How to Build AI-Powered Learning Pathways
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Dina Yorke, VP Learning Excellence at Schneider Electric, about how AI is transforming workforce learning through personalization at scale.
Dina shares how Schneider Electric is building a skills-based organization where employees drive their own development, supported by AI-powered learning pathways that adapt to individual needs. She explains how breaking down silos, enabling collaboration, and leveraging AI allows Schneider to upskill faster, keep content relevant, and prepare for future workforce challenges.
🎓 In this episode, Dina discusses:
Why skills-based learning beats rigid job titles in today’s market
Breaking silos to unlock organizational knowledge and expertise
How AI helps keep learning content fresh, relevant, and adaptive
How Schneider uses AI to personalize learning for every employee
How calculated career risks unlock new personal and professional growth
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Chris Rainey 0:00
Did it? Welcome to the show. How are you I'm good. How are you, Chris, I'm so I'm good. First I'm good. And I'm so excited. We're having this conversation. I feel like I've interviewed everyone in the team, but you quite a few of us. I
Dina Yorke 0:13
don't think so. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 0:14
have you been avoiding me? No, none of that. I'm only playing before we jump in. Tell everyone little bit about yourself, personally and your your journey to where we are now, because you have such an interesting background and journey.
Dina Yorke 0:29
Yeah, it's been an interesting career so far, 3030, plus years. I hate to say that, wow. Anyway, no, it's been great. You know, I was thinking as reflecting on this, you know, what would have my 16 or 18 year old self had been, I don't think they would have ever saw myself being here. You know when I think I shared with you, when I was 16, I really thought I was gonna be a veterinarian in biology. And I think when I reflect back about my career, is about how narrow minded I was on all my initially, and how as I've gone through and done different things in my career, I just keep opening up that view of like, oh, I can do things. So when I was 16, I realized I couldn't handle blood and guts, and then I decided, well, if I can't be a vet, I'm not going to do biology. Why? I don't know. And somehow my father convinced me to go into business, which was a great decision, but I said, Dad, I'm not going to be an accountant. No way. Right? What did I graduate with a concentration in accounting, and I started my first seven years of my career as a CPA, spending a couple of years in the UK. But then I decided, okay, I don't want to be a partner. I always thought I was going to be this really straightforward finance person. So then I was in finance, going to be in finance. I was going to move up be VP or CFO someday. Then I get into Schneider, right? And I was a finance business partner, also doing HR. I was running both HR and finance, which was a crazy, crazy jump, but it opened my mind, like, wow, I could do so much more, right? And so then I'll this career in Schneider. My almost 18 years, I've done finance, HR operations. Then I got into global Dei, and now I'm running learning, the operational side of learning, the the strategy and platforms and such governance of that never would have thought I would have gotten there. But each stage is It wasn't intentional, like the things that I did was a little bit of risk taking, but each time, I just went a little bit further, and I challenged myself, and I had good champions, challenging me to to take, take some of these calculated risks, right? So,
Chris Rainey 2:27
yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned an amazing career. No, it's incredible, and it's quite rare. It becomes more more rare that you find people that have been with an organization and had multiple careers within the same business, and that's something over the years, getting to know you, the team and the organization, that that's part of the culture of what it means to work at Schneider. And everyone, like everyone I know, has been like, had three or four careers, yeah.
Dina Yorke 2:55
And that's what makes it great. And that's, you know, part of the reason I've been here for 18 years is that you can keep building on yourself and learning from yourself, but building on those skills. And I think, as you know now, skills has become like the conversation, like skills is the foundation, and when I reflect back, I'm like, I guess that's what my career is. I've always been focused on where can I best utilize my skills, and where my skills can best be applied, right? Yeah, and unintentional, but that's really what my career has been. Has been, where can my skills be best applied? And, you know, I think those consulting days I have really played out building those consulting skills in my first seven years of my career play very well into all the things I've had to do, from business partnering to HR, business partnering now trying to do influencing and convincing as we're trying to really change some of the culture within either around, how do we do this skills transformation? How do we make sure we deliver the right skills at the right time? Those are, you know, those are big, heavy, transformational things, and you need to have those kind of consulting and influencing and convincing skills, which I've built over this career in multiple ways and applied it in different roles.
