Workplace Stories by RedThread Research – Details, episodes & analysis

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Workplace Stories by RedThread Research

Stacia Garr & Dani Johnson

Business

Frequency: 1 episode/15d. Total Eps: 109

At RedThread, we love data—but we know stories are what stick. That’s why we bring together thinkers, writers, leaders, and practitioners to share real-world insights about what works in the workplace, what they’ve learned, and where the future of work is headed. We keep it insightful, thought-provoking, and maybe even a little irreverent.

But we don’t stop at conversations. Our research, events, and community turn insights into action, helping organizations and individuals navigate the changing world of work.

Want to be part of the conversation? Join our community for free and connect with others shaping the future of work.

Learn more about RedThread Research here: https://redthreadresearch.com/home

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Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - management
11/07/2025
#93
🇨🇦 Canada - management
10/07/2025
#65
🇬🇧 Great Britain - management
08/07/2025
#85
🇩🇪 Germany - management
02/07/2025
#81
🇩🇪 Germany - management
01/07/2025
#46
🇨🇦 Canada - management
18/06/2025
#90
🇨🇦 Canada - management
14/06/2025
#73
🇨🇦 Canada - management
16/05/2025
#98
🇨🇦 Canada - management
15/05/2025
#51
🇺🇸 USA - management
03/05/2025
#92

Spotify

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https://brenebrown.com/
436 shares
https://elevenlabs.io/
206 shares
https://www.radicalcandor.com/
171 shares

https://www.linkedin.com/company/redthread-research/
53 shares
https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaldea/
46 shares
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherlind/
19 shares

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 59%

Publication history

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HR, Workforce Automation, and GenAI at Merck: Jeremy Shapiro & Chris Shultz

Episode 82

mercredi 11 septembre 2024 • Duration 42:31

Jeremy Shapiro, AVP of Human Resources and Workforce Analytics, and Chris Shultz, Director of HR Intelligent Automation and Gen AI at Merck join us in this forward-thinking conversation. Learn how (and why) Merck is embracing AI to streamline HR processes, support innovation, and maintain ethical considerations. This was hugely educational for us and we hope you get a glimpse into the future of HR tech.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

What does the future of HR look like in an AI-driven world? [1:17]
How can AI serve as a translator and guide for HR professionals? [7:47]
How Merck ensures AI is implemented responsibly [8:51]
How Merck leveraging AI for massive efficiency gains in HR [12:45]
How Merck determines what AI solutions to build internally [16:54]
Can HR keep pushing the efficiency frontier with AI, or is there a limit? [19:19]
How organizations can support the mental well-being of AI engineers [25:16]
How ethics play a crucial role in the development of AI [31:12]
What key strategies should HR leaders focus on in the next six months? [37:03]

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with our Guests

Connect With Red Thread Research

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

The Critical Role Data Plays in Skills Development: MetLife’s Emily Hacker and Dan Weiss

Episode 84

mercredi 28 août 2024 • Duration 46:24

Skills data can be used to raise the bar in talent acquisition, implement data-driven learning, make strategic workforce planning decisions, help employees reach career aspirations, and much more. Too many organizations are so glued to the idea of perfection that they won’t implement imperfect programs to gather skills data. Dan Weiss and Emily Hacker believe that this mindset is useless.Your skills data won’t be perfect—but it can still be useful and helpful to employees. They share exactly why in this episode of Workplace Stories.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

Join the RedThread Research Community! [2:53]
Learning more about Dan Weiss and Emily Hacker [3:35]
Transforming culture before building infrastructure [9:07]
How the MetLife culture championed the process [13:23]
Their current pilot and the vision for the future [16:40]
The lightning round [25:46]
How to get buy-in from leadership [30:09]
The critical role data plays in skills development [33:09]
Their data sources and how they’re using them [36:43]
Where does the data live? [40:43]
The biggest thing Emily and Dan have learned [43:35]
Why Emily and Dan do the work they do [44:26]

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Emily Hacker and Dan Weiss

Connect with Emily on LinkedIn
Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

When Digital Transformation Drives Skills Transformation: Booking.com’s Oliver Drury

Season 11 · Episode 2

mercredi 21 février 2024 • Duration 51:40

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

Connect with Oliver Drury

Connect on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

Company Culture is the Foundation for Skills Readiness: Executive Networks’ Gina Jeneroux

Season 11 · Episode 1

mercredi 7 février 2024 • Duration 53:46

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

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

The Skills Odyssey IV: Opening Arguments

Season 11

mardi 6 février 2024 • Duration 10:45

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

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

A Skills Approach for the Present and Future: IEEE’s Jennifer Rogers

Season 10 · Episode 6

mercredi 6 décembre 2023 • Duration 56:06

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.

Leveraging Generative AI to Efficiently Utilize Skills Data: McKinsey & Company’s Yelena Mammadova, Ed.D

Season 10 · Episode 5

mercredi 22 novembre 2023 • Duration 48:59

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.

Narrowing Scope & Purpose to Ease the Transition to a Skills-Based Organization: HPE's Kaye Slay and Vandana Bhagtani

Season 10 · Episode 4

mercredi 8 novembre 2023 • Duration 49:58

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.

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

Partnerships Focused on Learning Equity: Ingka Group’s Shannon Custard

Season 10 · Episode 3

mercredi 25 octobre 2023 • Duration 48:36

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 neglected. So they focused on solving the skills problems for the frontline employees to then extrapolate to the corporate population.

Through the process, they almost completely scrapped and redesigned their onboarding process to make sure the frontline team members had the skills necessary to be successful. When you help people reach success soon, it makes an impact.

In this conversation, Shannon shares more about the process of transitioning to a skills-based organization, why the Ingka Group believes it’s important, and the impact it’s making on their frontline population.

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Shannon Custard

Ingka Group
Connect on LinkedIn

Connect With Red Thread Research

Subscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

Creating a Job Architecture from Scratch: Megan Bickle

Season 10 · Episode 2

mercredi 11 octobre 2023 • Duration 49:35

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 were a part of their overall integrated talent management strategy, infused throughout the organization. Capability models and job structures were built in tandem. In this conversation, Megan shares her experience building a skills-based organization as the Global Talent Management and Organizational Development Leader at GE Digital.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...