Episode 210: How Digital Transformation Fuels Skills and EX at Lloyds Banking Group (Interview with Lara Wainwright and Duncan Reynell)
As digital transformation redefines industries, organisations are faced with the challenge of building a workforce equipped for rapid change. At Lloyds Banking Group, this shift is driving a bold move towards a skills-based organisation, where agility, adaptability, and continuous learning are core to its evolution.
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by two leaders at the heart of this transformation: Lara Wainwright, Product Owner and Lab Lead, and Duncan Reynell, Group Talent & Development Director at Lloyds Banking Group. Together, they dive into:
The broader strategy behind Lloyds’ workforce transformation agenda.
How both Lara and Duncan’s roles interconnect to drive the digital transformation that enables Lloyds Banking Group’s skills-based organisation goals.
Challenges and successes encountered along the journey, offering practical advice for organisations navigating similar digital transformations.
The role of workforce data in driving progress, fostering culture, and enhancing employee engagement across Lloyds.
Metrics that Lloyds Banking Group uses to measure success in skills development, ensuring alignment with long-term transformation goals.
This episode, sponsored by Workday, is essential for HR leaders aiming to leverage data and analytics to drive workforce agility and transformation.
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for HR and finance, recognised as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites.
Organisations ranging from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500— including Netflix, Sanofi, AstraZeneca, and Rolls Royce—have chosen Workday to build their HR systems and implement Workforce Analytics solutions.
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[0:00:00] David Green: Digital transformation has become a catalyst for change across industries, ushering organisations across the globe to rethink their talent strategies. At Lloyds Banking Group, this shift is enabling a bold move towards a skills-based organisation, where agility, adaptability, and continuous learning are taking centre stage. I'm David Green, and today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I'm delighted to welcome two leaders driving this transformation at Lloyds Banking Group, Lara Wainwright, Product Owner and Lab Lead, and Duncan Reynell, Group Talent and Development Director.
What I love about the dynamics between Lara and Duncan is how their roles intersect and complement each other in making this transformation a reality. Lara is on the ground selecting and implementing the solutions that drive digital enablement and support agile ways of working, while Duncan brings the strategic perspective, aligning Lloyds' skills agenda with the broader transformation goals to build a future-ready workforce. So today in our conversation, we focus on how these roles interconnect to drive the digital transformation that enables Lloyds Banking Group's goal to be a skills-based organisation. From the practicalities of digital enablement to strategic foresight guiding skills development, this conversation will offer valuable insights into the mechanics of building agility into both talent and technology. So without further ado, let's get started.
Lara, Duncan, it's a pleasure to have you both on the show. Could you start by giving a brief introduction to yourselves and your roles at Lloyds Banking Group? Lara, I'll start with you.
[0:01:54] Lara Wainwright: Of course. So, hi, I'm Lara and I lead the Attract, Activate & Grow Lab within the People Platform at Lloyds Banking Group. What does that mean? So in essence, my team leads all of the technology product offerings across all things from strategic workforce planning, talent acquisition, talent marketplace, skills, learning, and I also support all of the people technology stack into our Lloyds Technology Centre over in Hyderabad. Now, the team is a multi-skilled set of teams, so I have feature teams covering all of those areas. And within that, we have product owners, customer journey managers, and an awesome team of engineers within that. The mission of that team is very much to equip the business with insight and technology, to make the best decisions to drive workforce agility and productivity, and to also offer candidates and colleagues exceptional career-enhancing opportunities that are enabled by our tech.
[0:02:44] David Green: That's great, Lara, and we're definitely going to dig into that. That sounds like a great role for you to have. And, Duncan, if you'd like to introduce yourself as well.
[0:02:51] Duncan Reynell: Yeah, hello. So I'm Duncan and I lead the Learning and Skills Team here at Lloyds Banking Group, and we're here to devise propositions and solutions that really enable colleagues to have the right skills for today, but importantly for tomorrow, so that they can remain relevant, but also have impact. So, we help in several ways. We support those joining us, through induction and onboarding, and when we make changes that colleagues need to adopt, whether that's new products, new procedures, new ways of working, we help with the learning solutions for that. Importantly, we equip our leaders to lead through our transformation that we're going through at the moment. We also help colleagues reskill into different career tracks. And importantly, we keep us safe through our mandatory training and regulatory training. So, our mission, so I'll do mine, Lara, is that we're here to help the organisation become skills-focused, building those critical capabilities that enable delivery of the strategy.
