In this episode, James Kennedy, a civil engineer and change practitioner, discusses the contractor safety management program at Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC). He shares how his childhood passion for LEGOs sparked his curiosity about how things work and how his team used data to rectify their initial misconceptions and bolster program design. Learn about “Hearts and Minds,” an initiative that creates a personal connection to safety through stories and experiences, and why behavioral ch...
Sep 18, 2023•52 min
Join Michelle Ockers for a compelling conversation with Dustin Lacasse, the L&D Lead at the San Diego Zoo, as they delve into the world of non-profit L&D. Lacasse shares his personal experiences, highlighting both the challenges and possibilities. He brings to light his team’s strategic approach to performance management by moving away from a “needs improvement” to a "developing towards standards" model. He also discusses data-driven refinements and meaningful learning pathways all within the Zo...
Sep 04, 2023•1 hr 5 min
How Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport has piloted a customised micro-credential to develop storytelling skills across their workforce. Our guests are Stacie Swindon, a learning and development consultant from Waka Kotahi and Marcus Garrett, an instructional designer from RMIT Online who partnered on this project. Our host, Michelle Ockers, from Learning Uncut also worked on this pilot, shaping the requirements, and leading the evaluation. Host: Michelle Ockers Transcript and related resources: h...
Aug 21, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Marc Howells, VP of Global Talent and Development at AstraZeneca, discusses the company's radical learning transformation. He dives into cultivating a culture of lifelong learning, experimenting with journaling for learning reflection, and fostering continuous learning through their "Learning for Life" campaign. Howells also explains the shift toward learning democratisation, making resources accessible to all employees in multiple languages. With a significant tech overhaul, they streamlined 75...
Aug 07, 2023•56 min
Deb Van Rensburg, who leads Enterprise Regulatory Learning at National Australia Bank (NAB) discusses how they have evolved their approach to regulatory learning. We cover the 3-stage approach they used to streamline content and improve the learner experience. This includes the use of real-world scenarios and inclusive design practices to ensure that every participant feels seen and finds relevance beyond their specific roles. We also discuss how Deb got critical stakeholders on board with chang...
Jul 10, 2023•51 min
Join us for this episode of Learning Uncut as we delve into learning transformation with Bendigo Bank's Capability team leaders, Caroline Petha, Jo Doody, and David Maiolo. They discuss their individual responsibilities and collaborative strategies in capability, learning design, ecosystem and learning culture development. Their work demonstrates the value of integrated efforts across teams, and the role of partnerships with business leaders and external partners. Though longer than our usual ep...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 125
We explore highlights of the Learning Technologies UK 2023 conference (LTUK23). Our guests, including the conference organiser, thirty under 30s cohort leader, speakers, social media team member and a session chairperson to share their different perspectives on the conference. Explore the major themes that emerged, including the curiosity about generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), the significance of adaptability in the face of change, and the enduring importance of impactful learning strate...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 124
In this episode of the Learning Uncut podcast, Matthew Mould and Emma Shirlaw from ANZ Bank and Simon Dewar from BSI eLearning discuss their award-winning onboarding program. The program won the Best Onboarding award and was a runner up in the Best Blended Learning category at the 2022 AITD Excellence Awards. The team redesigned their Branch Banker onboarding program to increase speed to competence and build confidence in their bankers' ability to apply skills flexibly in a range of customer ser...
May 29, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Michal Niezgoda, a Leadership Development Specialist at Amazon Data Services, shares how Carl Hodler, from Learner Lab, helped him run a storytelling challenge for leaders from multiple business units. Using StoryTagger, leaders recorded short videos on the theme of Thriving versus Surviving in challenging times. Carl and Michal discuss how they shaped the campaign and the importance of capturing and sharing stories on video to build human connection and support people in thriving. This episode ...
May 15, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Viv Burgess, formerly from the Tasmanian State Service knows how to patiently and persistently get things done across the 18 agencies in this state government. She walks us through how she led a cross-agency working group to break down silos to develop and implement a single Manager Essentials program. Now in its sixth year, this award-winning program emphasises application in the workplace and has helped managers to create a more positive workplace environment. Host: Michelle Ockers Transcript ...
