the course of this research, we identified 4 trends in learning content that are helping shape the learning content strategies of forward-thinking orgs:

1. More types and sources of learning content
2. More enabling, less pushing of learning content by L&D functions
3. More (and better) use of skills data to inform learning content priorities
4. More access for all employees

In the following sections, we take a brief look at these 4 trends.

More types & sources of learning content

Not only is there more learning content in more places—but there are more types of content created by a wider variety of authors. Learning content used to be primarily created and controlled by L&D functions. Now, however, employees have access to:

• L&D function-created content
• Learning content created by subject-matter experts (SMEs)
• Company reports, policies, strategy docs, etc.
• Vendor-created learning content (custom or off the shelf)
• YouTube and other social media content
• Podcasts
• Conference notes, presentations, and videos
• Trade- or industry-specific content
• Learning content libraries (LinkedIn Learning, Udemy for Business, etc.)
• Subscriptions to learning content aggregators
• The entire internet

There’s not only more volume of content—there’s more types of content, in more places, created by a wider variety of authors.

And we know that’s not an exhaustive list.

The incredible volume, variety, and breadth of the learning content that’s available—over much of which L&D functions have limited control—complicate things for learning leaders and for employees.

Through our research, though, we found that learning leaders who’ve given this some thought don’t try to control the chaos. Instead, they embrace it—or, at least, they try to work with the reality that learning content is already complicated, and it’s only going to get bigger and more complex over time.

L&D functions can create systems, processes, and policies that help employees navigate the chaos of learning content.

Savvy learning leaders think about how to create systems, processes, and policies that help orgs and employees navigate through the chaos—rather than trying to tame the chaos itself (because that’s not gonna happen).

One learning leader noted:

“Learning functions need to recognize we never owned learning content in the first place, and we certainly don’t now. We need to embrace the chaos.”

Nick Halder, Senior Director of Talent, Snow Software

More enabling, less pushing by L&D functions

Given the increasing amount and variety of learning content out there, the move toward personalized development experiences, and the sheer variety of people in most orgs, it’s almost impossible for L&D functions to push the right content to the right people at the right time in the right format—all the time. There’s also a growing recognition that often the employee knows best—or at least has a good sense of—what they need to learn.

Learning leaders are thinking about how to enable employees to navigate to the right content themselves, rather than pushing content to employees.

Instead of trying to push learning content, L&D functions are thinking about how to enable employees to navigate to the right content themselves—by giving guidance and context about, for example, the org’s strategy and direction, skills that may be needed in the future, and how learning content is organized in the company. This guidance and context can create conditions that enable employees to find and consume learning content when and how they like, in ways that align with their needs and org goals.

More (& better) use of skills data to inform learning content priorities

Learning leaders we talked to noted that, in the past, L&D functions have sometimes pushed out learning content that wasn’t relevant or helpful to employees. These learning leaders see information about the skills employees and orgs need as a potential solution:

“Without insight into what skills are in demand and what skills people have, L&D tends to focus on the learning content we think people need. That’s rarely an effective approach.”

Participant, “New Trends in Learning Content & Content Management” Roundtable

Forward-thinking orgs are using information about the skills their workforce has and the skills it’ll need in the future to decide what learning content to prioritize. Learning leaders are making investments in learning content that can help close critical skills gaps.

Skills info can help orgs better understand what learning content to prioritize and invest in.

More access for all employees

In the last year or so, learning leaders have started taking a much closer look at how accessible learning content really is in their orgs: They’re recognizing the importance of making learning content more widely available to close skills gaps—and to help the business stay agile, responsive, and competitive.²

Three ways learning leaders can improve access include:

• Removing artificial barriers. Sometimes orgs give employees access to learning content on a “need-to-know” basis. But this logic creates unnecessary boundaries that could be removed unless they’re strategically justified—for example, intellectual property, safety / security, cost, or some other significant reason.
• Making learning content more discoverable. Sometimes great learning content is hidden in pockets or silos within the company. Orgs can find ways of making learning content easier to discover by implementing organization standards and really good search capabilities. They can also create a culture of discovery by removing unnecessary passwords and encouraging employees to poke around.
• Making learning content accessible on mobile. Learning content doesn’t just live on desktops anymore. Employees, particularly frontline workers, need access on their phones. This often means rethinking accessibility to LMSs or LXPs, as well as thinking mobile-first when creating new learning content.

Forward-thinking orgs are exploring ways to make learning content transparent, accessible, and appealing to all employees.

In brief

These 4 trends are currently shaping the learning content environment. In this research, we sought to understand how learning leaders are navigating these trends—and how these trends affect their goals, focus areas, challenges, and strategies for learning content.

We developed a learning content model that can help orgs think through their learning content strategies.

This inquiry resulted in a model that can help orgs think through their learning content strategies and make better decisions about where L&D functions should focus their time and resources. The next section introduces and explores this learning content model.

A Model for Thinking About Learning Content

We looked for similarities and differences between learning leaders’ approaches to learning content—and noticed that the learning leaders we spoke with take very different approaches to learning content based on 2 factors (or dimensions) of the learning content they’re working with:

• How unique the learning content is to their org (specificity). Are leaders dealing with learning content that applies specifically to their company or content that applies across orgs?
• The shelf life of the learning content (durability). Are leaders thinking mostly about learning content that needs to be updated rarely, or learning content that’s continually changing and regularly in jeopardy of being out of date? (Note: Long vs. short shelf life may differ from industry to industry and company to company. But, in general, we consider durable learning content to last 1 or more years without needing to be updated.)

If we plot learning content against these 2 dimensions (specificity and durability), then the content generally falls within 1 of the following 4 categories:

1. Specific & Durable. Learning content that’s specific to 1 org and has a long shelf life
2. Specific & Perishable. Learning content that’s specific to 1 org but changes often
3. Generic & Perishable. Learning content that applies to many orgs and changes often
4. Generic & Durable. Learning content that applies to many orgs and has a long shelf life

The learning content model, introduced in Figure 1, outlines these 4 categories and provides examples of some common topics that each category tends to cover.

Learning leaders might consider using this model to clarify the L&D function’s (and other stakeholders’) focus areas and roles regarding learning content. When we gave one learning leader—who happens to sit in a central L&D team within a federated system—a sneak peek at this model, he said:

“I like this model because it can help our L&D teams think about who owns what content. L&D sometimes tries to be all things to all people, but that’s not possible. In my company, we’re starting to be much more intentional about where each of our respective L&D teams are best-suited to play.”

John Z., Head of Digital Learning & Design, Global Medical Devices Company

Figure 1: Learning Content Model | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Let’s look at each of these 4 categories in more detail. For each category, we discuss:

• The focus L&D functions should have for each learning content category
• Challenges specific to each learning content category
• How L&D functions can address those challenges in the immediate and longer terms

Specific & Durable

The Specific & Durable learning content category generally applies only to 1 org and has a relatively long shelf life. It tends to include:

• Introductions to the org’s values, mission, philosophy, and how the org expects employees to act
• Info about strategic initiatives that define the org’s direction
• Onboarding training and materials
• “Crown jewels”—intellectual property that’s critical to success / competitive advantage as a company

The purpose of Specific & Durable learning content is often to shape organizational culture—helping employees understand “this is who we are” and “this is how we act.” Accordingly, the learning leaders we spoke with talked about Specific & Durable learning content most often in conjunction with organizational initiatives, such as organizational culture or change efforts; diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB); and strategic pivots (e.g., adapting to industry upheaval).

Specific & Durable learning content often helps shape org culture—by helping employees understand “this is who we are” and “this is how we act.”

L&D’s focus should be: Drive organizational initiatives

Forward-thinking orgs conceptualize the L&D function’s role—and related goals—differently, depending on the category of learning content at hand: They have a different focus for each of the 4 categories of learning content. As the nature of the learning content and its associated challenges change, so does the way the org thinks about where L&D functions should spend the most effort.

L&D should think about how Specific & Durable learning content can help move the needle in areas that are priorities for the business.

For Specific & Durable learning content, L&D functions should focus on driving organizational initiatives. Specifically, they should think about how Specific & Durable learning content can help move the needle in areas that are priorities for the business.

As one learning leader said:

“What’s the strategic change that’s happening? Is your learning content relevant to get to those organizational outcomes?”

Participant, “New Trends in Learning Content & Content Management” Roundtable

Importantly, learning leaders aren’t thinking about how L&D functions can drive org initiatives alone—far from it. Almost every learning leader we spoke with about Specific & Durable learning content described how they’re reaching outside of the L&D function—to other parts of HR and to leaders of other functions—to stay in sync with org priorities and use learning content to support the cultural and strategic initiatives important to the business.

Biggest challenges we heard

Because Specific & Durable learning content often links directly to key business initiatives, L&D functions typically face challenges like:

• Staying aligned with business goals. How do we stay agile and aligned with business goals in an ever-flexible environment?
• Driving change. How do we use learning content to move the org toward its goals?
• Measuring impact. How do we know if the learning content is, in fact, driving the change, creating the culture, or moving the needle in ways that align with the org’s priorities?

Intentionally linking learning content to org priorities is a critical component in addressing these challenges, particularly around measuring impact.

Forward-thinking L&D functions measure success against metrics used by the entire org, not just the L&D function.

In our research on measuring learning impact, we found that average L&D functions tend to triage based on the squeakiest wheel or easiest fix. Conversely, more forward-thinking L&D functions develop strategies and relationships to continually align and adjust learning content to support org goals—and to measure success against metrics used by the entire org, not just the L&D function.³

What L&D can do

In Figure 2, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. The ideas here (and in subsequent Figures 3-5) are divided into 2 sections:

• Do Now. Actions L&D functions can start on right away
• Work On. Actions requiring some time and coordination to implement

Each idea is paired with an example of how an org is implementing it.

Figure 2: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Specific & Durable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Specific & Perishable

Specific & Perishable learning content is unique to the org and changes / needs updating relatively often. Examples of this type of learning content include:

• Customer training (e.g., on the org’s products)
• Org-specific policies and processes
• Instructions and updates on internally built software / tools

A defining characteristic of Specific & Perishable learning content: The sources of the learning content exist all over the org—in policy and process documents, product release notes, wikis, etc. This truth, combined with the fact that the content changes often, means it’s exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) for L&D functions to create and update all Specific & Perishable learning content needed by the org.

L&D’s focus should be: Enable content creation

In contrast to orgs in which the L&D function tries to control learning content, orgs that deputize all employees and focus on enabling the creation of learning content—no matter who does the creating—tend to have much more success ensuring that updated learning content is available when needed.

The L&D function’s focus for Specific & Perishable learning content should be to enable the creation and curation of learning content within the org—not to create or control that learning content.

The most forward-thinking learning leaders we encountered approach learning content almost as a free-market economy problem: In their minds, L&D functions should facilitate the supply and demand of learning content. Their job is to make those supply / demand exchanges as frictionless as possible, both for the consumers of the learning content as well as the suppliers, no matter where they sit in the org.

Biggest challenges we heard

Challenges with Specific & Perishable learning content tend to stem from the fact that it needs to be updated frequently and only internal people (for the most part) can do the updating. Challenges include:

• Learning content becomes stale and is hard to keep updated
• The best learning content exists in lots of different places in the org
• Quality and consistency of learning content can vary, since a lot of the learning content isn’t created by the L&D function

We talked with several learning leaders who said their L&D teams struggle either to keep tons of content updated themselves or to incentivize SMEs across the business to keep their learning content updated.

L&D functions should provide processes, templates, and guidance to enable anyone in the org to create or curate learning content with relative ease, consistency, and quality.

To address these challenges, the learning leaders we spoke with focus on putting in place processes, templates, and guidance that enable anyone in the org to create or curate learning content with relative ease, consistency, and quality.