[0:03:46] David Green: So, Lara, I love the description of your role. I presume it was partly created as a result of the digital transformation that the bank is currently undergoing. I think you've been in the role for nearly a year now, so you must be right in the middle of navigating some of these changes. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your role and how it's helping drive this change.
[0:04:05] Lara Wainwright: For sure. And I have to say, David, it was entirely for the reason of the change that we're going through that I even said yes to the role at Lloyds in the first place. What I'll do is I'll ground us in a quick bit of context around, I've mentioned 'platform' earlier in my intro, and then, folks, aren't you listening to the podcast maybe wondering, well, what do we mean when we talk about platforms? Well actually, across Lloyds Banking Group we have in excess of 40 different platforms actually that are set up across the bank, whether or not that might be in the space of homes where we're servicing our mortgage products, everyday banking, through to then us lot from an enterprise perspective, be that finance as a platform, people too.
Now, I mentioned earlier around having multi-skilled teams that come together to drive technology and innovation change in the bank. The platform construct has gone through multiple evolutions over the last couple of years, but really the main shift that we've been looking to drive over the last year has been that shift in mindset that is organising ourselves around products versus projects. So, not unusual, but really prominent, of course, in terms of the impact we can make in the people space here; but also being really clear around that we're using agile as our disciplined method of change that is supporting that too. And that came in a context whereby all of our multiple platforms were previously driving change in slightly different ways, still driving great outcomes, but it was still fragmented, at times inconsistent. And with our new COO joining in the last year or so, he really wanted to make sure that we could be super-disciplined in terms of what we did to drive greater pace and change in service of our customers.
So, what does that really mean, to return to your point around then the role that I've looked to do within this? Well ultimately, over the last almost year, my mission has been, how do I support this team to navigate through this scale of change that we're going through? We're talking around organisation redesign within the lab and the platform itself, transitioning in terms of our ways of working, both in terms of the adoption of different tools, adoption of different team structures, but also while we continue to deliver really awesome change back into the business, how do we make sure we continue to deliver value?
Now, with that in mind, I took three key focuses on board, one of which was, okay, we're transitioning our focus to products. We know within Agile that everything that we should be doing should be in service of releasing value to the customer. Actually, to what extent was all of our work aligned to a clear value agenda? And for us, when I talk about the value agenda, I'm talking about enabling the business. Are we tackling risk? And where and how are we enriching the experiences for candidates and colleagues? Upon a review of all of the work, I had to be pretty ruthless in terms of if, it didn't have a clear connection to that, the work was deprioritised or entirely taken off the pad.
Secondly, how could I help then the teams within the lab to actually navigate that change sustainably? I mentioned earlier, we're talking about new team, new tools, new agenda. We know that everyone has their own real max capacity for absorbing and navigating through change, and how could I do that so that I wouldn't end up with a team of broken people along the way? And what that meant was, in conjunction to deprioritising the work on the first point, was at times stepping back to say, "No, not yet". And Duncan and I had to navigate a couple of scenarios whereby, with our new LXP rollout, we had to review and revisit some of the dates based on what we came to learn from the team better stating capacity, and some of the obstacles that we had to really sort of overcome there.
Then, third, probably a bit of a segue there really, bringing my stakeholders along the way, because we've gone through such a transition and we may touch on that in a little bit, but I needed to create space for the team to be able to thrive. And previously, what we had had had been, while we still have a really great voracious appetite and engagement with the work that we do from a technology perspective, what that could sometimes mean is that there is a desire for 12 things to happen simultaneously; yet with the change in structure, we're formed of feature teams of circa seven people, there is a maximum bandwidth with which they can deliver. So, actually bringing that to life, working that through with my stakeholders, such as Duncan and others in the business to say, actually, there's only so much we can deliver. How do we ensure that we're delivering the most impact for the business? And do we really need to have that as a tech widget to really enhance the proposition, or is there another way that we can still help you and work with you to deliver on your goals?
So, I think that would probably summarise some of the areas where we've been focusing on and I've been leading through.
