Episode 43: Improving Employee Experience through Learning, Skill Development and Mobility (Interview with Kat Kennedy)
In this episode of the podcast, my guest is Kat Kennedy, the Chief Experience Officer of Degreed, where she has overall responsibility for product and technology. Kat was employee number three at Degreed and since she joined in 2012, the company has enjoyed phenomenal growth and created an entire new category in the HR technology market with its learning experience platform or LXP.
Covid-19 has accentuated the importance of re-skilling, up-skilling and learning and since the start of the crisis, as Kat outlines in our discussion, Degreed hired another 150 people into the firm. You can listen below or by visiting the podcast website here.
In our conversation Kat and I discuss:
The challenges in running a fast growing HR Tech company
Creating the new LXP category and being a female leader in tech
Why it is crucial to use data and analytics in learning and development
How learning, careers and mobility are all coming together into one personalised platform, AKA the talent marketplace
What we can learn from organisations who are combining learning, analytics and skills togetherwe
The future direction of the Learning and Development field
This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in learning skills and the technology that supports it. So that is Business Leaders, CHROs, Chief Learning Officers and anyone in a People Analytics, Learning, Workforce Planning or HR Business Partner role.
Support for this podcast is brought to you by Degreed. To learn more, visit https://degreed.com/.
Interview Transcript
David Green: Today I am delighted to welcome Kat Kennedy, who is the Chief Experience Officer at Degreed, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Kat, welcome to the show. It is great to have you on here. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to your background and what the role of Chief Experience Officer entails?
Kat Kennedy: Yes of course and it is so good to be here as well. So, at Degreed as Chief Experience Officer, I am able to work very closely with our Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer and our VP of Strategic Technology. So working closely with all of the teams and Leaders that create the platform, both as it is today and also planning for what it will become in the future.
David Green: I believe you have been at Degreed pretty much since the company was founded back in 2012. It has probably been a long and interesting journey, I imagine. Can you talk us through a little bit of that journey, what you have gone through over the last, nearly eight years now, and the challenges that you have faced to introduce what is essentially a new category of learning experience platform?
Kat Kennedy: Yeah, I am happy to. So back in 2012 I joined the two co-founders, David Blake and Eric Sharp. What prompted me to join was David's articulation of the world as he would like it to be seen, a world in which every individual is recognised not for their credentials but for the skills that they have and the ways in which they have applied those skills.
So from 2012 to 2013, we were trying to create the mechanism by which that individual could be represented and that led us to have some very fascinating conversations with leaders of Business and they told us the challenge that they had in understanding individuals, the skills that they had, and the ways in which they were developing those skills. Those conversations were happening with the backdrop of an explosion of online content, MOOCs were really coming into the picture at a scale that we hadn't seen before and so the ability to not just recognise individuals for their skills and the ways that they are developing those skills, but to give them access to all of that incredible content, that was really coming into the picture at a pace that we hadn't seen before. So as we attack that opportunity we were also having those conversations with the enterprise and they just got very excited that they could take advantage of all of that content, they could get a better representation of their people and so it was a very organic transition into the enterprise. The challenge was in 2014, there was no line item for learning experience platform. It was just working with incredibly innovative individuals inside of fantastic companies, Bank of America, MasterCard, Lithium Motors a much smaller company but one of the earliest, were who we were partnering with. I think the challenge in creating a category is you don't have the line item but the fun in creating a category is it's just all about listening to the challenges that those companies have and coming up with solutions through partnership to solve them. That is both what has created that category now, is we have stayed focused on enabling that individual, enabling the enterprise and we partner very, very closely with those that, you would cite them as clients but I truly count them as partners, to continue to address their needs and therefore address the needs of the individuals.
David Green: Obviously creating a new category is a challenge, not just as a line item, but it is almost an education process as well for some of the key players within the organisations that you are working with. What are some of the biggest challenges or misconceptions you face when looking to educate HR Leaders? I say HR, because most of the people that listen to the show are working in HR.
Kat Kennedy: That it is much more than aggregation. So the definition of an LXP, great that the category is now created, it is very fluid what people think when they think of an LXP. So to get everyone to understand that the experience is the core parts of the LXP, that is where I spend the bulk of my time and what experience means both for the enterprise and for that individual is far beyond curation and integration of content assets.