For example, these forward-thinking learning leaders:

• Implement basic instructional design templates and norms across the org
• Put in place tech that offers standard templates, design principles, and formatting
• Track learning content usage and communicate regularly with learning content authors about updates
• Make themselves available as consultants—answering questions and providing advice on how to create effective learning content that meets the standards they’ve set

What L&D can do

In Figure 3, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 3: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Specific & Perishable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.⁴

Generic & Perishable

Generic & Perishable learning content can apply to many orgs but has a short shelf life. Examples of Generic & Perishable learning content include:

• Training / updates on fast-changing tech skills
• How-to tutorials on common processes (e.g., how to create a QR code, how to use a function in Excel)
• Info on current events and industry / market updates

Generic & Perishable learning content is defined by its sheer volume—and the fact that it’s everywhere.

The defining characteristic of this learning content category is sheer volume: There’s so much of it, everywhere! Much Generic & Perishable learning content is available for free online, although Google and YouTube are certainly not the only ways to find it. Other sources of Generic & Perishable learning content are, for example:

• Learning content libraries like PluralSight and LinkedIn Learning
• Professional or trade publications and websites
• Tech vendors offering learning content on how to use their software

Generic & Perishable learning content also changes frequently, meaning the great video someone found last year might be 3 releases out of date this year.

L&D’s focus should be: Help employees filter to the right learning content

The nature of Generic & Perishable learning content means L&D functions’ focus should be to help employees filter. It would be incredibly difficult to provide just the right info to each employee when they need it. Rather, learning leaders’ job is to create conditions that enable employees to cut through the noise and find what they need.

L&D functions should create conditions that enable employees to cut through the noise and volume of learning content to find what they need.

In most orgs, helping employees “filter” means using some kind of tech, most commonly an LXP. We’ve yet to see an org set up a completely manual process that enables filtering at the scale most orgs need: Most orgs leverage both tech and humans to get the job done. For example, teams may share the best or most helpful learning content with one another via Teams or Slack; they may set up queries in content aggregators like Feedly and other apps.

Biggest challenges we heard

We heard 2 main challenges related to Generic & Perishable learning content, both stemming from the volume and turnover common to this learning content category:

• There’s too much noise. For Generic & Perishable learning content, the “signal-to-noise” ratio is extremely low: There’s a lot of learning content in this category, but quality and relevance vary. Although it may be easy to find some learning content on a particular topic or question, it’s hard to know whether it’s the best learning content—or what the org would want an employee to rely on.
• Finding the latest and greatest. There’s regularly more and better learning content somewhere out there. Employees have a hard time finding the most updated, most relevant stuff.

Implementing effective search, curation, and recommendation engines can help give employees direction and a place to start.

Implementing effective search, curation, and recommendation engines can help address these challenges by giving employees direction and a place to start. We explore these ideas next.

What L&D can do

In Figure 4, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 4: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Generic & Perishable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.^5,6

Generic & Durable

Generic & Durable learning content changes relatively infrequently and applies to many orgs. It includes learning content such as:

• Education and refreshers on safety, security, and ethics
• Leadership development training and programs
• Industry-specific background / context (e.g., how the banking system works)
• Learning content to develop sales skills
• Support for employee wellbeing, mindfulness, and personal growth

Because Generic & Durable learning content can apply to many orgs and likely isn’t changing at a breakneck pace, quite a few learning content vendors play in this space. These vendors offer high-quality learning content on specialty topics that an in-house L&D team may not have the expertise or bandwidth to create.

Many Generic & Durable learning content vendors offer high-quality learning content on specialty topics that an in-house L&D team may not have the expertise or bandwidth to create.

L&D’s focus should be: Facilitate consistency & quality

L&D functions’ focus for Generic & Durable learning content should be facilitating consistency and quality—setting standards for what quality learning content looks like across the org. Because so many vendors offer different learning content at varying levels of quality, L&D functions can create value by helping the org define standards that outline, for example:

• The “go-to” vendors to work with on cross-functional topics like leadership, industry context, or wellbeing
• Criteria for selecting vendors not on the “go-to” list
• What high-quality learning content looks like and where it’s coming from
• Ways to measure / understand what learning content is working and what’s not

L&D functions should define standards that outline, for example, go-to vendors, vendor selection criteria, and what “high-quality” learning content looks like for the org.

With these standards (and / or others) in place, L&D functions can provide a consistent, org-wide point of view on cross-cutting topics, like “the way we lead,” “the way we think about safety,” and so on.

Biggest challenges we heard

Consistency and quality are the primary challenges for Generic & Durable learning content because much of the learning content can apply to many different functions (think leadership development or safety / security) and so many commercial sources of this category of learning content exist.

This breadth and variety give rise to potential differences—within the same org—in:

• The content that’s used for learning on a particular subject
• The quality or efficacy of that learning content
• How that learning content is delivered or supported
• Who gets access to the learning content
• The processes used to evaluate the learning content

As an example, we’ve seen orgs that use a dozen or more different leadership models because different functions / teams brought in different leadership vendors / consultants at different times.

Forward-thinking L&D functions consider how they can foster relationships—with vendors and other functions—to ensure consistency and quality of learning content across the org.

In the lit review we did as part of this research, we read several articles on creating consistent learning content. In an org, consistent course design and visual cues across as much learning content as possible can go a long way toward helping employees understand and navigate learning content easily. However, this kind of consistency is sometimes difficult to achieve with externally created content.

In addition to these instructional design elements, forward-thinking L&D functions are also considering how they can foster relationships—with vendors and with other functions—to bring people together across silos in order to ensure consistency and quality of learning content throughout the org. This sometimes means convening cross-functional groups to align on needs, pool resources, or negotiate org-level (rather than function- or team-level) contracts with vendors.

What L&D can do

In Figure 5, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 5: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Generic & Durable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Wrap-Up

We’ve given you a snapshot of recent trends in learning content, including how the explosion in volume and variety of learning content is affecting orgs and employees alike. We’ve also introduced a model for thinking about learning content in 4 categories, based on 2 key factors:

• The specificity of the learning content to the org
• The durability (or shelf life) of the learning content

Our biggest takeaway from this study is how the 4 different categories of learning content give rise to very different focuses for L&D functions—different conceptions of what L&D functions should do with regard to that learning content—and have very different associated challenges. (Unsurprisingly, there’s no one-size-fits-all learning content strategy.)

We are grateful to those learning leaders who shared their experiences and examples with us, and are excited to share so many concrete examples in this report.

As always, we welcome feedback and discussion! Please feel free to reach out to RedThread Research at [email protected] or www.redthreadresearch.com. We’d love to hear about your experiences.

Appendix 1: Research Methodology

We launched our study in Spring 2021. This report gathers and synthesizes findings from our research efforts, which include:

• A literature review of 51 articles from business, trade, and popular lit sources
• 1 roundtable with a total of 33 participants
• 15 in-depth interviews with learning leaders about their experiences and thoughts on learning content

For those looking for specific information that came out of those efforts, you’re in luck: We’ve a policy of sharing as much information as possible throughout the research process. Please see:

• Premise: “Content in the 2020s: Enabling Learning”
• Lit review: “Learning Content in the 2020s: What the Literature Says”
• Roundtable readout: “Trends in Learning Content & Content Management”
• Q&A call: "Learning Content"

Appendix 2: Contributors

Thank you so much to those of you who participated in our roundtable and interviews. We couldn’t have done this research without you! In addition to the leaders listed below, there are many others we can’t name publicly. We extend our gratitude nonetheless: You know who you are.

Angel Rodriguez
Ann Boldt
Brett Rose
Bria Dimke
Brian Richardson
Catherine Marchand
Chris Casement
Chris Olson
Clark Shah-Nelson
Eddie Garcia
Emily Crockett
Erik Soerhaug
Gordon O’Reilly
Greg Williams
Heather Bahorich
Ian Bolderstone
Jihyun Jeong
Jim Maddock
John Z.
Laurence D. Banner
Leah Holmgren
Marc Ramos
Martin Tanguay
Melissa Lamkin
Mitchel M.
Nick Halder
Nicole Leret
Robert Young
Sarah Foster
Shaun Rozyn
Stephanie Fritz
Stephen T.
Tania Tiippana
Tone Reierselmoen
Zachary Pfau

In addition, we thank Catherine Coughlin for editing the report, Jennifer Hines for graphics, Jenny Barandich for the layout, and Sana Lall-Trail for research and project management.

Key Takeaways

1. Forward-thinking L&D functions make the chaos of learning content work for their orgs. Being overwhelmed by the surging quantities, types, and sources of learning content is yesterday’s news—but still today’s problem. Learning leaders are embracing the chaos and moving from providing content to enabling it, with an eye toward making more content available to all employees.
2. Learning leaders should ask 2 questions about learning content: 1) Is it specific to the org? 2) How long is its shelf life (How durable is it)? Thinking in these 2 dimensions—specificity and durability—can help L&D functions clarify their learning content strategy and priorities.
3. We developed a new model for learning content. From our conversations with forward-thinking learning leaders, we identified a model that breaks learning content into 4 categories (defined by the 2 dimensions of specificity and durability). This model can form the foundation of a learning content strategy that’s clear on priorities, roles & responsibilities, and areas of focus.
4. There are distinct actions L&D functions can and should take to improve their learning content strategies—and those actions change based on the 4-category model of learning content introduced in this report. We provide some suggestions for immediate and longer-term actions to take, as well as examples of real orgs implementing these ideas, to help learning leaders organize the chaos and better manage learning content overall.

Why Talk About Learning Content Now?

We’ve been witnessing rapid growth in the amount of learning content available to employees. This growth started decades ago, but it’s recently turned from a trickle to a flood. There’s more learning content everywhere—inside and outside orgs; online and offline; on desktops and mobile devices; and in learning systems, shared folders, browsers, email, and chat platforms. Is it any wonder that employees are overwhelmed and exhausted by the sheer volume of all that’s available?¹

Employees are overwhelmed and exhausted by the amount of learning content.

Employees feel like they’re drowning—and it’s L&D’s job to help them find and consume the content that builds skills and drives outcomes that matter to the business. To do this, L&D functions need well-crafted learning content strategies that support org learning and business strategies.

A learning content strategy should help L&D functions answer questions like:

• How will we decide what learning content to bring into the org?
• How will we identify—and help employees identify—learning content that’ll support our business and learning strategies?
• How and when will learning content be updated? By whom?
• How will we make the right learning content easily available to employees?
• What can we do immediately and in the longer term to improve employees’ ability to find and consume the learning content they need?

In this study—which included a lit review, roundtable, and interviews—we explored these questions. Through this research, we sought to identify the leading practices that orgs are using to help employees sift through the volume of learning content to find what’s right for them, when they need it.

L&D functions need well-crafted learning content strategies that support org learning and business strategies.

In the next section, we introduce the trends we uncovered as part of this study.

What’s Happening in Learning Content?

In the course of this research, we identified 4 trends in learning content that are helping shape the learning content strategies of forward-thinking orgs:

1. More types and sources of learning content
2. More enabling, less pushing of learning content by L&D functions
3. More (and better) use of skills data to inform learning content priorities
4. More access for all employees

In the following sections, we take a brief look at these 4 trends.

More types & sources of learning content

Not only is there more learning content in more places—but there are more types of content created by a wider variety of authors. Learning content used to be primarily created and controlled by L&D functions. Now, however, employees have access to:

• L&D function-created content
• Learning content created by subject-matter experts (SMEs)
• Company reports, policies, strategy docs, etc.
• Vendor-created learning content (custom or off the shelf)
• YouTube and other social media content
• Podcasts
• Conference notes, presentations, and videos
• Trade- or industry-specific content
• Learning content libraries (LinkedIn Learning, Udemy for Business, etc.)
• Subscriptions to learning content aggregators
• The entire internet

There’s not only more volume of content—there’s more types of content, in more places, created by a wider variety of authors.

And we know that’s not an exhaustive list.

The incredible volume, variety, and breadth of the learning content that’s available—over much of which L&D functions have limited control—complicate things for learning leaders and for employees.