[0:08:32] Duncan Reynell: And, David, can I just add a couple of comments? So, I've been here a bit longer than Lara, and I've seen many iterations of how we've done change in the organisation. And I think this marks a very significant step change to how we've done things before. And the two bits I draw out from what Lara described, but perhaps describe them in a slightly different way. I think the joint ownership and accountability between the business and the technology is something that's been lacking in the past. And I think through our platform structure, that brings it very close together. And then the second bit, which is a really good forcing mechanism, is that we have fixed capacity, and that forces you to make choices and decisions, which we've not always been very good at.
So, I think whilst it's very difficult and sometimes it's a little bit fraught in terms of those conversations, it's really necessary and actually makes you go faster, because you're focusing on fewer things but going quicker with them and then you get on to the next thing. So, it's not easy, we're on a journey as they say, but it's definitely a refreshing way in which we run the business.
[0:09:39] David Green: Lara mentioned you're one of her key stakeholders. I mean, could you share more with listeners about the strategy around the Lloyds Banking Group transformation agenda? What are some of the key objectives driving this shift?
[0:10:56] Duncan Reynell: Yeah, very happy to. So, we're about halfway through our transformation journey, and it's one of the biggest financial services transformations that's going on at the moment. So, we've got another two-plus years to go. The reality is it will never be done, but for the current strategic cycle. And we're focused on three sort of core pillars, so grow, focus, and change. We love the power of three. So, the first is growing by supporting our customers and clients through new propositions, new products, whether that's directly or through our intermediaries. And that helps us drive revenue growth and diversification. The second one is around focusing on high performance. So, that means a real focus on cost leadership, increasing productivity, and probably very pertinent to this conversation, and I'm sure Lara might touch on it, how do we streamline our technology processes, and particularly how do we reduce duplication and remove that retiring legacy system, which is a real sort of drag on the organisation. So this helps, amongst other things, to help us strengthen our cost and capital efficiency.
Then the third bit, which I think is probably the most exciting bit, is changing how we operate and how we do that at pace. So, how do we maximise the potential of our people, technology, and data? And what Lara's just described is part of how we change how we do change, how we adopt Agile at scale, and how do we break down those silos, which I think the platform structure that Lara's described does that. But it's also about increasing the benefit from our customer data, and how do we fully adopt new ways of working and break some of those historic ways which we've done things.
What's very exciting across those three pillars is skills are super-important. So, within each of those pillars, skills are super-relevant. And if you take the platform evolution that Lara's described, we've been supporting the teams on how do we equip people to adopt Agile, how do we equip them to use the new tooling, and so forth. But equally, skills cut across all the three pillars as well, so at a macro level, as well as pillar by pillar. So, super-exciting for us at the minute.
[0:13:00] David Green: How far into the skills journey are you at Lloyds Banking Group? And how are your digital transformation efforts that you've just spoken about, how are they enabling the transition towards, and it's a bit of a phrase, a skills-based organisation?
[0:13:14] Duncan Reynell: Yeah, it's a familiar topic, and I'm sure a familiar one for this podcast as well. I'll cover off a little bit, and then I'll hand over to Lara. So, last year was very much around how do we get the skills engine running, probably moving from first to second gear, as it were. So, some of the things that we focused on was building a banking-specific, technology-focused, and strategically-aligned skills taxonomy, a bit of a mouthful there, but then taking that and really embedding it into a refreshed job architecture, so that we get a really clear sense of what jobs do we have, what skills do we need, and to what degree of proficiency. And then we got on with some front-runner activity within our data and tech areas, on things like skills capture and really starting to think about how we can drive learning pathways and so forth. And yes, before you ask, we know that we need to keep our skills taxonomy alive and fresh and iterating as the market changes, and that's a dilemma that Lara and I are both thinking about, because clearly there's emerging skills, sunsetting skills and so forth. We need to keep that taxonomy up to date because it drives so much through the end-to-end colleague journey.
So, that was last year. This year, very much around how do we segment, personalise our proposition. So, we've created skills academies focused on our key colleague groups. So, for example, we have a colleague group that covers our customer care roles, so that's probably about half of our business; then we have essential experts, so that would include people like risk people, finance; and then we have data and tech and so forth. And the important thing that we've introduced this year is a sponsorship from our group executive members. So, senior sponsorships, these are direct reports of our CEO, Charlie Nunn, and they really help us think about what's the most important skills that we should be focusing on. They also help us convene leaders across the business. So, the advantage with segmentation is that you bring businesses together on common skill topics and solve the problem once rather than many times, and avoid that duplication.