It is about recognising and developing skill, mobilising those individuals to the work that needs to be done. That is, I think, where we have the funnest conversations but also are necessary conversations because if we are just checking a box on that line item, it can be seen as curation and nothing else.
But I think that is just the bear stakes for what it means to be in LXP.
David Green: And obviously you were employee number three, how many employees are you up to now?
Kat Kennedy: 570, I think around there, so we have grown quite a bit.
David Green: Quite a journey over the last eight years. Obviously you have been there pretty much since the start and I know you work very closely with the CEO, Chris McCarthy, to essentially run the company. I think you explained to me that he runs the go to market part and you are running the technical part, the actual product side. What do you see as some of the biggest challenges involved in running a fast growing HR Tech company?
Kat Kennedy: It is a new company every six months, I think that is the biggest takeaway that I have had for the past eight years is that you can never rest on “well we have got it under control now” because what the organisation needs changes so quickly as you are scaling at the rate that we are. I think we have added around 150 individuals to the company since Covid began. The needs of the organisation evolve just as the way that you are creating products evolves. So making sure that you are agile with your internal practices in the same way that we are agile in the way that we deliver product that has been a key part of how, I believe, we have been able to scale successfully. The other thing that I am so grateful that we had in place very early on was operating principles. We are clear from day one when you join Degreed, the way in which we make decisions, the reasons why we are making those decisions and what we want the world to look like. So being mission driven has enabled us to scale very well and having those operating principles in place from the earliest of days that we have always been able to rely on.
David Green: And you have managed to obviously maintain and adapt your culture as you have grown?
Kat Kennedy: Culture is not a mission statement in my mind. Culture is about the people, the way in which we communicate with each other, how we make decisions and allowing that culture to evolve and to grow and not to try to control it but instead let it be organic, has been a beautiful part about being at Degreed and I think why as a millennial I am still there and I plan to be there for much, much longer. It is evolving, it is growing and we all can stay very close together because of that evolution.
David Green: Also you mentioned that since Covid you have added 150 people, so by my rudimentary math you have grown by more than 25% in terms of headcount since the start of the crisis, which was what about six months ago now? I think we are seeing an explosion in learning aren't we, since the crisis started?
Kat Kennedy: The pressure of the moment has accelerated the conversation between HR and the entirety of the business and the needs that they had were really just knocking on the door. I need to quickly develop my people, I need to redirect where their attention and their energy is and just the screams for help were coming very loudly. So I was no longer on at HR to be trying to win over hearts and minds, hearts and minds were won and instead it becomes about how does everyone partner together to push the ball forward? That is what I have seen. It has accelerated conversations and things are being done through partnership instead of “please, please look at what will happen if you don't pay attention” and I think the pain of those who weren't able to get the rest of the organisation to listen to them now is going to be a lesson that is not easily forgotten and that's great.
It is great that we have been able to put individuals at the centre of the business through this crisis, you know the never waste a good crisis moment, that is where I am coming out of it very optimistic. I think this is a change that will last for a long, long while because the pain for those who weren't prepared was also very poignant.
David Green: And lastly before we sort of delve in a bit deeper into some of the L&D stuff.
Obviously there has been a big focus on women in tech, not just in the US, but in other countries as well. You have got the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Products Officer and the VP of Strategy and Technology coming into you, what are some of the challenges or considerations that you find being a prominent woman in tech?
Kat Kennedy: There is often a misconception that I don't understand technical communication. My background is in Computer Science, that is what my degree is in, I worked as a Software Developer for the earlier phases of my career and I think just that misconception that we don't fully understand the conversations that are being had, that they need to be explained to us when we are also driving the decisioning, that is something that has persisted through every phase of my career. What I love about being a woman in technology at this point is I am not alone. It has definitely become an area that everyone recognises is equal and it needs different perspectives and it needs diversity and I have definitely seen all of those investments and recognition of that pay off. And so knowing that I am not the only one that looks like me, that thinks like me inside of technology, there is so much to say about the safety that comes in knowing that I am not the only one and I am able to engage more authentically because I have that comeradery around me.