Through our research, though, we found that learning leaders who’ve given this some thought don’t try to control the chaos. Instead, they embrace it—or, at least, they try to work with the reality that learning content is already complicated, and it’s only going to get bigger and more complex over time.

L&D functions can create systems, processes, and policies that help employees navigate the chaos of learning content.

Savvy learning leaders think about how to create systems, processes, and policies that help orgs and employees navigate through the chaos—rather than trying to tame the chaos itself (because that’s not gonna happen).

One learning leader noted:

“Learning functions need to recognize we never owned learning content in the first place, and we certainly don’t now. We need to embrace the chaos.”

Nick Halder, Senior Director of Talent, Snow Software

More enabling, less pushing by L&D functions

Given the increasing amount and variety of learning content out there, the move toward personalized development experiences, and the sheer variety of people in most orgs, it’s almost impossible for L&D functions to push the right content to the right people at the right time in the right format—all the time. There’s also a growing recognition that often the employee knows best—or at least has a good sense of—what they need to learn.

Learning leaders are thinking about how to enable employees to navigate to the right content themselves, rather than pushing content to employees.

Instead of trying to push learning content, L&D functions are thinking about how to enable employees to navigate to the right content themselves—by giving guidance and context about, for example, the org’s strategy and direction, skills that may be needed in the future, and how learning content is organized in the company. This guidance and context can create conditions that enable employees to find and consume learning content when and how they like, in ways that align with their needs and org goals.

More (& better) use of skills data to inform learning content priorities

Learning leaders we talked to noted that, in the past, L&D functions have sometimes pushed out learning content that wasn’t relevant or helpful to employees. These learning leaders see information about the skills employees and orgs need as a potential solution:

“Without insight into what skills are in demand and what skills people have, L&D tends to focus on the learning content we think people need. That’s rarely an effective approach.”

Participant, “New Trends in Learning Content & Content Management” Roundtable

Forward-thinking orgs are using information about the skills their workforce has and the skills it’ll need in the future to decide what learning content to prioritize. Learning leaders are making investments in learning content that can help close critical skills gaps.

Skills info can help orgs better understand what learning content to prioritize and invest in.

More access for all employees

In the last year or so, learning leaders have started taking a much closer look at how accessible learning content really is in their orgs: They’re recognizing the importance of making learning content more widely available to close skills gaps—and to help the business stay agile, responsive, and competitive.²

Three ways learning leaders can improve access include:

• Removing artificial barriers. Sometimes orgs give employees access to learning content on a “need-to-know” basis. But this logic creates unnecessary boundaries that could be removed unless they’re strategically justified—for example, intellectual property, safety / security, cost, or some other significant reason.
• Making learning content more discoverable. Sometimes great learning content is hidden in pockets or silos within the company. Orgs can find ways of making learning content easier to discover by implementing organization standards and really good search capabilities. They can also create a culture of discovery by removing unnecessary passwords and encouraging employees to poke around.
• Making learning content accessible on mobile. Learning content doesn’t just live on desktops anymore. Employees, particularly frontline workers, need access on their phones. This often means rethinking accessibility to LMSs or LXPs, as well as thinking mobile-first when creating new learning content.

Forward-thinking orgs are exploring ways to make learning content transparent, accessible, and appealing to all employees.

In brief

These 4 trends are currently shaping the learning content environment. In this research, we sought to understand how learning leaders are navigating these trends—and how these trends affect their goals, focus areas, challenges, and strategies for learning content.

We developed a learning content model that can help orgs think through their learning content strategies.

This inquiry resulted in a model that can help orgs think through their learning content strategies and make better decisions about where L&D functions should focus their time and resources. The next section introduces and explores this learning content model.

A Model for Thinking About Learning Content

We looked for similarities and differences between learning leaders’ approaches to learning content—and noticed that the learning leaders we spoke with take very different approaches to learning content based on 2 factors (or dimensions) of the learning content they’re working with:

• How unique the learning content is to their org (specificity). Are leaders dealing with learning content that applies specifically to their company or content that applies across orgs?
• The shelf life of the learning content (durability). Are leaders thinking mostly about learning content that needs to be updated rarely, or learning content that’s continually changing and regularly in jeopardy of being out of date? (Note: Long vs. short shelf life may differ from industry to industry and company to company. But, in general, we consider durable learning content to last 1 or more years without needing to be updated.)

If we plot learning content against these 2 dimensions (specificity and durability), then the content generally falls within 1 of the following 4 categories:

1. Specific & Durable. Learning content that’s specific to 1 org and has a long shelf life
2. Specific & Perishable. Learning content that’s specific to 1 org but changes often
3. Generic & Perishable. Learning content that applies to many orgs and changes often
4. Generic & Durable. Learning content that applies to many orgs and has a long shelf life

The learning content model, introduced in Figure 1, outlines these 4 categories and provides examples of some common topics that each category tends to cover.

Learning leaders might consider using this model to clarify the L&D function’s (and other stakeholders’) focus areas and roles regarding learning content. When we gave one learning leader—who happens to sit in a central L&D team within a federated system—a sneak peek at this model, he said:

“I like this model because it can help our L&D teams think about who owns what content. L&D sometimes tries to be all things to all people, but that’s not possible. In my company, we’re starting to be much more intentional about where each of our respective L&D teams are best-suited to play.”

John Z., Head of Digital Learning & Design, Global Medical Devices Company

Figure 1: Learning Content Model | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Let’s look at each of these 4 categories in more detail. For each category, we discuss:

• The focus L&D functions should have for each learning content category
• Challenges specific to each learning content category
• How L&D functions can address those challenges in the immediate and longer terms

Specific & Durable

The Specific & Durable learning content category generally applies only to 1 org and has a relatively long shelf life. It tends to include:

• Introductions to the org’s values, mission, philosophy, and how the org expects employees to act
• Info about strategic initiatives that define the org’s direction
• Onboarding training and materials
• “Crown jewels”—intellectual property that’s critical to success / competitive advantage as a company

The purpose of Specific & Durable learning content is often to shape organizational culture—helping employees understand “this is who we are” and “this is how we act.” Accordingly, the learning leaders we spoke with talked about Specific & Durable learning content most often in conjunction with organizational initiatives, such as organizational culture or change efforts; diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB); and strategic pivots (e.g., adapting to industry upheaval).

Specific & Durable learning content often helps shape org culture—by helping employees understand “this is who we are” and “this is how we act.”

L&D’s focus should be: Drive organizational initiatives

Forward-thinking orgs conceptualize the L&D function’s role—and related goals—differently, depending on the category of learning content at hand: They have a different focus for each of the 4 categories of learning content. As the nature of the learning content and its associated challenges change, so does the way the org thinks about where L&D functions should spend the most effort.

L&D should think about how Specific & Durable learning content can help move the needle in areas that are priorities for the business.

For Specific & Durable learning content, L&D functions should focus on driving organizational initiatives. Specifically, they should think about how Specific & Durable learning content can help move the needle in areas that are priorities for the business.

As one learning leader said:

“What’s the strategic change that’s happening? Is your learning content relevant to get to those organizational outcomes?”

Participant, “New Trends in Learning Content & Content Management” Roundtable

Importantly, learning leaders aren’t thinking about how L&D functions can drive org initiatives alone—far from it. Almost every learning leader we spoke with about Specific & Durable learning content described how they’re reaching outside of the L&D function—to other parts of HR and to leaders of other functions—to stay in sync with org priorities and use learning content to support the cultural and strategic initiatives important to the business.

Biggest challenges we heard

Because Specific & Durable learning content often links directly to key business initiatives, L&D functions typically face challenges like:

• Staying aligned with business goals. How do we stay agile and aligned with business goals in an ever-flexible environment?
• Driving change. How do we use learning content to move the org toward its goals?
• Measuring impact. How do we know if the learning content is, in fact, driving the change, creating the culture, or moving the needle in ways that align with the org’s priorities?

Intentionally linking learning content to org priorities is a critical component in addressing these challenges, particularly around measuring impact.

Forward-thinking L&D functions measure success against metrics used by the entire org, not just the L&D function.

In our research on measuring learning impact, we found that average L&D functions tend to triage based on the squeakiest wheel or easiest fix. Conversely, more forward-thinking L&D functions develop strategies and relationships to continually align and adjust learning content to support org goals—and to measure success against metrics used by the entire org, not just the L&D function.³

What L&D can do

In Figure 2, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. The ideas here (and in subsequent Figures 3-5) are divided into 2 sections:

• Do Now. Actions L&D functions can start on right away
• Work On. Actions requiring some time and coordination to implement

Each idea is paired with an example of how an org is implementing it.

Figure 2: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Specific & Durable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Specific & Perishable

Specific & Perishable learning content is unique to the org and changes / needs updating relatively often. Examples of this type of learning content include:

• Customer training (e.g., on the org’s products)
• Org-specific policies and processes
• Instructions and updates on internally built software / tools

A defining characteristic of Specific & Perishable learning content: The sources of the learning content exist all over the org—in policy and process documents, product release notes, wikis, etc. This truth, combined with the fact that the content changes often, means it’s exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) for L&D functions to create and update all Specific & Perishable learning content needed by the org.

L&D’s focus should be: Enable content creation

In contrast to orgs in which the L&D function tries to control learning content, orgs that deputize all employees and focus on enabling the creation of learning content—no matter who does the creating—tend to have much more success ensuring that updated learning content is available when needed.

The L&D function’s focus for Specific & Perishable learning content should be to enable the creation and curation of learning content within the org—not to create or control that learning content.

The most forward-thinking learning leaders we encountered approach learning content almost as a free-market economy problem: In their minds, L&D functions should facilitate the supply and demand of learning content. Their job is to make those supply / demand exchanges as frictionless as possible, both for the consumers of the learning content as well as the suppliers, no matter where they sit in the org.

Biggest challenges we heard

Challenges with Specific & Perishable learning content tend to stem from the fact that it needs to be updated frequently and only internal people (for the most part) can do the updating. Challenges include:

• Learning content becomes stale and is hard to keep updated
• The best learning content exists in lots of different places in the org
• Quality and consistency of learning content can vary, since a lot of the learning content isn’t created by the L&D function

We talked with several learning leaders who said their L&D teams struggle either to keep tons of content updated themselves or to incentivize SMEs across the business to keep their learning content updated.

L&D functions should provide processes, templates, and guidance to enable anyone in the org to create or curate learning content with relative ease, consistency, and quality.

To address these challenges, the learning leaders we spoke with focus on putting in place processes, templates, and guidance that enable anyone in the org to create or curate learning content with relative ease, consistency, and quality.

For example, these forward-thinking learning leaders:

• Implement basic instructional design templates and norms across the org
• Put in place tech that offers standard templates, design principles, and formatting
• Track learning content usage and communicate regularly with learning content authors about updates
• Make themselves available as consultants—answering questions and providing advice on how to create effective learning content that meets the standards they’ve set

What L&D can do

In Figure 3, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 3: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Specific & Perishable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.⁴

Generic & Perishable

Generic & Perishable learning content can apply to many orgs but has a short shelf life. Examples of Generic & Perishable learning content include:

• Training / updates on fast-changing tech skills
• How-to tutorials on common processes (e.g., how to create a QR code, how to use a function in Excel)
• Info on current events and industry / market updates

Generic & Perishable learning content is defined by its sheer volume—and the fact that it’s everywhere.

The defining characteristic of this learning content category is sheer volume: There’s so much of it, everywhere! Much Generic & Perishable learning content is available for free online, although Google and YouTube are certainly not the only ways to find it. Other sources of Generic & Perishable learning content are, for example:

• Learning content libraries like PluralSight and LinkedIn Learning
• Professional or trade publications and websites
• Tech vendors offering learning content on how to use their software

Generic & Perishable learning content also changes frequently, meaning the great video someone found last year might be 3 releases out of date this year.