Then next year, it's about how do we mature our skills approach and really get those skills foundations in place. So, we have spent a long time thinking about how skills connect within the colleague lifecycle, because you need skills to flow through, there needs to be a single source of truth and all those sorts of things. So, we need to solve for that one, because bringing skills to life for our colleagues through opportunities, pathways, and our personalised experiences and innovation is super-important. But we need tech enablement to do that, to an extent. So, that's where I'll neatly segue across and hand over to Lara, perhaps.
[0:15:54] Lara Wainwright: Yeah, cheers, Duncan. And I think you just brought to life also the excellent intellectual capacity that you and the team bring to your thinking around the proposition too, which I have to just say is great, such a wonderful challenge and delight to kind of partner with from a technology product standpoint too. So, David, if I step back for a second, to Duncan's point, we've had foundations and innovation at play so far. So, whether or not that's around the foundations around gearing up the launch of the learning experience platform, we use Viva Learning. And really, the view to that is that we can enable greater skills within learning through being one of the strategic partners working with Microsoft around skills in Viva, and what that will bring around skills inferencing in due course; but also, ensuring that then we could strengthen our external skills insights, supporting our strategic workforce planning team with really, it's been a fascinating year in terms of where we're almost leapfrogging what the market is able to provide, and we've been able to input and shape the roadmaps of the provider that we're working with at the moment in terms of the scale of our ambition there.
But then also, when I look back at what the team have established in terms of the internal build and innovation of a Workday-leading MVP, around 360 skills capture, whereby we're capturing skills feedback across the Dreyfus scale, around critical skills, around some of our priority personas, archetypes, be it in the tech and data space. And for those guys to be able to go over to Las Vegas and share some of the progress in that space is a really great opportunity for us to step back and look at our progress. But I'm being indulgent, I should probably share more around where we're focusing going forwards.
So, given the scale of the ambition that Duncan's outlined, I needed to step back and look at our SBO tech in the round for the wider people proposition, and marry it to the ambition that our People and Places executive committee had. So, in partnership with our extended people leadership, our architects within the platform too, then I surfaced at the breakdown of all of the skills leaning capabilities that we had across the colleague lifecycle, and also brought to life then the interoperability of the skills ecosystem across all core employee lifecycle moments. And that was really designed to support us with more ruthless prioritisation around what we believe will progressively unlock value to the business and colleagues over 2025 and 2026. I just really wanted to make sure that we were prioritising the greatest areas of traffic and significance for LBG, Lloyds Banking Group.
Off the back of that exercise and the power, frankly, in this digital age of getting people in the room, sticking dots on a wall and being able to see the model come to life, we now know that our direction is set to strengthen our skills foundations, and that is very much around normalisation and capture on a more holistic level, whilst enriching then the talent marketplace experience for our colleagues. And then that will then serve as a springboard to then enhancing our workforce planning for skills in the future. We cannot do it all at once, but we think we've got a good formula now for seeing that progressive unlock of value to the business and colleagues too.
[0:18:52] David Green: How do you decide on the solutions that support the businesses as you navigate this transformation?
[0:19:00] Lara Wainwright: Yeah, thanks David. So, there are a couple of lenses that we take on this. So, across our People Platform, we ground ourselves in three key principles when it comes to implementing tech transformation. This is, of course, after we've ensured that the opportunity aligns with the golden thread of value to the business and colleagues. So, I'll start us up with more in the core. So, our current application landscape is pretty vast with dozens of applications across our colleague lifecycle. And between myself and the wider platform leadership team, we're on a mission to review and reduce that portfolio, where appropriate, for both a smoother, more cohesive experience for our colleagues to navigate, but frankly, also managing our cost of ownership too.
Now, secondarily to that, we still want to innovate, differentiate. So where, across what could become a congested environment and roadmap, are we going to be really ruthless in focusing on where our major point server innovations are going to pay off for us? And we know that within the People Platform, those are in areas of skills-based organisation. Where can we enhance our colleague assist proposition? And then, where can we bring great iteration to the day-to-day moments, whether or not that's around cyclical experiences with early careers and so forth, but where are we going to be really, really clear? And as I say, SBO has been a really key driver for us in the innovate, differentiate space.
