This week’s podcast guest is Dr. Nancy Doyle, Chief Research Officer at Genius Within and Co-Director at the Centre for Neurodiversity at Work. In our conversation, Nancy and I discuss the fact that 15 to 20% of the population are neurodiverse, so we are all managing neurodivergent people in our organisations, whether we realise it or not. Nancy also explains how to build organisations that are inclusive to the needs of neurodivergent people, including the most important touch points in the employee journey that should be addressed and the business benefits of hiring neurodiverse individuals, including examples from organisations such as Microsoft. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is René Gessenich, Head of Strategic Workforce Planning at Novartis. In our conversation, René and I discuss the skills operating system that René and his team are building at Novartis and why having a robust skills ontology is so important. We look at how to incorporate internal and external skills data, in a single skills ontology and we also look at Novartis's approach to skills-based workforce planning in more detail. René shares, a couple of examples that illustrate their targeted approach and provides some specific advice for organisations looking to adopt this approach. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Charles Jennings, Partner at the 70:20:10 Institute. Charlies is a big believer in getting the learning context right by better embedding learning into work, often called informal learning, experiential learning, or real learning. While the 70:20:10 model was designed to promote this approach, many organisations adopting the model are still falling short of the mark. Charles and I dig into this in more detail throughout the episode, with many insights, both from academic literature and practical case studies from organisations. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Melissa Arronte, Employee Experience Practice Lead at Medallia. Melissa started her career in people analytics before the term really even existed and her career has taken her on a fascinating journey where she has become a bonafide expert in employee surveys and continuous listening, two topics that we cover extensively throughout this episode. Throughout this episode Melissa and I discuss the state of employee experience today, how to measure the business impact of employee experience and the future of the field and her thoughts on continuous listening in the workplace, the business value, the key challenges and the data sources available beyond employee surveys. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Steve Scott, Managing Director and Global Head of Workforce Management and Analytics at Standard Chartered Bank, talking about the critical importance of developing a data-driven culture in HR, in order for people analytics to deliver sustainable value to the business. Throughout this episode, Steve and I talk about how the field of people analytics is evolving, the transformation of people analytics at Standard Chartered to a value added function, and how Standard Chartered has built an effective talent marketplace that functions in a hybrid work environment. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Thimon De Jong, a social psychologist specialising in the future of human behaviour and the Founder at Whetston. Throughout this episode Thimon and I talk a lot about the psychological impacts of the pandemic on the workforce and discuss how organisations and employees confront change during a crisis as well as Thimon’s interesting perspective on why asking employees what they want during the crisis itself, might not be the best approach. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast is a special bonus episode where David shares his thoughts on the trends and predictions for HR in 2022. 2021 exposed a growing chasm between employers, who yearn for a return to significant in person based working, and employees, who don’t. This only magnifies the importance of the field of human resources. The pandemic has not only accelerated the future of work, it has accelerated the role of HR too. HR’s journey from an inward looking function, focused on compliance, process, standardisation, and intuition, to an outward looking function, focused instead on skills, products, personalisation, and data, has gathered paced in the last two years and is set to quicken further in 2022. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Nerys Mutlow, Evangelist in the Chief Innovation Office at ServiceNow. Throughout this episode Nerys and I discuss the gap between customer experience and employee experience and Nerys’s perspective on how employee experience is evolving, how to design an excellent employee experience by thinking beyond personas to individual level wants and need and the relationship between employee wellbeing and productivity, including striking the right balance in particular for hybrid work. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Anshul Sheopuri, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer at IBM Workforce, talking about one of the key skills for HR professionals at IBM, data literacy. As both a business and technical executive at IBM, working in HR, Anshul shares his views with us on both the strategic and technological future of HR, with a particular focus on the application of artificial intelligence across the field. Throughout this episode Anshul and I discuss the five pillars of trustworthy AI and HR and how he is developing a data-driven culture at IBM by celebrating individuals who embody that culture, investing in the right tools and technology to democratise data across the organisation and making it clear which skills are needed, including data literacy. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Patrick Coolen, Global Head of People Analytics, HR Intelligence and Organisational Design at ABN AMRO, talking about his journey, setting up and evolving his people analytics team at ABN AMRO, over the last eight years. I have known Patrick, for most of that time and one of the main things that has always stood out to me has been his laser sharp focus on delivering value to the business. Throughout this episode, Patrick and I discuss, his brilliant article written together with his colleague Jaap Veldkamp, 8 Big Ticket Items for People Analytics. We look in particular at analytics for personalisation as well as analytics for value and analytics for evaluation and discuss Patrick's journey developing the people analytics team at ABN AMRO over the last eight years, which all started with a focus on advanced analytics and the business. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Nicky Hoyland, CEO, and co-founder of Huler who talks about moving away from defining where work gets done and instead focusing on the task at hand, the ultimate goal we are striving towards, and letting people figure out for themselves the best way to do that. As a self-proclaimed work tech nerd, Nicky talks about the role that workplace tech plays in a new world of work, enabling people to get work done in the easiest simplest way possible, so once again, we can focus on the end goal of business, above all else. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is heard Ernest Ng, Vice President of Global Employee Success Strategy and People Analytics at Salesforce, talking about his team’s approach to managing the workforce, mirroring the approach the company takes to ensure customer success and satisfaction. Throughout our conversation we talk about the role of people analytics in ensuring employee success and the importance of developing a data driven culture, more broadly across HR. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is Dr. Jaclyn Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, who is talking about the role of data and analytics in the culture transformation program at the university. While technology plays a big part in culture transformation at the university, Jaclyn remained ever cognisant of the people at the heart of the transformation and ensuring that their diverse values were understood and respected. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, April Rinne, Change Expert and Author of her fantastic new book, Flux: Eight Superpowers For Thriving in Constant Change discusses her mission to get us to think differently about our relationship to change, that it is not something we can necessarily control, but it is something we need to be very comfortable with. Throughout this episode, April and I discuss April's advice to organisations going through change as well as the power of portfolio careers for workforce planning, for the individual to have a meaningful, satisfying work life and on a societal level, to provide unparalleled access to opportunities. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, Tina Kao Mylon, Chief Talent and Diversity Officer at Schneider Electric talks about how Schneider Electric uses their talent marketplace platform to not only match individuals to career opportunities, but also to mentors, striking the right balance between being technology enabled and human centric. Tina and I also discuss Schneider Electric’s pragmatic and applied high tech, high touch, approach to culture and leadership transformation, how Schneider Electric is using employee voice to help build a flexible and hybrid work approach that is inclusive of everyone and how data and analytics ensures the success of Schneider Electric’s unique multi-hub model. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, my guest is is Janice Burns, Chief People Officer at Degreed, who is passionate about the importance of learning and that the impact of learning isn't limited to remaining within the four walls of an organisation. Throughout this episode, Janice and I discuss Janice’s key strategic roles moving into the Chief People Officer role, the concept of guided freedom and why learning leaders should think differently about facilitating learning and she also shares her thoughts on the role of coaching and mentoring in professional development. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is Joan C. Williams, distinguished Law Professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law and author of a brilliant new book, Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good. Joan is dedicated to propagating an approach to Diversity and Inclusion that delivers real impact for the business and ensures real change is made. Throughout this episode, Joan and I discuss, how to connect D&I initiatives to business metrics that matter, with case studies from companies around the world, we look at the five patterns of bias that repeatedly emerge across organisations and industries and the concept of bias interrupters, what they are and how to use them in everyday scenarios, to reduce the impact of bias. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, David speaks to Peter Manniche Riber, Head of Digital Learning and Analytics at Novo Nordisk, about how the shift to remote work and digital ways of working has, in many ways, democratised learning and made it more inclusive. Great learning experiences should deliver value to the individual by opening up new opportunities as well as creating value for the organisation. In this episode, Peter shares his thoughts on what great learning experiences look like, how to measure the business impact of learning and how to move to data-driven learning design. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, the guest is Maarten van Beek, HR Director for Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg at ING, who I spoke to about the shift from a learn, work, retire approach to careers, to a model of lifelong learning. To encourage lifelong learning and talent fluidity across the organisation, taking an employee centric approach is vital. In Maarten’s opinion. HR should focus more on the employee journey, the employee experience and less on the responsibilities and confines of rigid traditional L&D roles.

Throughout the episode, Maarten and I discuss how organisations can promote a lifelong learning approach to work by encouraging and supporting employees to reinvent their skill sets every three to five years, the power of using skills data to fuel talent fluidity and the business value and societal value of measuring skills proficiency without depending on traditional qualifications and educational experience. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, Ralf Buechsenschuss, Global Head of Org Design, Analytics and Digitalisation at Zurich Insurance Company, speaks about the future of work, which we both agree is most definitely already here, and how it necessitates a skills-based approach to workforce planning.

The unpredictability and pace of change facing organisations today is, without a doubt a major challenge, a challenge only exacerbated since the start of the pandemic. It is a skills-based approach to workforce planning that has the potential to position the HR function as a strategic partner to the business, by addressing business priorities as they arise. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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