David Green: I mean, it is important as well, just from the sheer fact that probably 50% of your users are probably female so it makes sense to have a nice blend and a mix in terms of creating a product.
Kat Kennedy: I believe in diversity, one, because it is the right thing to do but two, because it helps the business. diversity means you have a variety of perspectives at the table and if perspective is reality, the more that we have the clearer picture of reality that we have. If we are going to solve the challenges that the future presents we have to have a more robust picture of the reality that we exist in. I believe the only way to get to that is through diversity. It helps us think about the problem more holistically but it also helps us to be more creative as we try to get solutions.
David Green: Yes, I don't think any of our listeners will disagree with that. Talking about some entrenched and outdated views, what are some of the most deeply entrenched and outdated views towards L&D that you think are holding organisations back? Perhaps examples of things that you have come across or that you see frequently?
Kat Kennedy: This is less and less the case as we move forward but I will still see it in pockets. When you say learning and you are inside of a company, people think of compliance, they don't think of development. So getting everyone to equate learning with development and all of the things that they are already doing. Degreed has done a lot of research, both on our own and in partnership with Harvard Business Publishing about the ways that people learn. What is fascinating coming out of that report is they didn't quantify the podcasts, the articles, the videos as learning, that was just things that they do to grow. So how do we make sure that as all of the investment and the hard work that is done inside of L and D and our HR more broadly is recognised as a benefit for the individual and that they see it not as a task master beating them with a stick, but instead, this is about helping you grow. I am here as an empowerment, as an enablement. Vidya the CLO of Ericsson, who I am able to partner with quite closely, you will hear her say empowerment all of the time and that is what I hope to see cascade across all organisations. A recognition that learning is about empowerment and about growth, it is not about compliance.
David Green: I think one of the things that has probably helped learning and actually quite a lot of other HR functions is this silo mentality, are we seeing learning kind of breaking out of that silo now and almost moving horizontally across the organisation?
Kat Kennedy: I think so and I think it has been accelerated by Covid-19. The recognition that it is about developing skills so that the business can move forward at the pace that is needed. That is where we have to be growing, we have to be evolving all the time because the world is evolving, the world is changing and nothing in my living memory has accelerated or brought a spotlight to those needs as quickly as Covid-19 did. So I believe that that is a change that will persist as we move forward because the world is only going to increase in the pace at which change is greeting us.
David Green: Yeah and the crisis will likely continue for the foreseeable future and give us a new world in many respects. I am passionate about Analytics, I think you guys at Degreed are as well. Why is it crucial for organisations to use data and analytics in L&D?
Kat Kennedy: So when Degreed got started I had no concept of L&D, we joke about this, there were really big players in the space that I had no recognition of. But what that naive and fresh perspective brought to the equation is just we were focused on solving the challenges and I was fascinated because every organisation that we talked to were spending so much money on content, on building skills. However when I would ask them what their benchmark was, what is the baseline that we are trying to grow? I was met with “can’t answer that right now.” So we are building skills without the understanding of supply. Where are you starting and demand, where do you need to mobilise them? Building skills was happening in isolation, that is incredibly inefficient because you don't know where you are starting and to what end you are growing them at the scale of the organisation. That might be happening in pockets, but I didn't see it happening at large. So to answer your question, why is analytics so important? Well, it helps you know where you are, it helps you see where things are going and it can also give you insights into activities that are happening beyond your control. As we think about how individuals think when they hear learning, it's about compliance. How do we see the ways that they are trying to develop and grow on their own then? Analytics can give us really meaningful context as to the things that are already happening and if we don't measure, then how do we know if we are successful?
So I could go on and on and on and on about why data is so important and there is the baseline analytics and then there are the insights that we can start to glean once we have that basic understanding. And yet across a lot of the organisations we get to partner with, we are still at the starting point, helping them to see just the baseline of where they are at before we can start to get to the good stuff, which is I believe, the insights and the predictive analytics that will come from it.
David Green: And of course learning the skills that the organisation needs and the learning that helps the organisation and the individuals within it, close that gap perhaps, you need analytics underneath, you need the data to understand what the skills are that you need and the learning and development that supports it.