Then last but not least, we then look at where can we automate to motivate. So, you might see now we've got a bit of a pattern in how we like to title those areas. So, where can we unlock valuable time for our colleagues to make more meaningful action elsewhere for themselves within their role in Lloyds? Productivity has been buzzing around for a long time, but it's a big priority for us going into next year. And so, we see that with the enhancement of AI and automation, again around where we can surface up ways to support our colleagues in their day-to-day work so that, again, they can have more enriching experiences.
The last thing that I would then overlay is then ensuring then that as we understand the business problem, we've got that value initiative, we've got those three pillars I've spoken to, is now what we're looking to do with the customer journey manager role that we've got within our platforms is to then leverage them and their accountability and ownership around the journey that our colleagues have, to do really deep research to understand what really needs to be true from both a proposition standpoint and then from a technology standpoint, so that we're really clear around where tech plays a role in enablement and enrichment, so that it isn't necessarily seen as a slap-bang panacea to be the solution to all of our problems. Now, we're in the earlier stages of maturing that role. It's a new role to bank, and it's a new role, therefore, to us. But one of the next steps that we'll be taking even around our SBO tech, literally kicking off in the next week or so, will be then the next research piece we take, so that then when we go to our core vendors, we're able to say actually this is what we better understand around, again, what that tech piece really needs.
[0:21:52] David Green: What have been some of the biggest challenges that you've faced, or are currently facing, whilst transitioning to more Agile ways of working, that kind of supports all of that? So, maybe I'll start with you, Lara, and then maybe, Duncan, you can add as well.
[0:22:57] Lara Wainwright: For sure. Okay, so where do I begin? Because there could be a myriad, but I say that with a smile, because of the development that we've been going on as a lab and a platform too. I'll start up with saying, we're saying no. So, I've mentioned throughout our conversation, there has needed to be a transition from real broad ambition and congestion in terms of where we want to be able to release technology, to then really refining to where are our key areas of differentiation going to be. And in order to navigate through that, in my instance, you're building new relationships with new stakeholders, you're setting up a new team and you're trying to with less credit in the bank saying, "No, I'm not going to deliver certain things for you, but actually you'll begin to see the payoff over a period of time", and having to sit tight with that and come off a Team's call and just grab a breath for a moment after it's been tense. You've walked away, both of you feel dissatisfied, but you know really in your heart of hearts, you're going in the right direction to set up the team for better delivery. And that has not really felt that easy, but we're getting better.
That really leads me to then, David, servicing the plane whilst in flight. I mentioned earlier around our ability to have delivered on a new learning experience platform, for instance, or whether or not it's doing a recruitment technology roadmap overview, or bringing in again new systems and tooling for other areas of my lab, being able to do that whilst you've got people who are going through so much change, you know, roles are uncertain as you're going through a restructure, keeping the focus whilst also making sure that people have got the time and space to process what they're navigating, we've managed it. Has it been tiring at times? Has it meant that we've made mistakes at times? Yes, but actually, we've managed it in one way or another.
I think that leads me to my third point, which would be trying to create the space for the team to feel safe enough to be creative and fail fast. We've navigated from a real transition in culture and continue to navigate through in this space, and I'm sure Duncan will have a view on this shortly too, where I came into a platform that had been not always, but often in a position of tell-do, you know, "I am the people function, this is where we're going, I need you to deliver this thing". And actually in reality, yes, it's disempowering, but it can also be quite a safe space to be too, because someone's told you what you need to do, you go do, you deliver as best as you can, you move on to the next. And helping the team transition to understand that they have got a voice, they have got autonomy and ownership, and should have pride in the product that actually they are helping to contribute to and develop, has been a challenge at times when people, again, are going through such a period of change and uncertainty. So, we're continuing to work on that, but the payoff is there.