Chris Rainey 4:02
Isn't it interesting that we never know at the time how useful that will be later in our career? Like, I kind of look back on moments in my career and be like, Why did I do that? And then, like, now, and where I am, like, wow. Like, that's the way that that's impacted what i've what I do now and the experience, whereas, like, at a time I was like, maybe, probably didn't fully appreciate the work. Oh, I
Dina Yorke 4:24
absolutely didn't appreciate right, you know, finance and account or accounting was like, all about those accounting skills. Meanwhile, really, what I was doing was going out and meeting what I loved about that job was going out and having the variety of meeting different clients, learning about their businesses, giving some advice back. I was really being able to help people make actions and learn from one another, and that collective collaboration. And as I say, I like to break down silos. How do I make people connect and bring those ideas together? I mean, that's that's the fun of the job. Yeah, for me,
Chris Rainey 4:54
part of your journey, though is that is, and what I find really interesting about this is that you're never. Really fully prepared. So going from finance to HR to dei to learning excellence, how do you know when you are you know like prepared to take that next step, or are you never and the idea is that you, as part of your culture, is that you have these set of skills, which, of course, are complementary, but of course, you still didn't have to have the deeper knowledge when you move into di or learning. How do you manage that personally? And also, how does the business ensure that they're successful when they're thinking about that process?
Dina Yorke 5:38
You know, for me, it's also sometimes I almost put like, I think I shared earlier when we were chatting was, you know, I put barriers up earlier in my career, like, oh, I don't have that skill, so I can't do that, right? Luckily, my husband's probably my biggest champion and cheerleader, right? And I almost didn't take the job in Schneider. I almost didn't put my name in for the role, because it was, it was this perfect financial Check, check, check, and the last line was, and you'll manage HR. And I'm like, I'm a finance person who manages HR. I know nothing. I don't know the legal side and and I was like, I can't put my name in for this job. And my husband's like, no. What are you doing? You know, put your name in. What do you have to lose? They just don't call you back. Thank God I did, because I wouldn't have had this amazing almost 18 years, and also many exciting things, things to come as well, right? So don't put limitations on yourself. That was one of those big skills. When I got in here, I was like, Okay, I almost missed this great opportunity because I put a self imposing barrier up, right? So that's piece of advice out there. Don't do that, right? There's enough barriers out there to start just take those calculated risks. So luckily, I had a good cheerleader saying, come on. You know, you can do this. And I think that that experience of almost missing out on that has always played a little bit in my my thoughts since then is like, what do I have to lose, right? Put your name in there as also having very good sponsors. So what I choose, I do calculate it as a Tina, my my current manager says, You take calculated risk. I look at who is the manager, and I also look at the team. So like, when I took this job within learning, I'm not a learning person. I'm a finance person. With it, had a little bit of been working with a dei for five years prior to that, but, but it was about on the operational side, like, how do we improve the way that we operate in this very matrix organization together? So I was like, okay, my skills, I can, you know, do influence convince I'm an operational I look for ways to improve constantly on that piece, and I love to manage teams. And I had not been managing a team for eight years, and that was something I really missed. I was mentoring people to fill in that gap of not being able to develop a team. And I'm like, okay, I get this team back, but, you know, I don't have learning experience. I don't know. I don't design learning programs. And it was great one of the team members, when I met with him, met with them, I said, anybody have questions like, why this role? Why did you pick this role? Great question. It was a great question. I was like, wow, that's a great question. And I like give you kudos for asking that right in the first meeting, meeting together, and I said, Look, I'm looking for something that was going to stretch me right. This was, this is my stretch to learn more about learning. But, you know, I looked at the team and I said, I wanted to have a team again. And I looked at the team, and I said, there's a bunch of great experts here, right? So I said, You guys are the experts, right? My job here is to block and tackle to help you get things through. How do we get the strategy we want to do? And my job is, hopefully I'll learn along from you guys to become a better, more diversified leader as a result. And it's been a lot of fun, right? I am learning a lot. I'm learning a lot every day, and I have a lot of appreciation for some of the complexities that maybe I didn't have before. But I also saw within the organization that we needed to break down silos, and that's something I'm very I think I'm very good at, is making connections and seeing who needs to to work together. That's true in all the jobs that I've done, is just really getting to know people. So then you kind of have those working relationships, and you're kind of like, hey, why don't you guys work on that idea together? Right? So, yeah, that's really been what the driver of that is. It's those calculated things I like to learn. I'm a person that likes to learn, right? I get bored after a period of time, if I'm doing the same thing over and over, and I know when I get bored, my productivity, my my energy level drops. I'm a high energy person. I like to make sure that I'm a I'm having fun when I'm doing it too.