L&D’s focus should be: Help employees filter to the right learning content

The nature of Generic & Perishable learning content means L&D functions’ focus should be to help employees filter. It would be incredibly difficult to provide just the right info to each employee when they need it. Rather, learning leaders’ job is to create conditions that enable employees to cut through the noise and find what they need.

L&D functions should create conditions that enable employees to cut through the noise and volume of learning content to find what they need.

In most orgs, helping employees “filter” means using some kind of tech, most commonly an LXP. We’ve yet to see an org set up a completely manual process that enables filtering at the scale most orgs need: Most orgs leverage both tech and humans to get the job done. For example, teams may share the best or most helpful learning content with one another via Teams or Slack; they may set up queries in content aggregators like Feedly and other apps.

Biggest challenges we heard

We heard 2 main challenges related to Generic & Perishable learning content, both stemming from the volume and turnover common to this learning content category:

• There’s too much noise. For Generic & Perishable learning content, the “signal-to-noise” ratio is extremely low: There’s a lot of learning content in this category, but quality and relevance vary. Although it may be easy to find some learning content on a particular topic or question, it’s hard to know whether it’s the best learning content—or what the org would want an employee to rely on.
• Finding the latest and greatest. There’s regularly more and better learning content somewhere out there. Employees have a hard time finding the most updated, most relevant stuff.

Implementing effective search, curation, and recommendation engines can help give employees direction and a place to start.

Implementing effective search, curation, and recommendation engines can help address these challenges by giving employees direction and a place to start. We explore these ideas next.

What L&D can do

In Figure 4, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 4: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Generic & Perishable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.^5,6

Generic & Durable

Generic & Durable learning content changes relatively infrequently and applies to many orgs. It includes learning content such as:

• Education and refreshers on safety, security, and ethics
• Leadership development training and programs
• Industry-specific background / context (e.g., how the banking system works)
• Learning content to develop sales skills
• Support for employee wellbeing, mindfulness, and personal growth

Because Generic & Durable learning content can apply to many orgs and likely isn’t changing at a breakneck pace, quite a few learning content vendors play in this space. These vendors offer high-quality learning content on specialty topics that an in-house L&D team may not have the expertise or bandwidth to create.

Many Generic & Durable learning content vendors offer high-quality learning content on specialty topics that an in-house L&D team may not have the expertise or bandwidth to create.

L&D’s focus should be: Facilitate consistency & quality

L&D functions’ focus for Generic & Durable learning content should be facilitating consistency and quality—setting standards for what quality learning content looks like across the org. Because so many vendors offer different learning content at varying levels of quality, L&D functions can create value by helping the org define standards that outline, for example:

• The “go-to” vendors to work with on cross-functional topics like leadership, industry context, or wellbeing
• Criteria for selecting vendors not on the “go-to” list
• What high-quality learning content looks like and where it’s coming from
• Ways to measure / understand what learning content is working and what’s not

L&D functions should define standards that outline, for example, go-to vendors, vendor selection criteria, and what “high-quality” learning content looks like for the org.

With these standards (and / or others) in place, L&D functions can provide a consistent, org-wide point of view on cross-cutting topics, like “the way we lead,” “the way we think about safety,” and so on.

Biggest challenges we heard

Consistency and quality are the primary challenges for Generic & Durable learning content because much of the learning content can apply to many different functions (think leadership development or safety / security) and so many commercial sources of this category of learning content exist.

This breadth and variety give rise to potential differences—within the same org—in:

• The content that’s used for learning on a particular subject
• The quality or efficacy of that learning content
• How that learning content is delivered or supported
• Who gets access to the learning content
• The processes used to evaluate the learning content

As an example, we’ve seen orgs that use a dozen or more different leadership models because different functions / teams brought in different leadership vendors / consultants at different times.

Forward-thinking L&D functions consider how they can foster relationships—with vendors and other functions—to ensure consistency and quality of learning content across the org.

In the lit review we did as part of this research, we read several articles on creating consistent learning content. In an org, consistent course design and visual cues across as much learning content as possible can go a long way toward helping employees understand and navigate learning content easily. However, this kind of consistency is sometimes difficult to achieve with externally created content.

In addition to these instructional design elements, forward-thinking L&D functions are also considering how they can foster relationships—with vendors and with other functions—to bring people together across silos in order to ensure consistency and quality of learning content throughout the org. This sometimes means convening cross-functional groups to align on needs, pool resources, or negotiate org-level (rather than function- or team-level) contracts with vendors.

What L&D can do

In Figure 5, we include some ways L&D functions can start addressing these challenges. Each idea also outlines how an org is implementing that idea.

Figure 5: Ways L&D Can Help Address Challenges—Generic & Durable Learning Content | Source: RedThread Research, 2021.

Wrap-Up

We’ve given you a snapshot of recent trends in learning content, including how the explosion in volume and variety of learning content is affecting orgs and employees alike. We’ve also introduced a model for thinking about learning content in 4 categories, based on 2 key factors:

• The specificity of the learning content to the org
• The durability (or shelf life) of the learning content

Our biggest takeaway from this study is how the 4 different categories of learning content give rise to very different focuses for L&D functions—different conceptions of what L&D functions should do with regard to that learning content—and have very different associated challenges. (Unsurprisingly, there’s no one-size-fits-all learning content strategy.)

We are grateful to those learning leaders who shared their experiences and examples with us, and are excited to share so many concrete examples in this report.

As always, we welcome feedback and discussion! Please feel free to reach out to RedThread Research at [email protected] or www.redthreadresearch.com. We’d love to hear about your experiences.

Appendix 1: Research Methodology

We launched our study in Spring 2021. This report gathers and synthesizes findings from our research efforts, which include:

• A literature review of 51 articles from business, trade, and popular lit sources
• 1 roundtable with a total of 33 participants
• 15 in-depth interviews with learning leaders about their experiences and thoughts on learning content

For those looking for specific information that came out of those efforts, you’re in luck: We’ve a policy of sharing as much information as possible throughout the research process. Please see:

• Premise: “Content in the 2020s: Enabling Learning”
• Lit review: “Learning Content in the 2020s: What the Literature Says”
• Roundtable readout: “Trends in Learning Content & Content Management”
• Q&A call: "Learning Content"

Appendix 2: Contributors

Thank you so much to those of you who participated in our roundtable and interviews. We couldn’t have done this research without you! In addition to the leaders listed below, there are many others we can’t name publicly. We extend our gratitude nonetheless: You know who you are.

Angel Rodriguez
Ann Boldt
Brett Rose
Bria Dimke
Brian Richardson
Catherine Marchand
Chris Casement
Chris Olson
Clark Shah-Nelson
Eddie Garcia
Emily Crockett
Erik Soerhaug
Gordon O’Reilly
Greg Williams
Heather Bahorich
Ian Bolderstone
Jihyun Jeong
Jim Maddock
John Z.
Laurence D. Banner
Leah Holmgren
Marc Ramos
Martin Tanguay
Melissa Lamkin
Mitchel M.
Nick Halder
Nicole Leret
Robert Young
Sarah Foster
Shaun Rozyn
Stephanie Fritz
Stephen T.
Tania Tiippana
Tone Reierselmoen
Zachary Pfau

In addition, we thank Catherine Coughlin for editing the report, Jennifer Hines for graphics, Jenny Barandich for the layout, and Sana Lall-Trail for research and project management.

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Guest

Karen Kocher, Global General Manager, Talent & Learning Experiences & Workforce of the Future, at Microsoft

DETAILS

What actually happens when your boss tells you one day that he’d like you to teach new digital skills to a few people … say, 25 million or so? You’re going to find out this week, because that really did happen to our great guest, Microsoft Global General Manager, Talent and Learning Experiences and Workforce of the Future Karen Kocher, who is leading the huge-scale Microsoft-LinkedIn global Skills Initiative. But important as that large-scale L&D experiment is, it’s far from all Karen wanted to talk to us about; think of the Skills program as an appetizer for a Learning and Skills banquet that includes life, career, and pay advice, as well as useful notes on credentialing and what transitioning to a ‘learn-it-all’ culture entails at company street level. Quite a woman. Quite a conversation. And quite a Workplace Story.

Resources

• Find out more about the Microsoft Skills Initiative here.
• Jeffrey Pfeffer’s The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
• Connect with Karen to carry on the debate here.
• Keep up with Season 1 of our podcast here.

Webinar

Workday hosted an exclusive webinar with the Workplace Stories team of Dani, Stacia and Chris in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. Find out more information and access content at www.workday.com/skills. 

Partner

We're also thrilled to be partnering with Chris Pirie, CEO of Learning Futures Group and voice of the Learning Is the New Working podcast. Check them both out.

Season Sponsor

Why we care

The Boards' and CEOs' agendas have never been so crowded with talent-related topics: workforce strategies and wellbeing; diversity, equity, and inclusion; culture; and, corporate purpose.¹ Forty-two percent of corporate board directors think talent management will be a top priority for them in 2021.² Additionally, 50% of CEOs globally cite recruitment and retention of top talent as a critical area of focus for them in 2021.³

We all know that what gets measured is what gets done.

Yet, there’s a significant under-investment by orgs in people analytics. Consider this:

• In 2020, just 56% of companies thought they’d made moderate or significant progress in people analytics in the past 10 years
• Only 27% of CHROs say they're investing in workplace analytics tools to analyze employees’ digital activities in 2021
• Only 38% of orgs were focused on understanding "employee voice" in 2020

There’s a yawning gap between what people analytics CAN do for orgs and what it IS doing for companies today. Why?

The existing gap

We believe this gap exists for a few reasons:

1. Lack of clarity around the role people analytics can play. C-suite execs haven’t necessarily understood the role of people data, analytics, and technology in helping them address some of the critical issues on their agendas.
2. No clear set of expectations. Because C-suite leaders often don’t understand the role people analytics functions can play, they haven’t known what to expect from their teams—and, thus, fail to define their expectations clearly.
3. Lack of confidence. Research has found that C-suites are worried about the impact of flawed data on their company’s business.⁴ This is driven by the fact that analytics functions in many orgs are relatively new and lack credibility. Additionally, being asked to make major decisions based on the output of an algorithm that they didn't create and don't always fully understand also adds to the lack of confidence among senior leaders.

People analytics leaders: Now is the time to show your value

HR played a crucial role in helping leaders navigate the pandemic, yet there’s no guarantee that they’ll continue to do so post-pandemic. In a recent survey, 87% of C-suite execs credit HR leaders with accelerating change throughout their orgs during COVID-19. However, just 52% believe this will continue to occur after the pandemic.⁵

People analytics functions are well-positioned to highlight the work they’ve done to date, and to show the insights and impact they can drive for the C-suite over the long term.

This is especially true when we consider that very few orgs have a plan for post-pandemic working. Sixty-eight percent of executives recently reported having no detailed plan in place when it comes to return-to-office planning.⁶ People analytics is the function best-suited to help leaders with:

• Understanding what people need
• Putting in place methods to measure those practices
• Providing insights that can lead to appropriate course-corrections

The question, of course, is how?

Our hypotheses

We have the following hypotheses for this research:

• C-suite leaders today don’t know what they should expect from people analytics—and so neither use them effectively nor have clear expectations of HR or people analytics leaders about them
• C-suite leaders who use people analytics are able to more effectively address their org’s challenges and priorities
• There are at least 3-5 common C-suite-level challenges that people analytics can help solve — and many more for each individual organization, depending on specific needs and situations
• There’s a standard set of insights and metrics that are necessary but not sufficient for the C-suite in helping them meet their needs
• Data quality and having a “single source of truth” are critical factors in determining the extent to which C-suite leaders feel comfortable using people analytics
• C-suite execs who are most effective at leveraging people analytics are operating in data-heavy organizational cultures; however, C-suite leaders in less data-focused cultures can still drive meaningful change via people analytics

What we’ll research

Through this research, we seek to answer the following questions:

• What types of challenges can people analytics help C-suite leaders solve?
• How can people analytics leaders best partner with C-suite leaders to solve those challenges?
• What’s the role of tech in enabling that partnership and delivering those insights?
• What’s the role of organizational culture in enabling or limiting the use of people analytics by C-suite leaders?
• What impact do C-suite execs experience by using people analytics to address their challenges?