May 01, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Diane Hickman from the Australian Public Service (APS) Commission speaks about the success of the APS-wide organisational learning strategy that was launched 20 months ago. Di shares the process they used to create a strategy that is relevant for their diverse workforce of over 150,000 people working in more than one 150 different agencies – many with their own L&D team. She discussed the importance of stakeholder engagement, creating leadership buy-in and developing a collaborative learning cul...
Apr 17, 2023•51 min
Adam McKinnon, the People Data and Analytics Leader at Reece, joins me to talk about the fascinating world of People Analytics. Reece is using a People Analytics platform to gain some serious insights into their business questions and issues related to people, and Adam’s here to share some real-world examples with us. He dives into how Reece is using data from a variety of sources, including their HR Information System, safety data and Service Now, to surface valuable insights – including in the...
Apr 03, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 119
In this episode, we discuss the latest innovation in HR and learning and development - the talent marketplace. Josh Bersin has described how it helps employees access opportunities within and outside their hierarchies, benefiting both the employer and employee. Our guest, Dean Summlar, the VP of Talent Management & Learning at Schneider Electric, shares insights into implementing the talent marketplace in his organisation and its benefits. Join us to learn about this innovative approach to talen...
Mar 20, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Lalaine Gedal, the Associate Director of Leader Development in the US for Takeda shares Takeda’s intentional approach to supporting their people to adopt a hybrid working model from their consultation on what hybrid working should look like to developing a toolkit to support people to adopt this change and engaging Cindy Huggett to run virtual sessions on leading in a hybrid environment. Cindy, a leading expert in virtual facilitation, joins the conversation to provide insight and tips on virtua...
Mar 06, 2023•51 min•Season 1Ep. 117
In this episode of Learning Uncut, I speak with Catriona Malcolm (or Cat as she is also known). She is the Enterprise Design Practice Lead at Westpac Group. With a workforce of around 40,000 people across seven business entities whose core service is banking, Cat’s role was created four years ago specifically to address the complexity of designing skills development solutions across these seven entities. We cover a lot of elements of the Westpac approach in this episode. We look at approaches su...
Feb 20, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 116
Welcome to our first episode for 2023. To kick off our podcasting year, Anthea Piening, the Capability and Change business leader for the sales team at Lion Australia shares a story about changes to onboarding at Lion Australia. She discusses how onboarding has been redesigned from a two-day event to a blended 12-week program. She discusses the key drivers and how the shift also reflects a move into digital learning with a mix of self-directed, leader-led and virtual activities – as well as high...
Feb 06, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 115
It’s been a huge year for Learning Uncut – both the podcast and the business! The podcast celebrated its 100th episode in May and there have been almost 50,000 downloads in the past 12 months alone. In the final episode for 2022 Michelle is joined by Ravina Bhatia, Director and CLO of Learning Tribe. Together they have been supporting Learning Uncut’s clients to develop and implement organisational learning strategy since mid-2021. In this episode, they look back on the year – covering their pro...
Dec 19, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Listening is a critical skill to increase the impact of Learning and Development professionals. Our guest, Shaheen, shares her personal journey with deep listening and how that has increased her effectiveness in her work. We weave this theme in with the story of Project Oxygen Mask, a mental health campaign conceived after noticing her own mental state and listening to others in the organisation to understand their experience. The campaign, designed in conjunction with a mental health expert in ...
Dec 05, 2022•52 min•Ep. 113
Siva Kulasingam, the Digital Learning Manager at Coles, believes that “data is a beautiful thing.” He joins me with Andrew Bloye from ClearXP to discuss how his team is working with xAPI data after implementing a Learning Experience Platform (or LXP) and Learning Record Store (or LRS) several years ago. We discuss how both guests think about the learning technology stack and the case to invest in both an LXP and LRS so that you can work with xAPI data. Get a clear explanation of the technical ja...
Nov 21, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Following the pandemic, the nature of work and the expectations people have of the workplace and employers have shifted significantly. In this episode of Learning Uncut, I am joined by Hannah Conkey, the Head of Learning and Organisational Development at the Royal Automotive Club of Victoria – RACV for short. Hannah shares how the RACV have reviewed their Employee Value Proposition, updated leadership development and how her qualification in neuroscience helped to inform their approach. Host: Mi...