Chris Rainey 9:28
I love that. Yeah, I think it says a lot, by the way, to when you had that meeting, that you had the psychological safety in the room, that someone could ask you that question on day one. I think, yeah, you know, because in most companies, that just wouldn't happen, let's be honest. But then also the fact that you led with humility to say, hey, I don't have all the answers. Like, my job is not to come in here and tell all of you what to do, right? I'm not the experts here. And that sends a very clear message to that team that's going to ask. Locker level of, you know, engagement and productivity and excitement, quite honestly, that, okay, this is really interesting, like, you know, whereas the fear all is always is someone's coming in and now they're going to change everything up and say, This is how we're going to do it. But the fact that you had that conversation so early on is huge.
Dina Yorke 10:19
I give my that, that team member, lots of credit for asking that, right? We were, was the last question of the meeting, but it was a great one, yeah, but I, you know, I took, you know, with this one, especially when I don't really know, I really took time, and I was given that time that the first three to four months, I just met people listen, which is hard for me, and in sitting there, and now, of course, I was listening and already starting calculating and making some ideas, but I didn't start telling ideas, right? I would drop some ideas into conversations. Well, what do you guys think about that? Or how? Why haven't we done this? But then I had the opportunity to bring all of us together for four for a few days, or hybrid in that tight stage, because coming out of COVID. But you know where we kind of thought through those ideas and had a little discussion. I got everybody then people had already been percolating some of those ideas. So it wasn't like, Oh, she's coming in and changing that, but they had time to think about that too and add their feet pad in. So yeah, I mean, that's just the way, I guess. You know, if you're a Strength Finders, person, which I follow, fell in love with them early on, I'm a wooer, or, as my husband might say, as a manipulator, but I'm a lure and a communicator is my you know, two things that I like to focus on, but it's about, how do we bring people together? Because together is how you achieve. You don't achieve on your own right, and you need to bring people along with you if you're really going to have success. I
Chris Rainey 11:40
agree. What was the biggest takeaways for you from that listening tour?
Dina Yorke 11:47
Just amazing about the number of people this the expertise that we have and ideas that people had, but also that we sometimes were always in this action mode that we don't always look out to see what other peoples are doing, and we kind of do our own thing, not realizing that probably two doors down, someone else is doing that, or someone two countries over is doing the same thing. So it's really around, how do we make sure that we're leveraging the expertise across the organization, but communicating, and it's hard when you're in a big organization, sometimes just those communication channels aren't as easily or we're all just, we all just want to achieve and do our best for the overall company and for the team, but sometimes, I think stepping back and trying to see if there's somebody else already doing that too, we need to take that time.
Chris Rainey 12:30
Happens a lot, especially in an organization like a global business, like, Yeah,
Dina Yorke 12:35
I think that's true in life too, right? Yeah, across any or I think that's true in any organization I've worked in even smaller ones, right? Just sometimes we're so focused on, you know, we need to achieve this for the success of the business, or success in our own personal lives, or whatever. Sometimes just taking back and like seeing if there's other people out there are reaching out to your network and learning from one another is sometimes the best investment
Chris Rainey 12:59
too. Yeah, so you had those conversations. How long you been in the role now,
Dina Yorke 13:04
three and a half years. Oh, wow.