So you talked about some of the organisations that you are working with, what are some of the ways that they are using L&D and Data Analytics effectively? You are probably thinking of some of your more advanced clients, feel free to name them, if you don't want to name them that is also fine. It is just interesting for listeners to understand where can they get to? Where can their organisation get to with this?
Kat Kennedy: Oh, there are so many incredible ones. I truly deem them as partners and build so many amazing things together. So some of my favourite usages of the utilisations of the data that are coming out of Degreed is when they are in combination with other key datasets. So those that are pulling everything that Degreed can provide into their BI tools and they are crossing that with things that are happening across the rest of the business and using it as an overlay. Whether it is the ways that people are engaging with content or how an individual is asserting their capability around a certain skill. That in combination, if you take a sales person, we can combine that with information coming out of Salesforce to derive some very exciting insights. So Degreed sees itself as a platform, we have so much incredible data that is generated through the engagement that we get from those end users and I want to share it across the business. Put that into your BI tool, cross it against all of the other systems that you have and I believe that is where we can start to derive some very powerful insights. So that is one of the favourite things that I can see across so many of our strategic partners.
The others are those that are intentionally asking individuals to engage with the platform in a certain way. So they don't bring Degreed in as the “one place to go for all of your learning.” Instead they bring Degreed in as “this is the platform for your individual progression” and what that does is, it gives a different perspective to the data that is generated. It is very intentional. The way that the individual is talking about themselves, the way that they engage with the platform and just the level of insight that we can get as it is focused around progression, as it is focused around development, it is so powerful.
And so that is my favourite favourite is when it is focused on progression and we can also tie into their internal BI tools.
David Green: And I guess as you said, the power is when you can actually start linking it to some of the business stuff as well, you can start linking it to business outcomes in sales for example. As simple as, we have put this team through this course of learning and within three to six months we started seeing an uptick in their sales results. Now tying it down just to the learning is difficult, admittedly, but you can see it as a safe assumption it was a big element in that.
Kat Kennedy: Yeah and another cool insight, this was made public, Unilever as they were talking about the results that they have seen with their investment in learning. What it did for promotion rates, for employee engagement, how they thought about the company and their relationship with it, as well as to how quickly they were able to advance their career we have seen real results and Unilever has published them. Leena, I think shared it on her Twitter months ago. But just so impressed with when we focus on empowering those individuals, the results really do start to speak for themselves as we see people mobilising across the organisation.
David Green: That is a great story. We had Leena as a guest on a podcast a year or so ago, she is very inspirational and I think very important in our space.
So skills, you have talked about connecting learning and skills, skills are changing faster than ever. The half life of skills is ever diminishing and roles are emerging and eroding faster than ever. Can we really get a handle on it all? How do you help organisations tackle this?
Kat Kennedy: Yes. I spoke earlier about that challenge of understanding baseline and also where you are trying to get to. The root of that issue is the way we define work. This is across every client, 99% of them at some point in our partnership will say to me that their job codes are a mess. They will just say it and it will be in passing, but that is a very important piece of this equation. If I have a Project Manager title and that is applied across 50 different people and inside of that 50, I actually have 20 of them doing completely different jobs. How do I know and how does the business know what this individual is starting to do?
And yet taxonomies are tied to that and yet that is not actually what the work is. So Degreed has taken the approach of lets understand individuals and their skills. We also have information as to what work are they doing and then we can start to understand what work are they actually doing inside of this job?
I believe that over the next five years, we will start to think about work and how we define work very differently. Up to this point technology hasn't empowered the organisation and we haven't had the data set to truly understand it. When Degreed is in play, we do have that dataset, we understand who the individual is, the work that they are doing, the work that they aspire to and all of those mechanisms together can give us very, very powerful insights into what is to come.
We talk about skills all of the time, but skills are just an aspect of the work that is being done. So that is what I see as a big opportunity is just throwing out the old ways that we defined what a job is and start to break it up, especially as automation comes into the equation. Work is changing, and what it means to have opportunity and to have a role I believe, we are already behind because I could ask even five of my Product Managers inside of Degreed to define their role and it would look a little bit different.
