News story

Skills – the plumbing, the poetry and the transformation of business and learning

LondonLearning NewsLearning Technologies

A panel of experts from Ericsson, Swisscom and Deutsche Post DHL, are at the Learning Technologies 2022 Conference, 4-5 May, London ExCeL, to take a look at how businesses are now choosing to define skills and how to engage people to use them as the new workplace currency.

Donald H Taylor: how businesses are using skills as the new workplace currency
Donald H Taylor: how businesses are using skills as the new workplace currency 

A skills-based approach expands the focus of L&D from how people learn to recruit both internally and externally and effective capability planning for the future. This gives L&D a truly strategic role – develop the skills of your people and you gain competitive advantage. 

At Learning Technologies 2022, 4-5 May in London, three hugely experienced L&D players – Peter Sheppard, head of global L&D ecosystem at Ericsson, Meredith Wellard, VP group learning talent and platforms at Deutsche Post DHL Group and Matthias Schmidt, project manager professional at Swisscom – share their insights into the new DNA of skills and their visions of a workplace in which we shift from roles to skills, from careers to projects and from biased decisions to anonymised personas.

Learning Technologies Conference Chair, Donald H Taylor: “The exciting promise now is that with a clear understanding of skills, organisations can better define what they need to succeed, employees can know better their own skills and where they can develop to fulfill organisation, career, and personal goals. All this relies on the detail of defining skills and engaging people to use them as the new workplace currency. In this session, we'll discover how some organisations are doing just that.”

Skills – the plumbing, the poetry and the transformation of business and learning, takes place on day two of the conference, 5 May, covering:

  • Taxonomies for skills – balance between complexity and usefulness
  • Understanding the easy wins for skills in your organisations
  • Why managers are the key to successful implementation
  • The importance of avoiding scope creep
  • Data dialogues to support decision-making

The full programme is available on the event website: Learning Technologies 2022 Conference. Conference passes are on sale: Learning Technologies 2022 Conference Conference Passes.

Learning Technologies 2022
4-5 May 2022, London ExCeL
#LT22UK

Peter Sheppard
Head of Global Learning Ecosystem, Ericsson

Peter is Global Learning Ecosystem Head at Ericsson. In his current role Peter has responsibility for creating the environment for learning in Ericsson through leading a central group of learning experts. This includes a focus on technology channels and platforms, digital learning, innovation, marketing, analytics, skills frameworks & transforming delivery management. Driving Ericsson’s quest for an easy ecosystem leads to projects as diverse as the Ericsson Time to Learn TV show and evolving the Company jobs & skills architecture. His team have picked up a number of Brandon Hall awards for their work to date. Previously he headed up Ericsson’s Centre of Excellence for Learning and before taking on this global role was Head of Learning for Region Western and Central Europe. Peter is from an HR & Learning background with other Ericsson roles including UK Competence, Talent and ER Director plus a variety of HR Business Partner roles. He has now clocked up 33 years of experience in Learning & HR having previously worked in Philips Electronics and IBM. A strong belief in the business value of learning and the ability of individuals to grow are the driving forces behind his career to date.

Matthias Schmidt
Leader Learning Architecture & Strategy, Swisscom

Matthias is an entrepreneurial-minded and digital savvy business leader with experience across a range of multi-national organisations in Europe, USA and Asia. He has spent the last decade driving the creation of new ventures and the success of digital transformation and change initiatives with great passion by bringing together human and technology from design to execution. As a leader and coach, Matthias prides himself on his capabilities to deal with uncertainty and to get the best from people by listening with empathy, understanding individual priorities and securing buy-in to drive positive outcomes that make a tangible difference in people’s lives and the future on this planet. At present, Matthias is in charge of building the next generation learning architecture for ~17'000 employees that deliver on the 'people imperative' "getting better 1% every day together".

Meredith Wellard
Vice President, Group Talent, Learning and HR Platforms, Deutsche Post DHL

Meredith Wellard is the Vice President, Group Talent, Learning and HR Platforms or Deutsche Post DHL. An innovative senior HR professional with a Masters Degree in Organizational Development and Learning, Meredith has had a diverse career spanning 25 years in customer service and human resource management across Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Before joining the Deutsche Post DHL Group, Meredith worked for Australia's largest private health insurer as Customer Satisfaction Manager and then National Organizational Development Manager. Meredith commenced working for DHL Express 13 years ago in the Middle East and after moving to the Global office, now lives in Germany with her husband and 2 children and enjoys travelling throughout Europe learning about the history and culture of each country. Meredith's expertise stems from having worked both in customer and operations management and strategic HR where she has learnt the true value to organizations of aligning employee engagement, leadership and cultural initiatives for the benefit of employees, the customer and the organization overall.