Chris Rainey 13:06
So it's been a it's been a while. Then let's jump into what's really top of mind for you right now, what's the sort of, some of the key priorities for you and the team that you're really excited about?
Dina Yorke 13:16
Oh, for me, it's just about this whole how do we make skills the foundation of everything we do, right? Because I do think, looking back on my career, I'm kind of like, yeah, it was skills, right? And I think that's so true is, what can you bring? How do we unleash and find those skills? Excuse me, so like, you know, the jobs that I'm holding now didn't exist when I came out as a newly grad from college. This is what I tell my daughters, right? Because they're both in university now. They did go the science route. They went the biology route and and going that piece, I said, but just make sure you build those strong skills of critical thinking, communication, problem solving, right? Because those are really foundational skills to be able to apply to anything that you decide to do. I have, you know, one child that's very focused and knows what she's going to do. The other one still, she's early in her her university experience, but she's still trying to figure that out. I'm like, that's fine. This is the time to build those skills today, because you can apply those as foundational skills for everything you do. And I think you know, as businesses, and we start looking at, you know, where the skill gaps are going to be, the more that we can understand what we have as skills within the organization, we will find talents that, maybe, yes, they don't have that certain expertise in that particular area, but that's something you can teach people certain like our industry, you can teach people. You can teach people about sustainability, the skills about problem solving and critical thinking are really hard. Well, there's the things that you kind of have to build early on and continue to develop right? And those can be applied to so many different types of functions too. So. Being able to be a collaborator or a team builder. Um, those are other skills that are out there. So I think it's how do we find those critical skills that are within within the organization they might be in people that aren't following the typical path that you thought they would be. So I'm excited about what that's going to unleash, yeah, but there's a lot of work to make sure we get the the tools in place, the structure in place, the governance in place, and keep going at the speed with the amount of change that is happening on a daily basis, right? Almost hourly. Sometimes
Chris Rainey 15:30
walk us through that journey, because you've been on the skills journey for a while, right? Because I know from speaking to the team, how has that evolved from where you started to how you now looking at how you become a skills based organization, especially as the technology itself is also,
Dina Yorke 15:47
again, it's just we had a really strong buy in from the top right. You have to have your leadership. Has to totally be into the concept of this as well, in which we have, we have strong leadership across that. And then it's looking at the right tools to be able to do that, but you have to have the right structure, like, what is the overall outcome that you want to achieve with that? And we see it as, like, the red thread through everything that we do, from recruiting all the way to performance, and who knows in the future, remuneration too. So you know, again, that piece there and then, like, finding the right solution for it now. Now, the thing is, this is the solution of today, right? But things are changing and evolving, and hopefully you're picking partners that are going to change and evolve with you at that, that stage, but, but now, with everything being open platforms and things along that, it gives some flexibility. If it's in the future, things go a different way, right? But who knows? I mean, the future changes every day. Like, what we hope is that our, you know, our, our partners are with us on that, that journey as well, and looking ahead and and I think we are picking those kind of
Chris Rainey 16:53
partners today. Yeah, it's interesting, because the way in which you've you're a perfect example of your personal career journey, how it's been focused around those core skills. I caught lights called Power skills that are transfer them human we call them human skills, human skills. So I transferred. I just don't like saying the word soft skills. I just