David Green: You recently, I think less than a year ago, you acquired Adepto. You are now approaching more than just learning with the platform. How do you see projects, jobs and talent mobility all coming together with learning? What are your thoughts on what companies should be thinking about the concept of talent marketplaces? I think I have seen it referred to as talent marketplaces, opportunity marketplaces, but this sort of place where everything comes together.
Kat Kennedy: So we announced our acquisition of Adepto in December and the why behind the acquisition really does come back to that comment I would always get our job codes are a mess. And yet we are trying to build skills, but to what? What is the why? Why does the individual care? Can we expose that why, that demand for their skills to them in the place where they are actively trying to build them? So Degreed is not a learning platform, Degreed is a platform for progress, both for the individual and for the organisation. So if it's for progress, what are we progressing to? That is where Adepto and now the Degreed career mobility product really comes into play. So what we see is, those that have career mobility live inside of their Degreed platform, they are putting demand. And what I love to see is it's not just full time jobs, it is stretch assignments, it is mentorships, it is come shadow and learn what it is like to be inside of this job. The skills to do that work already exist internally. Just last week as an example, we use Degreed at Degreed and we had a Solutions Engineer want to do a Vlookup to create this really cool presentation, but he isn't great at Excel and he was pulling his hair out Googling, trying to figure out what the answer was. So he put an opportunity, I need someone to teach me how to do a Vlookup, and put that live on Degreed. What is great is that once he asserts the skill required to help him with this, like Excel Data Analysis, we can see inside of the internal teams who has that skill. So they didn't even have to discover the opportunity, he found them because for each opportunity we can show the individuals that have the skills required. He found an analyst right at the top of that discover great candidate list, he awarded her the opportunity. She was notified, they spent 10 minutes, outcome, he learnt how to do the Vookup and he had that in his presentation. How many of those moments happen at scale? So, so many. So can we foster connections inside of the work to be done, both at that small, tiny project scale, but also on the larger side as well. I am a strong believer that the skills needed to push the business forward exist in the organisation, in the majority of cases. What we haven't had up to now, is the ability to unlock them, to see the individuals that have the knowledge and put them in the right places and apply them to the work. The challenge to accomplishing that is more change management than it is technology.
It is empowering those organisations to think differently about their people, to think differently about how they expose them to the work. I feel very lucky that we already get to work with organisations that think that way and are saying go find me the right people and let's make sure that we are unlocking knowledge.
David Green: So you mentioned Unilever, I know that is one organisation that is doing this well, this kind of marketplace type of thing, where it is great for the individual because they can link the way they want to develop their careers, with the skills that they might want to acquire, that the company needs more of.
And it is great for the company because they can combine internal talent for projects, stretch assignments, mobility options as well moving forward. It is absolutely fantastic.
Do you have any examples of organisations who have or are at least close to having a handle on all of this and what can we learn from them?
Kat Kennedy: They start creatively. So rather than start with full time jobs, Degreed can integrate with the ATS, we can expose those, push more internal engagement to those opportunities. They are not starting there, where they are starting is connecting people around meaningful work. So I don't know if I can cite the name, but they are actually starting with a mentoring program using opportunities.
So how do we both enable those who are seeking a mentor to say, I want to grow in XYZ and also those who are willing to mentor to say, I have these skills do you want to connect with me? And so they are tying into projects and needs that the business has already asserted is necessary and to aid change management, let's solve that. And as we solve that, then we can start to expand. So rather than trying to boil the ocean, starting top of the funnel with full time jobs, they start with those projects and those different arcs and push it forward in that way.
David Green: Okay, that is really helpful. Don't try and do everything at once, just pick off something that you know is important to your organisation. So in that particular organisation, that you cited there, was mentorship, good place to start, but in others it could be something else. It is linking it to the business needs.
Kat Kennedy: Yep, find a challenge that already exists and solve that one and then you will have your ROI story. How long have we waited for ROI, a nice clean, tight ROI story and here it is. We can put people applied to the work and you don't have to spend time recruiting and paying that cost, which is substantial in all regards, you can find those people internally. That is ROI and we are already seeing beautiful ROI stories with those that have Mobility live and it has only been live in the platform since February. We are already seeing that traction.