My last piece, I did want to do power of three, but I couldn't resist this one. For those that are listening that are also in the people technology space, you're hearing me talk about Agile in our conversation. The reality is that we work with a lot of software as service products. Now, there is some configuration available within that, and we've got a fabulous team who support Workday, both in a configuration standpoint and our engineers, though we are somewhat constrained in terms of the degrees of features and functionality. What that means is that when we are trying to overlay then our ambition to bring design thinking, be creative around where and how tech can be an enabler, actually you've got the tension point of, you know, my friends in the people function, Duncan and others, are like, "Oh, there's a smorgasbord of features and functionality. Why don't we have it all today?" And of course, Duncan doesn't always do that on a daily basis, we're all good.
But being able to rein it back and go, okay, again, what features are we going to run with that release the greatest value that we can have insights on, that we can bring research to, that then really help us inform what is a focused colleague proposition and product, has just meant that at times, again, when you're trying to work in an Agile way, what are the different levers that we have to play with? So, yeah, focusing where we work on the features and realising that we have got constraints when you work with SaaS products, too.
[0:27:04] Duncan Reynell: We've sort of covered it off in various ways in this conversation so far. I think one of the challenges is, value is an easy word to say, but what does it actually mean in practice? And it means different things to different people. So, I think getting better and sharper at that definition is going to help our decision-making and choices around prioritisation. So, doing that reconciliation of different points of view and timeframes, and all those sorts of things, is something that we're going to have to continue to work hard on.
The second thing I would just say is Agile is not just a platform thing. There is a danger organisationally we think, "Those people over there do that". And I think as a company, and we are doing this, but I think we probably need to go further and faster on it, is how does everybody lean into Agile? Because the whole organisation needs to adopt it to varying degrees, not to the level that Lara and the team are doing. But we need to get with the flow of it, because otherwise you've got old world versus new world sort of always competing. And just in the context of your question, from a skills-based organisation perspective, my one word of advice is progress over perfection. This is one of those topics you can overthink massively, and there is something about just starting and starting where the energy is, and we've certainly done that organisationally here with the data and tech world. And I know sometimes that's the obvious place to default to, but you just got to get going. And 80% is often good enough, and you can waste your time on the following 20%, and you just learn as you go along.
[0:28:35] David Green: Duncan, staying with you, on the flipside, what are some of the successes or positive steps you've experienced so far that indicate your approach is working? I think, Duncan, you were probably going to talk from a proposition perspective, and then Lara's going to talk from a customer and team impact perspective.
[0:28:53] Duncan Reynell: The stuff we talked about as challenges, I think a lot of those challenges are actually positives, because by having the discussion and learning together and iterating and knowing what to do differently next time is some of the positives. I mean, certainly as a proposition owner working with Lara and the product owners within the various feature teams, it definitely feels more collaborative. So, the sort of the tell-do dynamic that Lara described, we still have an element of that, because I think it's just a function of the broader priorities that we're trying to deliver on. But it's definitely more collaborative, more of a partnership, more upfront dialogue around value rather than the task and the thing. It's what are we trying to generate here and is there a different ordering? So, it definitely feels different. And I think doing fewer things and focusing on fewer things, it does feel as if we're going a little bit faster. I'm always going to want to go a bit faster, and Lara knows that. But Lara, what do you think?
[0:30:02] Lara Wainwright: Don't we all, Duncan! I couldn't agree more. And look, within this, I've touched on delivery a couple of times, but a win for me is that we have still delivered, and actually that the team have been able to apply their learnings and see the payoff through the transition, which has been no mean feat in itself. Secondly, I think where I touched on the challenge of saying no, the fact that now with some of my partners in the proposition, we're talking about root cause analysis and we're getting to the crux of the problem before we start trying to slap technology on it is fantastic, because it means that we've got more brains who are looking at the core problem and then we can work through then our options for a solution together.
Then lastly, I think, David, to your point around the team, we had our colleague survey results come back to us, I think a couple of weeks ago. Across the People Platform, across the lab that I lead, engagement scores are up, and that is in a context whereby we've completely overhauled the structure of the organisation, we've gone through a change in culture, a change in tooling, overall ways of working, which oftentimes you tend to see a drop as you navigate through that transition. Despite all of that, or perhaps because of all of the nature of change that we're doing, folks are telling us, "Actually, I am more engaged". Our eNPS is up, even the feedback that we're getting, don't get me wrong, the scores tell us that we need to do more to further unblock the work that people are trying to do. But are the scores on an uptick on that? Absolutely. So for me, that shows then the transition to the model that we're underway with is already having payoff. And it's exciting to know that the team agree that there's still more that we can go after.