Dina Yorke 17:13
don't like that. Neither do I. They're not soft Yeah, yeah. Drives
Chris Rainey 17:17
me. I just don't like that word. So yeah, with you humans, great. I like, because that's transferable, right? Like, as you've shown in your own career. But then, how do you do that scale? And then how do you then link that back to the business priorities, right? So there's clear outcomes that you're working towards. Because you're right, you have so many untapped skills that exist in different pockets of the business that you just have no idea, right, in the past, to be able to be there to find them. I
Dina Yorke 17:45
think it's about where's that data repository of that information, which we're still building, right? And it comes back to data quality, right? So everything's got to be, how do we make sure everything stays up to date? How can we also give employees more self service to be able to keep those kind of data points up to date? Right? So that's all coming. We're still on that journey. It's still early. So what's
Chris Rainey 18:04
been the reaction, though, to from employees in town, and how have you I
Dina Yorke 18:08
think, you know it's still coming. It's, it's still coming, right? So, you know, we're, we've, we've had our open talent marketplace, which has enabled people to find projects and mentors and and ways to develop their careers. I think, you know, what's, where do we take this and continue to modernize that, right? So we're on that journey, yeah, it's been, you know, that was very responsive, because it opened up, especially when you're a really big company, opportunities to find things that maybe aren't, you know, in your country or in in your city, that you're able to at least try these things, especially, you know, projects where you get to work across many cross functional or maybe different cultures, it's kind of exciting to be able to open that up. Yeah, I'm gonna have those opportunities. I wish I had those kind of things, and I
Chris Rainey 18:52
was me too. I mean, I probably wouldn't have left my last. I was in the same role my last, before I started this company, I was in the same job for 10 years, in exact same role, and I only left because I just like, I just felt like my growth just hit a ceiling, and I asked for opportunities. Like, I like, I know sales director, and I've been in sales since I was 17. I've been here for 10 years. I just want more opportunity to go somewhere else. And there just wasn't a path for me. And that led to me leaving the business, right? I didn't want to leave after the organization, but I just, like, if
Dina Yorke 19:24
I look at mine, I get, like, I said, I say it's five year cycles. It may be longer, but, you know, like, Why did I go to England after four years and working in as a CPA in Boston? Because I was getting bored. So what did I do? I stayed with the company, but I went to a different country, right? And that added, you know, energized me, did something different, whatever. And then I'm like, Okay, I need to go back to to the US if I'm going to be a partner, just because where I could see, at the time, where London's business world was, I was an American, and so I wasn't going to proceed to do as well there. So I moved back to the States, and within six months, I was like. AI, it wasn't the environment. Was the job. I need to, I need to change my job. And so I jumped. So, you know, if you look at the first I always laugh when everybody's like, Oh, the millennials, when, when I was now, it's the Gen Zs. They jump jobs so much in their career. But, oh, I look back at my career in my first 15 years, I think I was in five or six different companies, right? But it was because I was looking for, you know, I do that, and we get a little bit finance, okay, what do I want to do that's a little bit different. Let's jump to a different industry. But then, you know, when you land, and I landed here, right? And in this company, has enabled me to do reiterations of myself, try different things, doing different opportunities. And I think that's, that's hugely why I'm still here. The opportunities to try, to try different things, to utilize my skills and to push myself and try calculated risks.