Nov 07, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Kate Fraser from the Australian Association of Social Workers joins me to discuss a blended learning program for clinical supervisors developed in partnership with Family Safety Victoria. She is joined by Dr Kuva Jacobs from RedPoint Consulting who worked on the design and development of the program. Some interesting design considerations shaped this program, including a high need for psychological safety for participants due to lived experience of trauma, peer support through coaching circles, ...
Oct 24, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Pene Barton, VP People and Remote at Noissue joins me for this episode of Learning Uncut, where we discuss the near-universal challenge of keeping people connected, learning and performing while working remotely. We look at how Noissue has tackled this challenge as they scaled a global workforce. Pene discusses relevant approaches and tips including the development of employee journey maps and integrating ‘showing your work’ into the operating rhythm. Pene also discusses a range of tech tools th...
Oct 10, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 109
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is Australia’s multicultural public broadcasting service across a range of media. Brett Archer, their Capability Development leader, discusses how they have taken a strengths-based approach to leadership development. He has extended this to identify and leverage organisational strengths for learning purposes. If you can make it to Sydney 8-9 November 2022 join Brett and me at the L&D Innovation and TechFest where we’ll both be speaking. Transcript and relat...
Oct 05, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Katrina Moss from Shopify updates on the embedding of growth mindset in practices across the organisation, including as a key foundation for learning. One exciting new development in the work of L&D at Shopify is to support the effectiveness of work teams. The organisation is now digital by design, with teams spending very little time physically together. They are being very deliberate in ensuring that teams have a small number of well designed gatherings each year that build trust, connection a...
Sep 12, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 107
This special edition of Learning Uncut is a sequel to season two of the Learning Uncut Emergent series – Taking Bold Action. In this season the Emerging Stronger Team, Michelle Ockers, Laura Overton and Shannon Tipton explored the strengths that L&D require to take bold action. We incorporated insights from this series into our public 2022 Emerging Stronger masterclass. Emerging Stronger is now an industry initiative which is supported by a number of partners across the industry who share our vi...
Aug 29, 2022•51 min•Ep. 29
Sebastian Tindall from Vitality is a return guest. In episode 66 he spoke about their resource-led learning strategy. He returns to discuss how this strategy has evolved since late 2020, including the introduction of digital adoption platforms and expanded use of metrics to enable and demonstrate business impact. If you are serious about taking a business first mindset and impacting organisational performance in your role as a learning and development professional, you’ll get a lot out of this c...
Aug 15, 2022•57 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Kelly Hopkins joins us from Kathmandu to discuss how his small L&D team has taken big strides to support learning for their workforce of 1,800 people, many of whom are frontline staff in retail outlets. The most important element of their learning strategy is coaching, which they’ve enabled not only with technology but also with smart analog resources that are easy and effective to use in their retail workplace. Kelly describes what learning looked like when he joined the organisation almost sev...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 105
In Episode 103 we spoke with Zoe Freeman about the Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency organisational learning strategy, titled ‘Becoming a Learning Organisation.’ She mentioned that she had worked closely with Claudia Faletolu, Kaitohutohu Mātua, Āheitanga Māori (Māori Strategy Advisor) in the Centre for Learning and Development at Waka Kotahi. Claudia joins us to discuss how Te Ao Māori (Māori world view) was deeply woven into this learning strategy. Host: Michelle Ockers Transcript and r...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Becoming A Learning Organisation is the title of the Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency’s learning strategy. Their learning strategy is their roadmap to becoming a high-performing learning organisation. Zoe Freeman, the Strategic Advisor in the Centre for Learning and Development, discusses how the strategy was created. Key aspects of their approach include deep engagement across the organisation, deliberate preparation of the L&D team, and being informed by Māori worldview. The result is ...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 103
In the spirit of reconciliation Learning Uncut acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present. Reconciliation is an important issue and piece of unfinished business in Australia. It is about strengthening relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples, for the benefit of all. In this episode we will hear about how Origin has...
Jun 06, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 102