[0:31:43] David Green: Yeah, and clearly that's one measure of success of the work that you're doing. I'd love to dive a bit more around measuring it, how you measure how you're doing, because obviously it's such a big thing. I don't know if that lends itself around skills gaps or anything else, but particularly in relation maybe to skills development. So, maybe something for you, Duncan, what are some of the metrics or outcomes that you're looking to show that you're on the right track?
[0:32:07] Duncan Reynell: So, we've talked a couple of times about missions. We're definitely on a mission to improve measurement, but also impact and what value are we delivering? And importantly, as part of that, how do we put the right data in the hands of our line managers and our leaders? So, how do we federate out that sort of information? Because they're the ones mainly who can take the action. We can do certain things centrally, but a lot of it is best done locally. So, there's a power of three again, three things we focus on, one around focus, so are we sort of prioritising the right things; consumption; and then impact.
So, when it comes to focus, and this is probably an example of progress over perfection, we've landed on a measure called active learners. So, this is where individuals are consuming two items of content per month, which haven't been pushed to them, so it's self-initiated. And that gives us a sense of the intensity and the velocity of learning within the organisation. So, we want more active learners. But we're refining that measure now because we're thinking about, of those active learners, are they focusing on the skills that matter? So, we've got a subset of that measure. And then thinking about how we equip our line managers, we have a dashboard within Workday Learning, which is My Team Learning for Growth, a bit of a mouthful, we must change that title. But it's equipping line managers with a visualisation of, what type of learning is my team doing? So is it, again, on the right types of skills? So, again, helping our line managers to really focus on the things that matter.
Then from a consumption perspective, one of the advantages we're now starting to see with Viva Learning, is through our skills academies, we can really get a sense of consumption, which features of the product are people using, which pathways are people consuming, which ones aren't they consuming. So, we can really take a product mentality to the academy to think about, are the skills that we said that we would focus on with our group executive members, are they manifesting themselves in the way in which colleagues are transacting? So, what's working, what's not working, and how can we create further impact?
Then, on impact, we've created, we love a dashboard here, a strategic learning dashboard. So, this is something that I use with Sharon Docherty as our Chief People Officer, and we use it with our group executive members. So, this is a dashboard that focuses on the big things that we're doing at a business unit, functional and archetype, so segmentation level. And what it seeks to demonstrate is what progress we're making, either in the design or the deployment, but importantly, what value are we generating? So, hopefully that gives you a sense of how we're measuring impact.
[0:34:43] David Green: So, as you look ahead, and I know, Duncan, you touched a little bit on what the plan is for next year, what are the next steps for Lloyds Banking Group in its transformation journey? And what are your top priorities for the coming year?
[0:34:56] Lara Wainwright: So, I'll give a lens, I guess, from a People Platform standpoint, and then, Duncan, I'm sure you'll take it to a bigger view too. So, I've got a couple of lenses, David. So, for me, within the People Platform, our focus is around ongoing Agile maturity, getting stronger predictability and rigour that will allow us to really bring our proposition partners even closer to us. And that's, I think, reflected in the ambition across our wider platform network, with those 40-plus teams, which is no small percentage of Lloyds Banking Group too. And then within the People Platform, we're doubly invested in terms of how we set up the business for success through, of course, the products we release.
So, we've spent a lot of time today speaking about obviously the tech transformation agenda across skills-based organisation, but also with my peers, we've got the delivery of Colleague AI, where we've got Colleague Assist, where I've mentioned before on how we really look to drive productivity and accessibility through that work, but also undergoing a massive payroll transformation that will pay dividends back to the bank in terms of our system alignment in that space.
I touched on before around iterating, I think as well. So, I mentioned our three key, more in the core, innovate, differentiate, and automate to motivate. Another three is that whilst we've got transformation I've spoken to, we really want to make sure that we're iterating what we already have in place, so looking to drive big changes around recruitment, reward, all in service of driving great experiences, but also releasing greater efficiencies back into the ecosystem, whilst also running the engine really well in terms of our cyclical activities, such as cyclical pay, early careers, and so forth, really driving excellence in that space.