Chris Rainey 20:48
That's why fantastic, and that's why I feel like, also like the talent marketplace unlocks so much of that where you get to work on projects with different people and different teams from different parts of the world that you would never normally interact with, and that's super exciting and engaging, that you're being challenged in new ways. And of course, the business benefits from that. Of course, absolutely as well. But it is a big cultural change of the way of working. You could you talk to that a little bit, because, you know, that's a big change from the traditional ways of working that I've grew up in,
Dina Yorke 21:24
yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the big when you're a big company, ready, I'm trying to give you could apply that into a smaller company, like, if you think about, if you're in a startup company, you can kind of hear those things you're you're getting to do different projects, because there's fewer hats me or many hats being worn by fewer people, right? So you get that, that that piece here, I think by bringing that kind of that open talent marketplace, you're bringing a little bit of that, that environment in, because you're getting to have the opportunity to go work on a project that's utilizing some of your skills, but maybe in a different part, and you come back to your your your your job, right? Or your your doing this while you're doing your other job. It just adds a little bit more energy to to your day, adds a little bit of variety, right? And an opportunity to explore, you know, like I said with like, I wish we'd had those kind of things when, when I was this eight, when that was the age of our Gen Z and Millennial people, but it wasn't there. I did it by changing jobs, right, and changing companies. So now we can do that within your own, bigger companies, by finding these opportunities to kind of jazz you up a little bit about the different things that you you get opportunities to do. You know, I was like, with my kids with the Internet. They the reason they got on some of their third coming down. And really, I'm gonna be a neuroscientist. I'm like, What's a neuroscientist? They've been on the internet, right? They they had had some idea or saw something, and they went and explored, and they were like, This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go be a neuroscientist. I had no idea. How did you do that? I was on, I was looking this up on the internet. And I'm like, Okay, that's a good use of the Internet, right? And, you know, opening up the things, because I didn't have those opportunities to see what other careers and pieces were. Hence from, I can't do a be a vet. I'm not going to do biology, and then you end up in in business school because of some influence there from conversations with your parents. But
Chris Rainey 23:14
yeah, Mike, my six year old, came to me a few weeks ago and she said, Daddy, I want to start my own company, like you and Mommy. I was like, Okay, what do you want to what do you want to do? And she was like, I've been thinking about it, and I'm going to start my own peanut butter company. I was like, what? She's like, I love peanut butter. I should have it all the time. Kids love peanut butter, but she's like, there's different. There's not enough flavors of peanut butter. And I was like, What do you mean? And she was like, I want to make strawberry peanut butter and banana peanut butter. And she had, she had this whole plan, basically, of how she gonna create a peanut butter company. And then she's like, like, how do we do it? And I'm like, You're six, first and foremost. So this is strange having to come but she sees me and my wife, like she's in the studio all the time. She sees what we're doing with the company.
Dina Yorke 23:59
Sees it, right? That's the environment that she gets exposed to, and probably even through maybe listening to some of the conversations you have to like, that's great. I mean, that's a kid. The opportunities of this digital world is opening up so many opportunities for our younger generations to see and hear what other people do, right? I think that's one of the positive things of of the digital world when it comes to like, exposing our younger generations to opportunities. Yeah, one of
Chris Rainey 24:22
the challenges, I'm not sure if you've experienced internally, that I hear from a lot of your peers, is they're going through the skills based sort of transformation, and they're really, some of them are really struggling with, you know, their leadership and managers moving from being, you know, talent importers to talent exporters or talent hoarders, as they would say, actually, and that's seems to be a challenge for many, I'm not sure something. I
Dina Yorke 24:50
mean, it's interesting that has not been my experience with, with here, right at least. I mean, I had this great manager at one. Point, and he said to me, my job is to develop my successor, right? And he was that's really the job of a leader, is to develop your success, you know, find the people and develop them to be your successor. And that really stuck with me as well. And then I think about opportunity, yeah, I have some great talents, and there's some opportunities that are coming up. I'm like, oh, what? There's this great role that's coming up, yeah, and we're gonna, you know, obviously we want them to, you know, continue to have amazing careers within Schneider. I would love to keep them in my my team, and hoard their skills, but that's not to the benefit of that person, or, to be honest, to the organization. I think we have to be open to not hoarding, but sharing. Because, you know what, if you share other people, share back with you, and you're going to get some amazing people coming in and new ideas, diversity of ideas and experience to make us all a little bit stronger.