Who will be involved

We plan to include the following groups of people in the research:

• CEOs, C-suite leaders, and other non-HR business leaders
• CHROs and other HR leaders
• People analytics leaders

How to participate

We’ll be conducting this research over the next 4 months and invite you to participate in the study. There are 3 ways to participate:

1. 1. Let us interview you. If you're a people analytics leader or a C-suite exec willing to talk to us about this topic for 30-45 minutes, reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll schedule a discussion at your convenience.
   2. Join the conversation. We’re conducting a roundtable on this subject on June 16^th, 12pm ET. You can click here to register and join the waitlist.
   3. Share your thoughts. Read our research and tell us what you think! Shoot us a note at [email protected]. Your comments make us smarter and the research better.

Introduction

As part of our ongoing research in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), a few months ago we launched a new study to identify and look at the skills that can advance DEIB in orgs today. In our first roundtable on this topic, we focused on understanding which skills are critical for fostering DEIB and how orgs can effectively develop them.

We recently held our second roundtable on the topic of DEIB and skills and invited members from the following groups to participate:

• Employees
• Managers
• Employee resource group (ERG) leaders
• Senior leaders

We aimed to understand the roles of different organizational groups in fostering DEIB and the specific skills each group needs to embed DEIB into the org’s culture.

Our roundtable discussions focused on 2 main questions:

• What are the roles and responsibilities of employees, managers, ERG leaders, and senior leaders in fostering a DEIB culture?
• What skills do each of these groups need to drive DEIB at work?

Mindmap of Second DEIB & Skills Roundtable

The mindmap below outlines the conversations that transpired as part of this second roundtable.

Note: This is a live document. Click the window and use your cursor to explore it.

Key Takeaways

Highly engaging, the discussion produced different perspectives that helped us uncover several interesting insights. In general, the participants agreed that a lot of work needs to be done around identifying and intentionally developing skills for DEIB.

Participants agreed that a lot of work needs to be done around identifying and intentionally developing skills for DEIB.

A few key takeaways stand out from the discussion:

1. Managers need more than “managerial skills” to drive DEIB
2. Senior leaders should enable big-picture thinking
3. ERG leaders play a unique role in fostering DEIB
4. Clarity should be used for skills identification
5. Similar skills have different applications across job levels

The following sections offer an overview of each takeaway.

Managers need more than “managerial skills” to drive DEIB

Talking about the roles managers play in fostering DEIB and the skills they need to do that, participants highlighted several crucial responsibilities at the interpersonal and team levels.

• Managers should model appropriate behaviors, create psychological safety for their teams, set clear expectations, and take initiatives to seek out different perspectives. Some of the underpinning skills managers need to carry out these responsibilities include:
  • Self-awareness
  • Open-mindedness
  • Receptiveness
  • Willingness to learn
  • Active listening
• A number of manager skills required to drive DEIB aren’t considered essential or associated with being a manager. For example, one participant pointed out: While on the one hand managers are typically expected to “have all the answers”—they also need to be able to show a willingness to learn from others, and be open to diverse thoughts and ideas. Clear expectations must be set for the manager role and the work that needs to be done when it comes to DEIB.
• Additional training or continuing education programs for managers can help set the foundation for more nuanced DEIB skills. Participants pointed out that they see a lot of successful individual contributors promoted to the manager role because they’re able to produce effectively—but they may lack adequate people skills. As one participant explained:

“When it comes to DEIB, managers should get comfortable ‘writing with their nondominant hands’—as it forces them to think about the tendency to do things that are uncomfortable and helps reorient leaders to be able to improve DEIB.”

Senior leaders should enable big-picture thinking

Among all 4 groups, attendees listed the largest number of responsibilities for senior leaders. This long list (see the mindmap) indicates the crucial role senior leaders play in fostering DEIB across the org. At the core of it all, senior leaders are responsible for setting the tone, policies, and systems in place that foster a culture of DEIB. As one participant stated:

“Leaders are expected to lead DEIB efforts and model behaviors that reflect the org’s commitment to DEIB.”

For senior leaders, most of the necessary skills identified by participants focus on big-picture thinking, including:

• Change management. Senior leaders should champion DEIB values by steering the org through large-scale culture change
• The ability to influence people by effectively communicating the company’s DEIB goals with different audiences
• Learning agility. As leaders encounter complex DEIB challenges, the ability to apply the learnings from one situation to another becomes crucial
• Systems thinking.¹ When senior leaders engage in systems thinking, they’re more likely to think about DEIB more holistically, rather than implementing piecemeal strategies

Senior leaders: Dare to dream, challenge organizational, systemic, and policy disparities, and periodically reflect on what’s working—versus what’s not—in order to initiate change.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of senior leaders’ ability to empower others by giving people the “safe” space to speak up and bring together the appropriate groups of people to carry forward the org’s DEIB mission.

ERG leaders play a unique role in fostering DEIB

The discussion around ERG leaders’ responsibilities and the skills needed for DEIB resulted in some of the most novel insights from the roundtable. ERG leaders play a crucial role because of their unique position to:

• Represent the voices of the underrepresented groups in company conversations
• Communicate the contents of those meetings back to the group

This intermediary role demands a specific set of skills to drive DEIB. As one participant said:

“The role of ERG leaders in fostering a DEIB culture is to create an environment where people can openly express themselves and share ideas that add value to the company. They are responsible for communication between their members and senior leaders to ensure ideas are heard.

Some of the important skills identified for ERG leaders involve:

• Event planning
• Group facilitation
• The ability to translate the group's needs to business leaders
• The flexibility to work with diverse groups

In addition to bridging the gap between underrepresented groups and org management, ERG leaders also need to be a coach—someone who holds up a mirror to help others look intrinsically within themselves.

Participants also highlighted the importance of other skills that can complement the ERG leader role in disrupting and pushing the envelope within orgs:

• Persuasion
• Influence
• Persistence
• Advocacy skills, including promise-keeping, and protecting the identities and feelings of ERG members

As one participant emphasized and stated, ERG leaders should act as protectors while advocating for underrepresented groups:

“ERG leaders should protect the names of their group members—for example, being mindful when a group member wants to remain anonymous or may not be ready to take on a responsibility.”

Clarity should be used for skills identification

When it comes to identifying skills for DEIB, we had general agreement among roundtable participants that certain terms need more clarity and clearer definitions.

For example, “growth mindset” came up frequently as something that’s essential for DEIB. However, we found a lack of clarity about what exactly growth mindset really means, and whether it’s a skill or not. In addition, a few participants also expressed general apprehension that this term has become a buzzword and is overused in the context of DEIB. One participant explained:

“I have seen growth mindset come up in many instances—it is such a leadership term. Not clear what we mean by that—whether it’s an individual attribute or relative to the org culture.”

As the discussion unfolded, a few other skills—such as caring, vulnerability, optimism, resiliency, and humility—were highlighted as being necessary for DEIB. However, we lacked consensus on whether these terms should be categorized as general skills or skills only within the context of DEIB.

For example: One participant mentioned that optimism—on its own—could lead people to believe that things are already in a good state for everyone. But, when optimism is paired with eagerness to learn and evolve, that’s when it can be most effective for DEIB purposes.

Similar skills have different applications across job levels

Many skills required for fostering a DEIB culture were highlighted as crucial skills for all groups, including:

• Change management
• Critical thinking
• Self-awareness
• Active listening
• Emotional intelligence

While we observed similarities in DEIB skills across job levels, it was equally interesting to analyze and understand how these similarities were discussed during the roundtable in terms of their applications.

For example, change management applied to all 4 groups:

• Employees: focusing on an individual’s ability to deal with change that comes with innovation, ambiguity, and complexity associated with DEIB
• Managers: skills focusing on being receptive to new ways of thinking and modeling new behaviors to uphold the org’s DEIB values
• Senior leaders: skills focusing of being more operational—mainly focusing on org culture change and implementing large-scale behavior change to foster DEIB
• ERG leaders: focusing more on bottom-up change—being disruptive and pushing DEIB efforts up through the ranks to stick

By examining a similar skill across job levels, it became evident in our discussion that the relevance and application of a skill is dependent on contextual factors.

Defining DEIB skills in more granular terms could better inform an org’s skill training programs and improve diagnostic skills assessments.

A SPECIAL THANKS

We're extremely grateful to the attendees who enriched the conversation by sharing their thoughtful ideas and experiences. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback at [email protected].

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Listen to my podcast

Guests

Rob Lauber, former Chief Learning Officer at McDonald's

DETAILS

Truism 1: McDonald’s employs a lot of people. Truism 2: it doesn’t care that much about those people, so long as they flip the burgers OK, right? That 2nd one is totally wrong, as we find out in our great conversation with the giant company’s former CLO, the very engaging Rob Lauber. In fact, with its pioneering Archways Program, thousands of entry-level staff get amazing on-the-job training, but also money and support for up-skilling—upskilling that the corporation is perfectly ok with them using to move on, often to full-time education or valuable social careers like healthcare. Even more interesting: for every dollar put in the Archways Program, McDonald's directly benefits with by $3 back. Skills and what they mean (including some refreshing skepticism from Rob about what the robots really will take off us) has been Rob’s own ‘obsession’ over a storied career, so tune in for more on running training at mass scale—including some fascinating advise on what CLOs can do now, today, in terms of available company data. It’s enough to make you hungry.

Connect with him on LinkedIn here

Check out the Archway Program here

Now out of the Golden Arches, Rob’s new endeavor, XLO Global, is here

Webinar

Workday will host an exclusive live webinar towards the end of the season, where you can meet the Workplace Stories team of Dani, Stacia and Chris, and join in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. Find out more information and access content at www.workday.com/skills. 

Partner

We're also thrilled to be partnering with Chris Pirie, CEO of Learning Futures Group and voice of the Learning Is the New Working podcast. Check them both out.

Season Sponsor

Key quotes:

We did a study and essentially it showed a 3:1 return; for every dollar we put in the Archways Program, McDonald's directly benefited with a $3 return. So it was pretty easy to justify the program on the business side.

I do think that skills profile, skills inventory piece is a nut that I think is worth cracking.

Marketing's typically led by insights; they take the data, they drive insights, and then that drives the product. I think the HR/L&D organizations need to get much more disciplined and probably operate more in a parallel to the way of marketing organizations.

The CLO has an important role to play there in terms of almost demanding that the people analytics team is providing the insights that help set the agenda and the strategy for what L&D needs to pursue.

There's a huge amount of rich data there that L&D professionals can really draw upon and go after which on the business side are very meaningful in terms of their impact. It could be as simple as you go look at customer complaints and you can identify all the skill opportunities there around products not created correctly, regardless of industry—customer service experiences, not being what you would want them to be, those kinds of things

Stacia Garr:
Today were talking to Rob Lauber, who is currently CEO and founder at XLO Global, but was recently the CLO at McDonald's, which included being Dean of the Hamburger University, and before that he was the CLO at YUM! Brands.

Rob Lauber:
The people functions, HR functions, whatever you want to call them, in organizations need to operate like marketing organizations. And in marketing that's figured out, because data and insight drives action. And I don't think that most HR organizations in the country think about it that way, or globally even think about it that way. It's probably a few I'm sure, but I do think that there are far too many parallels, and not enough action.

Stacia Garr:
Today, we talked to Rob about how to operate a system at massive scale. We discuss frontline workers, and really what a difference skills programs can make in their careers. We talk about automation and AI, and how we can be thinking about freeing up people's resources to do new types of service.

Rob Lauber:
The biggest challenge is always scale and reach. You have an organization where in the US, for example, you're going to hire a million people into that system every year, right? So 3000 people a day are coming onto your system, 3000 people are coming off your system; that creates a lot of reverberation in the organization around having really good, repeatable, easy to execute systems in place, particularly around how you help people learn, or you can't possibly keep up. And that's got a downstream impact, obviously, on the customer experience.