So those, for me, are kind of the underpinning enablers that we want to do from a People Platform perspective. And Duncan, I guess, how does that play out in terms of your bigger picture point around transformation too?
[0:36:42] Duncan Reynell: So, I'll keep it relatively short. So, I think the big things for us for next year are personalisation, or continuing on that journey around personalisation, productivity, and to your point, Lara, colleague experience. And for me, all of that needs to be underpinned by skills. And then, of course, we did touch on it a little bit earlier, what further use cases can we identify from a Gen AI perspective? Because there are clearly many benefits to be gained there, whether it's productivity, efficiency, or experience, and so forth. So, those are the sorts of things that we're focusing on for next year.
[0:37:19] David Green: Brilliant. Well, I can't believe we've already got to the last question, and this is the question that we're asking everyone in this series. So I think, Duncan, I'm going to start with you on this. You kind of hinted a little bit, but I'd love to hear a bit more. How can organisations use workforce data or people data to drive culture, inclusion, and engagement?
[0:37:39] Duncan Reynell: This is super, super-important for us as an organisation. So, the role of data, whether it's for customers or other decisions that we make within the organisation, people data is fundamental to all of it. So, we've got a dedicated data hub team within the people and places function, and they're doing an amazing job in equipping our most senior leaders, but leaders at every level of the organisation, and furnishing them with data to enable them to make some choices and decisions around those topics of whether it's culture, inclusion, and engagement. And they bring and surface that data in a really simple and effective way, where you can drill and sort of manipulate the data through dashboards. And it enables line managers to see their data and the leaders above them see their respective line managers, and so forth. So, it's all done in a very secure, hierarchical way to protect the data, but equally it puts the data in the right hands.
Those dashboards are used regularly as part of our cadence of meetings and forums and committees, and so forth. So increasingly, data is the driver to inform a discussion around, "What do we do? This data is telling us X, Y, and Z. It leads us to these conclusions", and so forth. And then, because we look at things on a very longitudinal basis, we can sort of see what's the trend, is it moving in a direction that we'd wish it to? And of course then, periodically, there's things that we need to really focus on, whether it's hybrid working or talent acquisition or retention, or whatever it may be. Then we can do some further deep dives and bring other data to bear.
Then from a colleague sentiment perspective, we're now doing more pulse surveys. And the really neat thing that the team have been able to do is bring the results of those surveys almost the day after it's closed, "Here it is", you know, and furnishing us with that insight as quickly as possible so that we can take action. Because getting feedback is one thing, taking action is probably the most important thing. So, data, if you ask anybody here, particularly our data hub team, it's super, super-important for us. We're on a journey with all of this stuff, but we're definitely maturing our approach.
Then the flipside of it, of course, is we need to equip our line managers to be better at interpreting data. So, giving them a dashboard is one thing, but what do you do with it? How do you analyse it? And then, importantly, certainly for my skills partners who work with the business, how can we get better at telling the story with our data to inform a conversation? So, yeah, data is super-important for us.
[0:40:24] Lara Wainwright: Well, where can I go from there? I think, in brief what I would say, and what I really loved seeing one of my peers who leads listening bring, is that she brings design thinking to the heart of her proposition. So, both in terms of the timeliness that Duncan has spoken about, but the digestibility and usability of that insight is something that we shouldn't take for granted. And I think that the way in which I've seen that progress over the last year that I've been with Lloyds would be my standout point there, David; make sure it's usable, digestible for the leaders who are handling it.
[0:40:54] David Green: Yeah, so important; that insight to action to outcome kind of journey is so important. Before we wrap up, where can listeners find out more about you as individuals, but also about some of the great work that you're doing at Lloyds Banking Group?
[0:41:07] Lara Wainwright: For sure, so you can find me on LinkedIn, Lara, I often get a Lara, and then you'll see me smiling on my profile picture. So, guys, please do give me a look and reach out. That's the best route.
[0:41:19] Duncan Reynell: Likewise for me. So, Duncan Reynell.
[0:41:23] David Green: Brilliant. Well, thanks very much, Duncan, thanks very much, Lara. Look forward to maybe seeing you both in person soon as well. So, take care and thank you very much.
[0:41:32] Duncan Reynell: Thank you.
[0:41:32] Lara Wainwright: Thanks, David.