Chris Rainey 25:53
Yeah, talking about diversity of ideas, like, what were some of the biggest lessons or learnings that you brought from your dei role into this new role that you have now? Oh,
Dina Yorke 26:03
that's a really good question. I think it's more that you know everybody, everybody has different experiences and expertise, right? So I'm a very collaborative my if you ask my team, I'm a collaborative team. We, when we have our bi weekly meetings. We meet for an hour and a half. My team is from China to Mexico, so there's some of us that are working really early and some that are working late, but it's really focused on a particular problem, and we come together, the eight of us from our different experiences, and use it as a sounding board for whoever that problem is, right? Because sometimes we don't think through those things, or there may be some aspect that we've missed today. And yeah, I think that's the way that you get the benefit of hearing from other people that have been to different parts within a lot of my team have been here for 1520, years within the company, right? But they have all come from different aspects of the business. Maybe some are deep, deep learning experts. Maybe somebody that came from the business and is is now, you know, being more of a had been an SME, those kind of aspects about that, or they're coming straight from a digital mindset, right? And that makes us stronger and helps us get more cohesiveness as we go out and try to convince the bigger and broader organization that this is what we need to do, yes, really leaning in, that everybody's got experiences and skills that can can drive that. And I also like to understand what kind of skill sets I have within my team, so that when we're picking things like, Hey, you're working on that, go work with that person, because they have that kind of they've done that before, or they've got that kind of experience. I brought in a digital marketing person into the team, because I think that's gonna be more and more about how do we bring more eyes? Yeah, how do we bring the eyes to our content?
Chris Rainey 27:52
I'm so happy I've been telling a lot your peers you need that role in your organization. That's such a missing piece, especially now, how you inform an employee brand perspective, like and any program that you create, it needs to have its own identity, its own brand, something who we're going to remember, and that's a skill that typically not within the function.
Dina Yorke 28:13
And I think, you know, we're big into communities at work, or we call it, we call it communities at work. It's communities of practice, right? So we have a program here, and that's my digital marketer. I brought her in to run that group, and you know, she's, she's challenging how we use the tools, how we talk about it, but I think, you know, it's been really refreshing. And I think as we go through this skills transformation and user experience or employee experience, having digital marketing skills are going to be key, because, let's be honest, we all have so many things that are being asking us to look at, read, view, watch pot, you know, listen to, how do we how do we convince them that that your asset is the asset that they need to listen to, watch, engage with, right? And so I think the skills of of being able to
Chris Rainey 29:01
with the same like, it's the same way people in Yeah, and we've been doing that in marketing for a long time with our customers and creating a personalized experience and communication strategy for our customers, but we're not doing that for our employees, so I think that's just and now we also have the technology to be able to do that. So like, wherever, you know, those sort of moments that matter within the employee life cycle, you can really tailor the your communication to them, whether it's around, like big moments in their life or their specific benefits that are available to them, you know, whatever that may be in the past, it was sort of just one size fits all approach to that, and then we can get into learning after, but that's the same,
Dina Yorke 29:44
yeah, no. And I think, you know, you know, we just, you know, we're investing, you know, you're putting, you're putting dollars behind these different programs, and you want to make sure you get the the eyes and the people engaging, but you also want to make sure they're learning, right? They're talking away with some kind of sticky experience. I. Um, be it just one piece of information or a bunch of piece of information that they can walk away and apply, yeah, but it's hard. I mean, it's, I don't know about you, but when I get home at the last thing I want to because I'm looking at a zoom or a teams meeting, you know, for five hours every morning as I meet across my team, I I'm tired of looking at a screen when I get home, right? I'm tired of looking at my phone. It's digital fatigue at times, right? So what am I going to spend my, you know, eyes watching when I get home?
Chris Rainey 30:29
Right? It's interesting, because now you've got, like, tools that you can feel or out stuff, so you can only see what you want. But then there's a risk there that you don't have diversity, and are you just holding up a mirror, absolutely. So it's also like, I have a couple of different plugins and tools that I have that intentionally show me different perspectives on different topics, so that I don't just kind of see a reflection of my own views. Because that's how a lot of these search engines work, or a lot of these email platforms work, is whatever you're putting in, is what you ever get?
Dina Yorke 30:59
Absolutely. That's a Yeah, I think it's kind of some of the problems we have today, but that we only see what you know based upon what you say or your interest. But how do you learn? Right? How do you see again? That's good with my husband and I have a different view sometimes on different movies and things. So he, you know, we explore different things. He's opened up like genres that I may have not looked at in the past, and vice versa, right? So, so, you know, luckily, we share the same Netflix account. So, you know, whatever I pick, and he picks. So when you say, Hey, you're my interested in that, he's like, how did that one pop? I'm like, oh, yeah, I was watching something.
