Workplace Stories by RedThread Research
At RedThread, we love our data, but we know that what you remember is stories. So we spend time listening to thinkers, writers, leaders, and practitioners as they tell their stories about what works in the workplace, what they’ve learned, and what they hope to see in the future. We hope you find it inspirational, motivational, and a touch irreverent.
Episodes
April 3, 2024 • 56 mins
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 someon...
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 someon...
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March 20, 2024 • 45 mins
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 every...
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 every...
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March 6, 2024 • 50 mins
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 t...
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February 21, 2024 • 51 mins
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-ba...
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February 7, 2024 • 53 mins
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...
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February 6, 2024 • 10 mins
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.
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December 6, 2023 • 56 mins
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 per...
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November 22, 2023 • 48 mins
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...
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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 s...
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October 25, 2023 • 48 mins
Shannon Custard—the Global Competence Development Manager at Ingka Group—is responsible for leading their global learning organization consisting of over 177,000 workers across 30+ countries globally.
As they began the transition from a competence-based to a skills-based organization, Shannon wanted to focus first and foremost on frontline populations. They believe that frontline population learning equity is important and often ne...
As they began the transition from a competence-based to a skills-based organization, Shannon wanted to focus first and foremost on frontline populations. They believe that frontline population learning equity is important and often ne...
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October 11, 2023 • 49 mins
Megan Bickle is the Director of Culture, Employee Engagement and Employee Listening at Western Digital. In Megan’s experience, roles can be viewed as a collection of skills. Viewing roles this way allows organizations to be more responsive to the evolving needs of the business in terms of the skills needed for development and hiring. Megan believes that job architecture is essential to becoming a skills-based organization. Skills w...
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The importance of creating skills-based organizations is no longer a theoretical discussion: it’s now a practical reality. To ensure that businesses reach their desired outcomes, it is necessary to ensure that their workforce has the skills needed to get the job done.
Brian Richardson and Brian Hackett are deeply entrenched in helping business leaders discuss and develop the skills initiatives needed to improve their organizations’ ...
Brian Richardson and Brian Hackett are deeply entrenched in helping business leaders discuss and develop the skills initiatives needed to improve their organizations’ ...
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September 27, 2023 • 16 mins
The world of skills is evolving rapidly thanks to technology and data which is why we are devoting yet another season to the skills odyssey. In these opening arguments, you’ll hear how we’ll shape the season, why we’re focusing on skills again, who you can expect to listen to, and what we are most looking forward to. Press play to start a new season of Workplace Stories.
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Connect With Red Thread Research
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August 23, 2023 • 47 mins
Peter Tulumello is changing the culture at one of Canada’s largest grocery retailers. As a grocery chain, Sobeys has a large segment of frontline workers and with it, their own unique pain points.
To understand the problems that the frontline faces, Peter recognized that he needed to get into the stores to understand frontline workers’ day-to-day roles. Listen to this interview to hear how Peter identified major problems and came up...
To understand the problems that the frontline faces, Peter recognized that he needed to get into the stores to understand frontline workers’ day-to-day roles. Listen to this interview to hear how Peter identified major problems and came up...
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August 9, 2023 • 45 mins
What happens when a mechanical engineer tackles an L&D problem? A completely redesigned learning environment.
On this episode of Workplace Stories, we interview General Mills’ Valerie Digman. Valerie describes how she helped solve a frontline training problem and improved efficiency by 5%.
If you’re interested in improving efficiency and rethinking traditional training methods, you won’t want to miss this interview. Press play to...
On this episode of Workplace Stories, we interview General Mills’ Valerie Digman. Valerie describes how she helped solve a frontline training problem and improved efficiency by 5%.
If you’re interested in improving efficiency and rethinking traditional training methods, you won’t want to miss this interview. Press play to...
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July 26, 2023 • 38 mins
We’re all humans, so the needs of workers are similar across the board. John Brothers has learned this from his time as VP of Talent at Acuity.
On today’s episode of Workplace Stories, John recounts his experience working through Acuity’s cultural and business mindset shift and how that has affected the frontline workforce and beyond.
Connect with John Brothers
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On today’s episode of Workplace Stories, John recounts his experience working through Acuity’s cultural and business mindset shift and how that has affected the frontline workforce and beyond.
Connect with John Brothers
Connect With Red Thread Research
- Website: Red ...
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Improving the employee experience starts with data. Rotana’s Andrew Wolhunter understands that and uses Rotana’s qualitative data to retain frontline workers in a competitive market.
Andrew has an enthusiasm and infectious energy that he not only shares with his coworkers at Rotana, but he also shares this excitement with us on today’s episode. Listen in to learn how Andrew is using data to lead the change in the employee experience...
Andrew has an enthusiasm and infectious energy that he not only shares with his coworkers at Rotana, but he also shares this excitement with us on today’s episode. Listen in to learn how Andrew is using data to lead the change in the employee experience...
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June 28, 2023 • 48 mins
Frontline workers face unique challenges so organizations are making changes to empower them. On this season of Workplace Stories, we’re exploring the unique challenges and positive situations happening on the frontline.
On this episode, we chat with Tabatha Cronin to learn how Cargill is supporting its massive frontline labor force. Listen in to learn how Cargill dug in to understand the motivations driving their employees. You wo...
On this episode, we chat with Tabatha Cronin to learn how Cargill is supporting its massive frontline labor force. Listen in to learn how Cargill dug in to understand the motivations driving their employees. You wo...
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June 14, 2023 • 17 mins
Welcome back to our ninth season! We are excited about these upcoming episodes. In this season, Stacia and I focus on the frontline by discussing frontline workers with thought leaders from many organizations across various industries.
Frontline workers have typically been a part of the workforce that has been swept under the rug, but during the pandemic, they were thrust to the forefront of people’s minds.
In this season, we’ll disc...
Frontline workers have typically been a part of the workforce that has been swept under the rug, but during the pandemic, they were thrust to the forefront of people’s minds.
In this season, we’ll disc...
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June 14, 2023 • 50 mins
Frontline workers can have an outsized influence on the success of an organization. They are often the only interface our customers have with a brand. At RedThread Research, we have been diving into how to support frontline workers more holistically which is why this season we are focusing on the unique challenges that frontline workers face. We’ll also explore the changes organizations are making to empower them, as well as the go...
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