Stacia Garr:
So next time you go into a McDonald’s, and think about that person who's giving you that Happy Meal to keep those kiddos quiet, think about everything that had to happen for that person to be ready to deliver that with a smile.

Rob Lauber:
So my name's Rob Lauber. I was the former Chief Learning Officer at McDonald’s, YUM! Brands before that, Cingular Wireless even before that. And I'm currently getting my own little business off the ground—I’m the CEO and Founder, I promoted myself, of a little entity called XLO Global, which is really an external Chief Learning Officers’ view into the enterprise.

Stacia Garr:
Can you start by giving us an overview of McDonald's as an employer, its size, mission and purpose?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, so McDonald's is a 37,000 restaurant franchise organization; so it's 90-plus percent franchised. So we call it a system; it operates more like a network than, say , a large-scale entity that we all might be familiar with. And it's got probably 1.8 to 2 million employees around the world in 120 countries, serving about 70 million customers every day, plus or minus. They do a lot of transactions!

Stacia Garr:
Definitely! And you said that you were the CLO; can you talk a little bit more about your work there and how you would kind of generally describe the whole set of responsibilities?

Rob Lauber:
My overall responsibilities were for the learning and development, largely focused on the restaurant environment up through staff largely focused on the operational side of the business as well—so cutting across those countries and cutting across those large franchisees and the small franchisees that we have, and working through with them, learning and development strategies, and then working in the business to get the right infrastructure, the right content, the right business models, in place to really make sure we've got a really good way for enabling people to learn.

Stacia Garr:
And I know just from having spoken with some other former folks from McDonald’s that the franchise environment can kind of create a little bit of a different relationship with the employees of those franchisees, because they're not actually employees of McDonald's. Did that have an impact on the learning responsibilities for you as CLO in your organization?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, it adds a couple of different dimensions. One, it makes analytics very hard because you're really across different entities, so you run into whose data is it's kind of conversations not unlike you would in a lot of countries, I guess these days with global privacy concerns and things like that. And also the relationship then was more with the franchise owner, and making sure you're really driving and enabling learning that the franchise owner sees as important to their business, because they can always opt out. One of the themes I talked about with my team a lot was thinking like a consumer model, almost—you have to have a relevant product, you have to understand your audience, know what it is that they're really after and deliver a high quality product, or essentially they're not going to buy it and use it.

Stacia Garr:
Right. So it's almost like building an economic model into the L&D function in some ways.

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, the P& L side of it, right? But they're paying royalties and those types of things into the business to receive those kinds of services as well. So there is an expectation there.

Stacia Garr:
I'm heavily focused on data, so I want to make sure we come back around to that data point a little bit. But maybe if you can set the stage for us in terms of some of the unique problems you were trying to solve when you were a CLO, particularly given the nature of the organization?

Rob Lauber:
I would say the big things we were trying to solve were, I guess, today we would call digital transformation, right? Speaking of obsessions, since that's the topic of this all, that's another one at the moment, so a big part of what I was focused on was digital transformation of the way we enable learning at the restaurants: so how do we move from a paper-based, largely, approach across the United States and across the world to a more digital delivery platform that would enable the business to move faster, would make actual execution easier on the restaurant manager and on the employee?

And then I say the second thing was more honing in on how people really are learning at the restaurant level, which frankly is, is a shoulder-to-shoulder experience, someone showing you how to make French Fries and how do we deal with that? So really being plugged into how people learn and then trying to match your offerings into that flow of how people learn was, I'd say the biggest challenge that we faced.

Stacia Garr:
And maybe this is kind of a double click on that answer, but as you think about everything you were doing, what would you say were kind of the biggest challenges you were facing?

Rob Lauber:
The biggest challenge is always scale and reach. You have an organization where in the US, for example, you're going to hire a million people into that system every year, right? So 3000 people a day are coming onto your system, 3000 people are coming off your system. I'm just thinking about that. If you're in the talent acquisition world gives people heart palpitations, or you have to hand them a Xanax when you start talking about those things. But that creates a lot of reverberations in the organization around having really good, repeatable, easy to execute systems in place, particularly around how you help people learn, or you can't possibly keep up. And that's got a downstream impact, obviously, on the customer experience.

Chris Pirie:
So what were your core learning programs: was it about onboarding and franchise management and leadership? How would you characterize the ‘20’ in your ‘80:20’?

Rob Lauber:
I'd say the biggest focus was around enabling the frontline learner, the crew person. Because that was the biggest audience, obviously that we're dealing with around the world, and the least experienced audience that we were dealing with as well; they didn't know how to do the things that they needed to do. That's also the audience that you count on to really bring any changes as the organization moves to life, whether that's a new product, a new piece of equipment, right? That audience really has to know how to operate those pieces with a lot of proficiency with speed and , and capability. So, I put that in the 80 camp, but we ran the spectrum all the way up to helping franchise owners think about their business as they grew, what challenges and pitfalls they were running into and what pivots they needed to make from a mindset perspective in how they ran their business as well.

Stacia Garr:
Maybe just stepping back to you and your perspective around skills, what skills did you need to do your work and how did you acquire them?

Rob Lauber:
It's interesting. I think there are a couple of skills that were really important, I think, in the role. One is having a bit of business acumen, so understanding the mindset and perspective of the franchise owner, which is really a small business owner. And I was fortunate early in my career, I worked for Dun & Bradstreet, and I spent the first five years out of college putting together the business credit reports for small and medium-size and some large businesses that were pre-IPO. And you quickly got to understand the balance sheet; you quickly got to understand cash flow, supplier challenges, people, challenges, those types of things. I think that really helped me come into that role, because I could understand the small business challenge that many of them are facing in that piece.

So I think that one skill that was really important. I think another one was just really around the operational knowledge of L&D and the flexibility around design choices, infrastructure choices, content choices in the organization were really important as well. And then I think there were the obvious ones around, which probably is more a competency, I guess, but influencing and relationship building—and in a franchise system, figuring out who are the early adopters in the franchise system, who are the ones who may not be early adopters but if you get them on board, they help you drive momentum.

So, momentum. I looked at the success and in the things that we did around a momentum factor—how well was it being taken and where was it self-propelling/self-selling itself out across the system because the franchise community we'll be talking about it.

Chris Pirie:
Our topic here is skills for the season, and it means a lot of things to a lot of people. Rob, but what does skills mean to you in the context of your work as a CLO and McDonalds and before?How would you define skills?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, I always thought of skills as like specific learned abilities, I guess, would be the word, the change, that you need to perform a job successfully versus competencies, which are more about knowledge and behaviors.

So I almost put them in a mindset tool set, kind of a framework. And we would talk about that a lot at McDonald's as well, as there are some things you would do that were really around building mindset and changing mindset or helping frame people's mindset. And then the other side of it was really around the toolset, which was how do you create, and enable people to build their ability to perform things they need to do to be successful in their role?

Chris Pirie:
One of the things we're learning is that the language and the taxonomic structures around these things are very fluid, and everybody's kind of found a way in their environment to talk about them in a way that's meaningful to their business. I wonder what were the kind of conversations that you had with business leaders at McDonald's around the topic of skills? Did they get it? Were they concerned, were they engaged?

Rob Lauber:
I think it depends on who you were talking to on that front. So I think in the broader context, when we think about the employee value proposition, and we would talk about reasons people would want to work at McDonald's, but we would definitely get into the broader skills conversation around; it's the first rung on a career ladder. And those were the places that people could enter into the workplace in general, beyond just McDonald’s, and gain a set of skills that are highly portable.

When you get down to talking to franchise owners and at a more tactical level in the business at the restaurant level, the conversation mostly was driven around performance, right? It was, ’I need to make sure all my people know ‘how to’ and fill in the blank or even, in a lot of cases, I need to make sure all my people understand why we do whatever it is that we're trying to do there.’ So context became important there as well, so the skills conversations typically showed up kinda in those dimensions most commonly.

Chris Pirie:
What about with the frontline workers themselves? Did you ever have an opportunity to talk to them about their approach to this?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, I think the most common piece around that conversation or the orientation of that conversation or the direction it would head would be, where does this job lead me? Where can this take me? And the conversation around skills typically would come out of that, right? Like my ability to make French Fries is great if I'm going to go do the same job somewhere else in another business, but that's not really going to advance me, which we all seek and strive for every day; I don't think that's different for any of us.

And so the conversation around the portability, for example, of skills and how teamwork communications, dealing with conflict, working in a time intense environment, understanding how to get to work on time, some basic things too are all skills that we talk to people about how McDonald's sets you up for greater success when you move on to whatever it is you want to pursue.

Chris Pirie:
You are pretty connected in the industry; I know you see the world through a much broader lens than just your work at McDonald's, but why do you think skills are such a hot topic for people right now?

Rob Lauber:
I'm not really sure how it's emerged to be the words that everyone's used. I haven't really thought about it linearly. I keep going back to—and Chris, you'll relate because you and I were around at the same time—but in 2003, I was on an ATD (ASTD at the time) public policy group, and we published a skills gap white paper in 2003. And 17 years later, skills are the word that we're talking about today. So for me, I kinda think it's been front of mind for me for a long time. So I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, and I agree with you, why the surge in the narrative—and to Stacia’s point, the obsession is emerging.

I think part of it is around an evolution towards thinking differently about how we acquire talent in organizations. I think that's one piece, and lots of root causes about why we would think differently about that. I also think it's emerging because it helps bridge the gap between educational institutions and businesses; I think it puts it in simpler terms for people to really understand, ‘Here’s what we're looking for from a skills perspective in the business world,’ when I'm talking to a university president and they're talking about their academic rigor or the programs that they have.

Chris Pirie:
Got it, yeah. We had an interview just the other day where somebody was talking about, you mentioned it too, the technology and our obsession with digital transformation; Josh Bersin talks about an accelerated skills half-life, and there's just so much coming. I think a lot of leaders are anxious about where they're going to get the talent to create value from data and all the things that data is, the new oil, all the things that their software companies are telling you, you better worry about it's like people from the do that. That might be some of it too?

Rob Lauber:
Ironically, the ones telling you that the ones that are pitching products to solve that problem. It's a little suspect that way too.

Chris Pirie:
Good point, absolutely well taken!

Stacia Garr:
I wonder too, though, if some of this is, ‘cause we've heard throughout this podcast that skills are intensely or primarily individual—so we've heard like in several iterations, that competencies are owned by the organization, but skills are owned by the individual.

And I wonder if part of this is part of the push to have individuals own their careers even more? And so if you're talking about skills, that's in a language of something that employees can feel like they own, feel like they can acquire or confined sources from which to acquire those skills. And so I wonder if the broader shift that we've seen around putting onus for the learning of them is also a parallel reason why we're seeing the rise in skills.

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, I think too, I think about it too. Is it a more translatable way to talk to people about how to get from point A to point B versus a competency, a 14-point competency compendium that you have in your organization—one of which ironically is resilience—and nobody really knows what that is other than to put up with this pandemic for another month?

Chris Pirie:
Or documents that tell you which competencies you need!

Rob Lauber:
Exactly. It's funny though, because in the skills obsession we are talking about, on the side there's conversations about agility and resilience, and those are competencies that are not skills. So it is kind of funny to watch the parallel conversation and I think it's, it's somewhat unconscious in terms of, and not, I would say an equally valuable conversation is the way I would put it. But I think that it's really interesting to watch that play out.

But I do think it, it just makes it simpler for people to digest one, and two, I do think that, when you think about skills gaps out there and this need for a billion data scientists on the planet, so we can all just analyze data for the rest of our lives and then spit out amazing insights with no one to do anything about it. But the needs at that level are very skill-driven; there’s a methodical way to build those skills.

