Workplace Stories by RedThread Research

“Skills are like oxygen, invisible but necessary.”
This mindset shift is the brainchild of Vidya Krishnan, the Chief Learning Officer, and Peter Sheppard, the Head of the Global L&D Ecosystem at Ericsson.
Much of their job is identifying the oxygen and making it visible so they can do something with it. To do this, they’re taking a top-down and bottom-up approach. They’ve worked with senior leadership to define seven key skills they think everyone in the organization needs. They also work with the job leaders who own the skills to make sure their skills taxonomy is continuously updated.
Vidya and Peter are passionate about what they do. They’re working tirelessly to systemize learning to take care of and serve the individual. Because, ultimately, systems-first means people-first.
You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• Join the RedThread Research community today! [4:44]
• Learn more about Vidya and Peter [6:02]
• What is a skills-based organization? [9:33]
• What makes the skills effort worth it? [13:50]
• The data they use in addition to skills [16:40]
• Why their organization is passionate about skills [19:00]
• The scope of skills in their organization [20:38]
• Determining the important skills for a role [24:55]
• How they’re motivating their culture [29:01]
• The lightning round [33:32]
• How they organize their skills architecture [38:10]
• Who governs the skills infrastructure now? [45:44]
• Managing the data in their skills effort [47:56]
• How they figured out the best technology [53:15]
• Where to start with a skills transformation [54:49]
• How they determined global critical skills [57:56]
• Why Vidya and Peter are passionate about what they do [1:04:57]

Resources & People Mentioned

• Join theRedThread Research community
• The Checklist Manifestoby Atul Gawande
• TechWolf

Connect with Vidya Krishnan and Peter Sheppard

• Connect with Vidya onLinkedIn
• Connect with Peter onLinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website:Red Thread Research
• OnLinkedIn
• OnFacebook
• OnTwitter

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How do we define work and the skills needed to do the work? The way we view and assess skills is often through assessing and appraising someone’s output. But the problem is that most organizations aren’t capturing the right data and using it to gain insight.
According to Matt Donovan—the Chief Learning and Innovation Officer at GP Strategies—Job descriptions and skills in general describe the baseline. They are not what makes someone great at what they do.
So how do we define the work and the skills needed to do the work? How can we capture a high-performer’s secret sauce? What are they doing that’s making it a successful experience versus what’s written in the job description?
We dive into a fascinating conversation about where we are now, how AI is going to both help and disrupt organizations, and what the future of skills assessment could look like.
You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• Join the RedThread Research Community! [4:18]
• Learn more about Matt Donovan and GP Strategies [5:03]
• What is a skills-based organization? [7:20]
• How Matt approaches scope of work [9:33]
• Building buy-in in your organization [15:55]
• Matt’s advice for adopting a skills approach [19:11]
• Capturing the “secret sauce” in an organization [21:28]
• Taking a change management approach [28:13]
• The lightning round [30:14]
• Measuring the work being done [37:10]
• Data-driven performance management [43:32]
• How do we begin to bridge the gap? [47:05]
• Why Matt is passionate about learning [54:40]

Resources & People Mentioned

• Join the RedThread Research Community!
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Connect with Matt Donovan

• Connect on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology, and talent to get ahead of disease together. They aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of 2030.
In her role as the VP of People Data & Analytics, Angela is responsible for generating value from their people data. She has the opportunity to shape thinking and inform strategy. Her job is to translate skills so that everyone can do what they need to with the data.
She shares more about GSK’s scientific approach, how they’re using AI to gather information, and how skills verification ties in. Don’t miss this fascinating conversation.
You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• Join the RedThread Research community [4:39]
• Learn more about Angela and her role at GSK [5:38]
• Why they’re trying to create a skills-based organization [7:02]
• The GSK approach = Science x Tech x Talent [8:19]
• Do we still need skills’ taxonomies and ontologies? [14:44]
• How GSK gathers and integrates skills data into Workday [16:47]
• A conversation about the verification of skills [20:10]
• The lightning round [26:34]
• How job architecture and skills connect [31:02]
• When to communicate changes to employees [34:58]
• The technology and teams necessary to make their ecosystem work [36:30]
• Unexpected challenges they’ve worked to overcome [41:41]
• The biggest thing Angela’s learned during this process [43:06]