David Green: Brilliant. For the next few questions I am going to ask you to gaze into your crystal ball. So we will start with, what do you think the best practice and leading examples of using data for skills development and mobility will look like in five years?
We will talk about that and then we will expand it out to the L&D function afterwards.
Kat Kennedy: I think I already referenced this a bit, but when we have the right data sets, we understand the individual, how they talk about their skills and capabilities and we see the work that they are doing. I believe we will redefine what work looks like and how we apply individuals to that. I think it will start to modularise and break apart. What that will do in terms of data for how we build skills, is also going to be quite exciting. If we understand supply and we understand demand our ability to more quickly bridge that gap and build skill because I can see with data density the fastest path for a product manager to get into sales. I can see that path of what they both undertook in terms of skill development, but also what were the best resources to close that gap and all of that data in one platform like Degreed, is what's going to empower us to unlock those insights. So that is what I think the future holds is just more efficiency in the way that we are building skills and deploying talent.
David Green: And more use of data and analytics presumably, because again People Analytics has been around for quite a long time in many respects, but it is only really now that it seems to be coming into the mainstream and pretty much every organisation I speak to now has a People Analytics team of at least some degree or another. As you said, a lot of those teams are working very closely with their learning team to actually support them with the data that they need to really link everything together.
Kat Kennedy: I was just going to say, that technology has been around and we have made decisions for the business with Workforce and People Analytics, how we understand the individual, I think is what is evolving. We are coming to a better understanding of who that individual is. If we are just asking them to fill out a profile inside of the HCM, we will have a picture, but it is not going to be the full picture. However through engagement and watching that individual, we can come to a better, more real time understanding. And that is data that is so, so exciting because we can empower them in incredible ways if we understand them. We talk about personalisation but at the core of personalisation is the person and we have to understand that person first and foremost.
David Green: Lastly this is the question we are asking everyone on this series, what will be the role of L&D in 2030?
Kat Kennedy: In 2030, woah. I think it's those paths, the guidance, it is creating the conditions by which people can grow. I think that has always been the case and will continue to be so, the manner in which we are creating those conditions is going to be ever evolving. Automation and the ability of the machine to do a lot of the work we need to accept, but the human portion of creating that condition and always making sure that the guidance is taking the business at large, where it wants to go. That is what I believe L&D will be doing and the great ones already do that. They are creating the conditions, they are making sure that progression of individuals in the business are in lock step. The manner in which they will be empowered to more effectively do that work is going to unlock over the next 10 years.
Technology is really, really picking up in how we understand individuals, how we can apply them and oh, I am excited for what that will do in terms of empowering learning and development.
David Green: And things like virtual reality or augmented reality are you going to begin to see more of that? Obviously there are some organisations that are putting their toe in as such on this, but presumably this is going to take off?
Kat Kennedy: Oh there are so many cool things. We work with clients across every type of vertical, one of them is a mining operation and as they are training those that will go into the mines, they are doing that with virtual reality rather than having to put them on the job and deal with all of the external conditions that come along with it. They can do that training in a location that is safe, that they can control more of the conditions and you can cascade that across so many verticals. What AR has shown us is just that technology can empower us to be more efficient. There are going to be so many mechanisms that emerge over the next decade that help people to develop. I think the responsibility for those that are technologists inside of the enterprise is how do we capture that value in a way that translates back. Great that we can do it, but what does it mean and how we can really take advantage of it and quantify it?
As I think of Degreed’s future, that is the role that I want to serve, helping organisations to both take advantage of that technology, but quantify it and mobilise it.
David Green: Kat, it has been wonderful to have you on the show. I can't believe our time is up already. Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you and also find out more about Degreed and follow you and Degreed on social media?
Kat Kennedy: Yes. So we are @Degreed on Twitter. It is just degreed.com, you can find us and learn more about how we can empower both your people and your organisation. For myself personally I am @Kat_thegeek on Twitter, but if you reach out to Degreed you can get hold of me at any point. I am always happy to connect and to discuss and to talk about the future that we are all creating together.
David Green: Well, it has been wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks very much and enjoy the rest of your day.
Kat Kennedy: Thanks so much for having me!