Stacia Garr:
I think that's a clear articulation of what I was trying to say, which is that it's understandable and an individual can do something about it. So I love that perspective.

Let's shift over, because you did just now mention analytics and data, so that's kind of go after that a little bit more directly. A big theme in the skills discussion is skill supply and demand, with some skills being too short to supply and others in to greatest supply. How have you been thinking about this problem, and how do you think we should be thinking about that more holistically?

Rob Lauber:
I mean, I've seen and read a lot about the skills shortage typically on the tech side seems to be the loudest piece of it, although interestingly, it seems to have shifted away from things like coding because that actually seems to be commoditized now in the workplace, where six years ago I was on a workforce board and that's all we were talking about was building people with coding skills, helping people get coding skills. So it is interesting to watch the shift there.

So I do think that there's a little bit of that going on. I think the challenge around supply and demand is predicting the future, right? And so there's the technical, the technical piece of it as well is predicting the future. So there's anticipation around data skills, or cybersecurity skills, or those types of pieces, assuming that it's only gonna get more complex, more difficult, we're going to need more people for it, these are areas that are going to grow.

And then there’s the big question: what are the skills areas that are actually on the decline or less needed than before? I haven't seen much written from that angle—the contrarian angle that says, actually these are the skills we don't really need much of anymore. And then I do hear on a parallel side, the hard-soft skills conversation, when you think about those pieces while we're , I'd call the, the tech skills, hard skills for obvious reasons… but you hear every once in a while, the murmuring about ‘My teenage kids have no soft skills, like they don't know how to talk to somebody; if they have to make a phone call to their soccer coach, they don't know how to actually talk to them; they want to just text them.’ Right?

So I do think some of those softer skills also will emerge as a supply demand kind of equation at some point as well.

Stacia Garr:
I feel like we're hearing a fair amount of that in this whole discussion of both automation and AI and this question of what makes us human—what makes us stand out from what the robots can do. And in that discussion, whether you call it soft skills, or one of our guests called them ‘durable' skills, which we thought was interesting because they endure past a specific time, they're kind of throughout your whole career—but I think we may hear about it more in that context as well.

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, I do; I agree that we're approaching or in the middle of a pivot moment. But unfortunately, I can age myself and remember when a desktop computer landed on my desk; Chris probably read about that research, ‘cause he's much younger than me, but when when a desktop computer first landed on my desk and there were 40 clerks across the room that used to do all the data entry and now it was me and my colleagues, so you were self-servicing that end, all those people found other things to do. And I do think we're at kind of one of those moments again, where the same thing when the internet became a reality, a whole set of other skills were displaced, and people evolved and moved towards.

I think this pivot is very much similar to that new jobs are being created because a new industry or a new way of working or a new way of operating a new operating model is emerging again, so I see that as it's not a new problem, right? That's why I go back to my 2003 example: dot com bust, skills, shortage of those kinds of things. And I go to 2020 and I sit there and say, Hmm, skill shortage. Even in the pandemic, I think there's like 17 million posted jobs out there in the United States, so in theory all of those should be a hundred percent filled.

It's very interesting to me to sit there and watch the skill supply conversation go on. And it just feels very elusive. It's hard to sit there and I'd be surprised if anyone could proclaim. They have the formula and the science behind with certainty, these skills are going to generate these many jobs. And these skills are going to lose these many jobs.

I think about AI. And I know at McDonald's we were talking about AI at the drive-thru, the application, I actually wrote an article about this, the age of automation and how it's getting impacted our restaurants. And the conversation was more about, is it going to free up people? Sure. But it enables the restaurants to then do things they couldn't possibly do before—like the whole idea of table service, where you come in and place your order counter, and then go sit down and someone actually brings it to you; in the economic model without automation, that was a very difficult thing to do because you couldn't ask your restaurant and be profitable with a low cost product and still provide some level of table service or curbside service or delivery or those kinds of things. So the automation piece actually creates new opportunities for businesses, which in turn creates new opportunities for people.

Chris Pirie:
That's a really interesting idea, because I think there the skills gap between those two activities is pretty narrow—you can imagine taking someone from behind the deep fat fryer and skilling them up to perhaps be capable, more capable in front of a customer. Many of the examples that we see talked about and anxiety springing up around are where those retail jobs go away. And your only option is to become a software engineer for Amazon. And that feels like a vast chasm to get people through in terms of transforming.

Rob Lauber:
Frank Kevin Oaks reminded me of 1981 news article about how ATMs were the death of the teller—and then you go to like 2011 BLS statistics 20 years later, and there's actually more tellers working in banks than there were in 1981 yet ATMs are the understood way of doing business, right—the understood way of personal banking.

So it is very interesting to see, but the role of the teller to even transform into something completely different; they do different services, they provide a higher level of customer service than they did before. I think that's the kind of opportunity at the retail level, the consumer-facing level that is in front of a lot of businesses.

Stacia Garr:
And I think it ties in nicely, Chris, to what we heard another guest talking about, which is this idea of kind of thinking about the skills pipeline and where people move; so you can see the person who was previously making the fries, moving to this customer service or guest service role, and then somebody who may have been doing something else—it was a little bit more skilled being able to move up to something else because they’ve been freed to do that. So it's kind of this value chain that can get released if you're able to automate some of the lower level skills.

Rob Lauber:
I agree, and I think that in the bigger picture of things, we should be thinking about the labor market, that way more in general, right? So should the minimum wage be $7, $15, or $50 is an irrelevant conversation, because history says it doesn't really do anything to impact poverty over the long term anyway. But what does the economic opportunity of acquiring skills do? So how do you create and how do you think of, and how do you position, I don't know, the retail sector as the entry point for skill building for anyone in the workforce… and what does that get you? And then how do you move to another level? What does that get you? How does advancing your education, whether that's completing High School, completing college, getting an advanced degree, how does that position you further up a chain that creates new opportunities for you to move in a direction along the skills pipeline?

Chris Pirie:
One mechanism that we've used in the past around skills to do some of that actually is skills validation and credentialing. At Microsoft, for example, we knew we needed a million database administrators on the planet in order to make sure our technology could work, and so we built a certification program and we created a value around that job role, and injected those skills into the population. What was your philosophy around credentialing? How did it play into life at McDonald’s?

Rob Lauber:
We were a little looser on that in the context, I think. I think back to MCSC, for example; I think that's a great one—the national association of manufacturers’ ‘stackable credentials’ is another good example. But largely the credentialing idea hasn't taken off very far or gone as far as it probably needs to in the world.

At McDonald's, our approach was really more around knocking down barriers to advance your education through the traditional education systems that we have in place. So we had large populations that dropped out of High School, for whatever reasons; suddenly they became the breadwinner in their family, and they had to drop out of high school, or out of necessity they had to get a job and here they are, and they're there, so we focused very much on being able to open doors for people to access education and advance their education.

And that was really the intent behind the Archways Program, which was a gateway basically program that you can come in, work at McDonald's, advance your education and then pursue whatever avenue that you wanted to. So, interestingly, 40%—I think we surveyed like 40,000 crew people a couple of years ago—40% of them wanted to move into healthcare. So that kind of data is very interesting. And there's certainly no shortage of need for people in the healthcare profession, in all ranges, so we introduced programs to people that let them know what are the professions in healthcare that are available, here’s the educational tracks, if you want to be a CNA, or if you want to go all the way to nursing, or you want to be a med tech or whatever, physical therapist, here's basically what your education path looks like. And you can work for McDonald's for as long as it takes for you to get there, and we'll help make access easier; we’ll certainly make it more affordable to you, and give you that path to be able to pursue it in a way that you probably might not have thought of otherwise or had access to other.

Chris Pirie:
That's really, really interesting, and I want to get to this. Can you describe how that program works a little bit?

Rob Lauber:
Yep. So, yeah, so I’ll walk through the pillars of the program: first, we had an English language program, where people, typically Spanish in the US with Spanish as their first language, would learn English as a second language. That was an 8 or 12-week program you could go into, typically face-to-face locally delivered by a certified ESL person; McDonald’s fully paid for that.

The second piece was a career online high school program where you would get a diploma, not a GED. And you could typically in—depending on when you departed or stopped High School—you typically finish in 12 to 18 months. I think our average was like 14 months, and you could get a high school diploma. We then moved into the traditional college path, and McDonald's would fully pay for the high school piece, and that was about $1,300 in value there. And then in the college piece if you work 15 hours a week, you had been in the job for 90 days, you were eligible for $2,500 a year towards a degree program, and you could go to whatever school you wanted to. So if you wanted to go to your local community college, which by far and away numbers-wise was the most popular choice, you could do that and you could pursue whatever degree you wanted to. We weren't specific about like, it has to be supply chain, or tech, or something like that. And that was $2,500 a year.

And we had some preferred suppliers like Southern New Hampshire or Colorado Tech or some others out there, where they would work the other end of the equation to make that $2,500 stretch the farthest it possibly could. So your work experience would count towards some credits and your training experiences inside McDonald's would count toward some credit. And the affordability piece when you got through Cal grants and frankly grants from those schools with Colorado Tech, for example, you could go for free pretty much not out of pocket to attend school—all you had to do is put in the time and continue to work for McDonald's 15 hours a week.

Chris Pirie:
And was this available to people who were working in the franchise system?

Rob Lauber:
Yep, yeah. Over three years we had about 50,000 people participate in the program and a lot of repeat visitors as well, channeling down that path. And we would celebrate a lot of the success that they would have. So at Colorado Tech, I think two years ago, I went out to Denver and there were 170 people that were graduating out of the McDonald's system at Colorado Tech, and they would walk the stage they'd bring their families. And it was a huge occasion; many of them were the first person in their family to graduate from college, and many of them were pursuing other careers and other things, and it was great and they were grateful. And for McDonald's, the idea was they would stay longer, which they would. We knew that. And ultimately they'll turn into great consumers because there'll be fans of the brand probably for a pretty long time. And given what we were able to help them do, there’s a real win-win on that, on that side. And that's how we thought about it.

Chris Pirie:
Is there a lot of upward career mobility in McDonald's as well?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, absolutely. But when you look at the realities of the upward mobility piece given a highly franchised one, many of those franchises are family owned businesses. Your upward mobility could be limited; it depends on the franchise, but there are opportunities into the McDonald's corporation. So there were people that I knew that came through from franchisees into McDonald's corporate and entry-level kind of jobs and were making their way up the chain. And several of them said, I want to be a franchisee someday as well; this is setting their pathway to get there.

Stacia Garr
Did you measure the success of the program? Was it the increased retention rate? Was it the number of graduates or percentage of graduates?

Rob Lauber:
We looked at it, selfishly, on the business side. So first, what are we getting for what we're spending? So we looked at things like average tenure, likelihood to be promoted, revenue at the store level where you had two or more participants in the program compared to stores that didn't have participants. Those are three measures for example. And we did a study with Accenture, and essentially it showed a three to one return; for every dollar we in the program, McDonald's directly benefited with a $3 return. So it's pretty easy to justify the program on the business side. And a lot of all the confidence intervals and big data stuff you would want to see and that, people would want to know to believe that it was really true.

We also looked at the qualitative measures, so we talked to our top 10 franchisees with participants in it and said, ‘How is this helping you in the community, because so many of them are community-based; how is this helping your reputation? What kind of doors is it opening? What are you seeing in the quality of candidates?’ All very subjective and qualitative, but we also included 10 profiles of franchisees and the benefits they were seeing. A simple example would be like they were able to talk to their local legislators in a way where before they might not have gotten the time of day, because of the wage conversation or whatever it might be, or perceptions about McDonald's as an employer. So this opened doors for them to build better relationships in the community as well, which of course has an intangible long-term benefit.