Resources & People Mentioned

• Join the RedThread Research community
• It’s Time to Split HR by Ram Charan

Connect with Angela Le Mathon

• Connect on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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Sandra Loughlin is the Chief Learning Officer and the Global Head of Talent Enablement and Transformation at EPAM, a software engineering and consulting firm. Unlike many of the organizations we’ve spoken about, EPAM has been on a skills journey since its inception over 30 years ago. Building a skills-based organization has been the backbone of everything they do. In this conversation, Sandra shares why the juice is indeed “Worth the squeeze.”
Resources & People Mentioned

• Join our RedThread Research Community

Connect with Sandra Loughlin

• Connect on LinkedIn
• EPAM

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When Oliver (Ollie) Drury joined Booking.com, they dove into digital transformation by simplifying their tech stack—and reducing variables—using a middleware to stitch everything together. That enabled them to have a simpler set of variables from which to create their skills ecosystem. Their driving goal was to solve skills for the entire organization. In this conversation, Ollie shares how they’re working to accomplish a skills-based transformation by first focusing on digital transformation.
You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• Join the RedThread Research Community [5:01]
• Learn more about Ollie Drury and his work [5:59]
• Why they’re creating a skills-based organization [7:09]
• Why they focused on digital transformation first [8:00]
• How they’re building for reversibility [18:04]
• Major obstacles they’ve overcome [24:08]
• How they’re measuring effectiveness [26:08]
• The lightning round [27:58]
• Who leads skills at Booking.com? [34:29]
• Why employees own the skills data [38:05]
• How culture impacts the journey to skills [42:38]
• Steering away from the reward use case [47:53]
• The biggest thing Ollie’s learned [49:35]
• Why Ollie is passionate about this work [50:22]

Resources & People Mentioned

• Join the RedThread Research Community
• MuleSoft
• Tech Off
• Workday
• Gloat
• Neilsoft
• Crunchr
• BOOK: Work without Jobs
• BOOK: Inspired
• BOOK: Hidden Potential
• BOOK: The Technology Fallacy

Connect with Oliver Drury

• Connect on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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According to Gina Jeneroux, company culture sets the foundation for skills readiness. If a company culture isn’t supportive of innovation and creativity, is it ready to support an initiative to focus on skills? Skills should be infused into everything you do in your organization and supported from the top down. Gina has spent almost 40 years in the financial services and learning industries. She spent the last few years running BMO’s corporate university and serving as Chief Learning Officer. In this conversation, she shares why a focus on skills is necessary, why company culture plays an important role, and how to get buy-in from company leadership.You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...
Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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Welcome to the newest season of Workplace Stories. It will come as no surprise that we’re devoting season 11 to continuing our conversation around skills. Why? Because there are still questions to be answered. In these opening arguments, we’ll share the questions we’re being asked, what we’re looking forward to, and we’ll give you a sneak-peak of some of the amazing guests we’ll be having conversations with.
Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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Jennifer Rogers is the Executive Officer in the Learning Technology Standards Committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which has 427,000+ members in over 190 countries. The IEEE is the world’s largest trade organization and the professional home for engineering and technology communities worldwide. Jennifer is an unrelenting advocate for the potential that exists in others, which is why she’s a perfect fit at IEEE. IEEE is working together to figure out skills across an industry. They’re also focused on skills development and education at all levels through college and a professional career. In this conversation, Jennifer shares what a skills-based organization looks like, how they organize and validate skills, and how their approach focuses on both the present and future.

According to Yelena Mammadova, Ed.D—the Associate Director of Learning, Skills Transformation Initiative at McKinsey—McKinsey seeks to bring impact to clients and create an organization where they attract, excite, and retain exceptional people. The primary goal of her department is to accelerate talent development. Yelena strives to connect human development and technology in her role. She is one our first guests who’s talked about generative AI and how it’s embedded into their skills effort. They’re using AI to connect and map skills information.
Secondly, they’re integrating skills with their people analytics teams. They’re starting small and experimenting. Most organizations build skills models around the job architecture currently in place. McKinsey is taking a different approach. They’re developing assessments for skills so they know how to organize the people around the work they have.
Learn more about their unique approach and their utilization of generative AI to father and efficiently utilize skills data in this conversation.

Transitioning a large company like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to a skills-based organization could be a daunting task. That’s why focusing on scope and purpose was an important place to start for Vandana Bhagtani and Kaye Slay. In this conversation, Vandana—The Director of Technical Talent Management—and Kaye—The User Experience and Adoption Lead for Talent and Learning Systems—share how they’ve worked together to develop a strategy for transitioning HPE to a skills-based organization. They also share why they chose to focus on a particular group and narrowed their scope further to talent acquisition and people development (all the while leveraging technology and AI). They’re at the start of their journey and will evolve and develop as they transition to a skills-based organization.
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