Stacia Garr:
And then kind of one other question on this is, how did it work financially? So I know you mentioned kind of the return measures, but did the franchisees have to pay any amount if their people were participating in this program, or was that kind of all part of their royalties they would pay otherwise?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, at the time it was fully funded, and it has been up to this point fully funded, by McDonald's corporation. There is a discussion about a shift, where it's a shared model underway, and we'll see what the outcome is on that. But up to this point, the first five years, from 2015 through 2020, McDonald's corporation underwrote it—largely because we believe from an employer reputation perspective, and also from a business perspective, we needed to do that to get the program momentum and proof points in place.

Stacia Garr:
Fascinating. I want to turn—I kind of foreshadowed this in your introduction—but I want to turn a little bit more to that conversation about data, and how you all were thinking about that. So what challenges did you have in obtaining or identifying skills data, and then actually using it to understand what was happening with skills in the organization?

Rob Lauber:
The challenges we would face were mainly around getting granular; comparing store to store, for example, was very challenging. Typically, we would be able to compare at, what I would say in the US was what we call a co-op level, which was about 55 of those around the United States. And they were basically clusters of operators, maybe 20 or so franchisees, and all of their data would be up and grouped in an anonymous kind of way, where you wouldn't be able to figure out who's who. So we were able to gather that data that way.

Stacia Garr:
Too much noise around this, and not a lot of conversation about what people are actually doing and how they're actually thinking about it. And so we're trying to elevate these stories of how, exactly that—how people are thinking about it. We'll go here next, but also this intersection between learning and, and people analytics; so the data, and because a lot of times it seems like those are two parallel paths in the organization that are never meeting. And so we're also trying to kind of encourage that because we think that the problem needs to be solved.

We don't know the exact answer, but we think those two groups need to work together to solve it.

Rob Lauber:
Yeah. My two-cent opinion is the people functions, HR functions, whatever you want to call them and organizations need to operate like marketing organizations. And in marketing, that's figured out because data and insight drives action. Right?

I don't think that most HR organizations in the country think about it that way or globally even think about it that way: probably a few, I'm sure. But I do think that there are far too many parallels and not enough action.

Stacia Garr:
So how should learning be working with people analytics and thinking about this data and kind of the relationship between the two organizations to really understand both what skills are in the organization today, and how we should be thinking about developing skills?

Rob Lauber:
I think from my inventory perspective—and my experience comes from a large enterprise perspective—and I think McDonald's aside, I know my peers in larger enterprises are dealing with this, too. There isn't really a way to capture the inventory, right? The conversation around needs is always pretty apparent, but the conversation around what do we have in our organization and what can we draw upon an organization, where are we in our organization, isn’t necessarily as evident as I think many folks in L&D or in that probably the people organizations, HR organizations want it to be.

So I can think about an example; I was talking with a colleague of mine a couple of weeks ago at a large consumer distribution company. And they were talking about a driver who has an engineering degree applied for a job with their engineering organization. And they had no idea this person was out there driving, and had that kind of skill set. And at first, honestly, and I, and I'd say this comment in a lot of organizations, there was something dismissive about, Oh, well, they're a driver, right? So really, why would I consider them, we should go external for this?

But I do think that the other side of it was this aha, like, well, how many other engineers do we have out there that drive, they could be doing this other engineering work for us, which can drive value. I think that's a simple example, but that conversation came up once or twice while I was at McDonald's too. Are there IT professionals sitting out there, or people capable of taking at least entry-level jobs in our organization that are in our restaurant communities? And we're just not even aware of where they are.

So I do think that skills profile skills inventory piece is a nut that I think is worth cracking that I think a lot of us are trying to get to. And I think having that then becomes your data analytics driver, right? Because if what you have and where you're trying to go, L&D steps in and tries to fill the gap right, as does talent acquisition, I would say, right? Am I going to buy my talent or am I going to build my talent?

And I think that's really where the L&D role plays in it. I think the analytics team in L&D teams, the analytics piece of it has to be central to beyond just L&D. I think of it in the holistic person profile of who's working in our organization, what’s the flow look like of the people that are coming into our organization; how do we compare against others that are trying to hire the same people we are?

I would lean on that insights organization and analytics or analytics organization, really, to give me the insights about what we see and what we don't know that's right in front of us. Similar to, and I mentioned this earlier, similar to a marketing organization; marketing's typically led by insights; they take the data, they drive insights, and then that drives the product. I think the HR/L&D organizations need to get much more disciplined and probably operate more in a parallel to the way of marketing organizations.

Stacia Garr:
And what do you think the role is of the CLO in driving that? Because we don't often hear, at least on the people analytics side, as the CLO is being a primary customer, if you will, of the analytics function, but it sounds like there's an actually an opportunity here for the CLO to, to be pushing for that service, if you will, from the analytics group?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, absolutely, I think that the CLO has an important role to play there in terms of almost demanding—demanding is too strong a word—but I mean, the expectation that people analytics team is going to be providing the insights that help set the agenda and the strategy for what L&D needs to pursue.

So I do think that that's an important piece that needs to be there. And if it's not in place, I would suggest to my colleagues, they should try to figure that one out and make sure that it is in place.

Stacia Garr:
Definitely. Are there any other groups just around this out, any other groups that you think learning should be collaborating with specifically with regard to skills that we haven't talked about?

Rob Lauber:
It's interesting, because one of the things I looked a lot at and tried to work a lot with was, we did work around the customer experience and what customers expected out of their McDonald's transaction, for example. So we went over and we looked at customer insights and consumer insights, and what were customers saying about their experience with the brand, and that identified a set of skills that we knew we needed to focus on in the organization around hospitality.

For example, to the example I gave earlier, where automation freed up people to now go interact and engage directly with customers: well when they do engage with customers, what is it that they expect and how do I make sure that those people have those skills and abilities to be able to do that?

The other side is to look to your marketing organization, because that's some of where the outcomes are or the insights that they find about the experience that your organization is providing, is obviously driven by your people. And that's the flip side of the skill development that you're trying to do.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah, a lot of what I'm seeing on the people analytics side is the bringing together of customer experience, data, and employee experience data for that exact reason. And so you can clearly see when there's that gap, connecting that back to the L&D group to try and fill that gap, or alternatively to talent acquisition, if that skill set isn't available, or can't be developed quickly enough.

Rob Lauber:
That’s right.

Chris Pirie:
What I love about that is that that's business data, right—that’s business outcome data, and when your learning strategy is driven by that, then what the problem is you're trying to fix, and guess what, whether you're having an impact or not, because you can look back at that data rather than examine your own products and the own experience and something within the sphere of L&D.

Rob Lauber:
I mean, it could be as simple as you go look at customer complaints and you can identify all the skill opportunities there around products not created correctly, regardless of industry—customer service experiences, not being what you would want them to be those kinds of things. I mean, there's a huge amount of rich data there that L&D professionals can really draw upon to set a priority, and frankly go after and which on the business side are very meaningful in terms of their impact.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah, very measurable, which I think is important because if you could reduce the percentage of complaints around a certain thing, there's your direct business impact of your work.

Rob Lauber:
And a whole bunch of people outside your function can tell you how much that's worth.

Stacia Garr:
Yes!

Rob Lauber:
And keep your job simple!

Chris Pirie:
I'm sure there are a lot of startups out there that are starting to apply AI and trawling through that business data to generate the skills that need to be worked on anyway; we’re seeing a lot of cool startups using data around skills to create value for a number of different people. Are there organizations or vendors that you worked with out there that you admire in terms of what they're doing around skills and creating value from understanding skills in a better way?

Rob Lauber:
I'm going to now tick off all the vendors that I work with; thanks for that! But it's actually been an interesting question because I don't know that I really ever thought of them that way, in terms of, particularly with the McDonald's scale and the challenges of having access to data. It typically wasn't framed up in that context with that, so it wouldn't be fair to me to sit there and say, I like this organization over this organization.

I do know some of the suppliers that I worked with there that I still talk to today are on the fringe of being able to skills map any training content that you have, for example in your system using AI and be able to present to a learner, e.g. if you take this course, here's three or four different skills that you're going to be able to take away out of there.

So to your point, I think that not only the startup community, but I also think that even the existing community that's out there, are catching onto this as an opportunity. And I think it's good thinking about it that way, it’s really good. And I think three or four years from now, we'll either be onto something, or we'll all agree it's not really possible to tackle.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. I think that's exactly where we are in this, in this whole conversation. Rob, is there anything else we should've asked you about?

Rob Lauber:
No, not really. Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean, this has been a great conversation overall, and there's probably could go on for a couple more hours because there's so many cogs on the wheel that we didn't get to that could in this whole area.

Chris Pirie:
Well, maybe you could just tell us something a little bit about what you're going to do next and what, what your plans are, and then also, how can people connect with you to learn more?

Rob Lauber:
Well, I started this little venture called XLO Global, so xloglobal.com is my plug; it's a really complex website of one page, but specifically by design, because I'm really focused on doing three things.

One is advisory services, so I'm working with some startups and that part is pretty public, you can find out about that on the website as well. I'm also then working with some organizations on some short-term projects, around learning strategies, within a particular problem that they're trying to solve.

And then the third piece of work I'm doing is working with a couple of organizations right now on revamping their business model, their infrastructure and their content or approach to learning as a whole, as they're trying to pivot their business for growth as the pandemic comes out. So they're actually leveraging this moment, where growth is a bit of a challenge to get themselves ready, to be able to really accelerate quickly as an organization when they come out. So I'm doing those three pieces of work right now, and that's mostly my focus.

Chris Pirie:
Sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun.

Rob Lauber:
That's all I'm after at this point. It's really good!

Stacia Garr:
Well, that actually ties nicely into what I think is our final question. We've done a bunch of research on purpose. And so we'd like to end these conversations with questions about your purpose, and really why do you do the work that you do?

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, again, probably a five-hour conversation and some psychoanalysis. But I distill it down into one thing. I get huge amounts of satisfaction out of helping other people be successful. And I can't explain it, but I think maybe I'm not unique to all of us on this call either about that, but for me, it's incredibly satisfying to help and to see someone succeed or gain a new insight or from something I might be able to unlock for them.

I've made that my pursuit. I truly believe that's why I'm here. It's I know that gives me the most energy, and so that's probably the simplest way to explain,

Stacia Garr:
Well, thank you for doing it for us and for our listeners today; I think you've helped us all understand something new and given us insights. So thank you very much.

Chris Pirie:
Yes thanks, Rob, great conversation. And I would also say that you have given a lot back to the industry as well through your work with ATD; you’re a very well networked person, and I'm sure you're coaching a lot of learning leaders who are lucky to have you.

Rob Lauber:
Yeah, I just gotta figure out how I monetize that, but I'm not too worried. You're probably doing a lot better at that than me, but I'm happy. I love doing that stuff just in terms of like, Hey, can you give me your advice? And the psychoanalysis part of this stage just for fun is like, I've had people come to me that I know, but don't really know, and they're like, can I sit down and have a career conversation with you because—and they're not an L&D at all, they're like, one of them was like a CFO—and it was like, I don't really know what I'm doing and I don't, tell me what you think, or here's the situation I'm in, what should I do kind of stuff. And it's always been fascinating for me and I haven't been able to unlock why people do that, but it is. I get a lot of career counseling questions from people as well.

Stacia Garr:
Because you listen carefully, and you ask thoughtful questions.

Rob Lauber:
I think my wanting people to be successful and helping them solve their problem comes through in that and the way I approach everything. So it's give, give, give. And I get back a lot of satisfaction and obviously from a career perspective that hasn't really hurt me because when I go into the organizations that I've been in and I'm like, let's be successful. Right? And how do I make sure we all win?

And I think that's helped me get to where I am.

Chris Pirie:
We are very grateful to Workday for their exclusive sponsorship of this first season of the RedThread Research podcast. Today, the world is changing faster than ever, and you can meet those changing needs with Workday; it’s one agile system that enables you to grow and re-skill your workforce. Workday is a financial, HR and planning system for a changing world.

Workday will also host an exclusive live webinar towards the end of the season where you can meet the team Dani, Stacia and myself, and join in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. You can find out more information and access exclusive content at www.workday.com/skills.