Chris Rainey 31:37
Yeah. I'm saying with my wife. My wife is breaking it
Dina Yorke 31:39
down by person. We all share the one account, and even my girls, so that, you know, sometimes you see things as pop up, we're like, okay, that adds variety to our list.
Chris Rainey 31:49
It's true. How have you a lot of right now, especially given the age of AI, everyone's kind of like, sort of looking at reimagining the learning experience, creating customizable learning pathways. Kind of, where are you on, on that journey? Because, you know, we've gone from, like, online courses to micro learning to this is transforming pretty fast. I think, you know for
Dina Yorke 32:11
us, you know, everybody learns a little bit different, so you got to make sure you have that diversity. So some people want the short pieces that other people we need certifications for, right? We want, they need the full certification, or they want to complete a full course. I am also a big believer, if you're really going to learn, it's not the micro learnings, it may be micro learnings, and so you can take it in bite size, but I do think if you're really going to apply, it's some deeper, deeper learning that you need to have. But that's my personal style, right? Someone else's style might be totally different. We do think, you know, you need some learning recommendations. So, you know, if we, we have, we recently rolled out Coursera across the enterprise, right, 10,000 courses. I don't know. I still equate it to why we need what we do. But we've built learning paths for different skills, and then for different job, there's different job family pages that were built with different skills. So there's some recommendation, because for me, I don't know when I was redoing my house, 1520, years ago, maybe in the contractor say, hey, I need you to go pick out tile. So go. Here's the tile store. I walked into the tile store, I was like, I don't even know where to go, what to do, I don't know what's in my price I turned around. I looked at my husband, like, I can't and I turned around, and we walked out, then then we went back with the contractor, and he's like, here's what's in your price range, here's what. And then I could pick out stuff, but I feel like that's kind of sometimes when we're giving these learning platforms that have amazing content, but if you just give it, and you don't give direction, and maybe for 20% I think they say are those natural learners that will go and just give it, and they'll go figure it out. But most of us are in that 50 55% are like, I need a little direction, or I need help finding what to do, right? And maybe. And then there's some that just want to be told exactly what to do, which is fine, too. And I think that's where we have to make sure, and that's where we are. Are building learning paths or learning recommendations to guide people. And then once you start doing that, the tools start telling you, Hey, you took this course. Maybe you want to take that course. Or or we keep refreshing those learning recommendations so that you know there's fresh suggestions there. But I think overall, most of us need a little bit of guidance, because 10,000 courses, 5000 courses, whatever you know, whatever the platform you you pick even 100 courses, that's still a lot. What do you pick out of
Chris Rainey 34:39
this? Yeah, I love this topic, by the way, and I've been really deep in this for the last three years because we we built Atlas, our AI copilot for all of our content, because we realized we had 50,000 hours of content, like, literally, like 20 years of me, one and a half 1000 episodes just of this podcast, let alone all of the events that we do every single month. All over the world. We have our AI Summit, we have our dei Summit, we have our people like we had so much content, and then we built Atlas. My co founder is guy called Guillermo Moran. He's a former chief learning officer for IBM and Boeing. He joined the team. I remember one of the first conversations I had. He's like, Chris right now, it's like walking into the supermarket and you just see all the ingredients, right? But you don't know. You don't know what meal you're making. You don't, you don't even know what meal you're making, let alone the ingredients you need. And I remember him saying that, it stuck in my head. He was like, we need to figure out, how do we, like, give people the recipe and then recommend, and it's kind of you said it way better than I just did, but it was similar, like, to what you You described on that experience. So what we did is, that's the grocery store for me too. Yeah,
Dina Yorke 35:43
my husband's the cook in our family. I'm like, grocery store. I'm like, I need a list. I need to know exactly what we're fixing. That's so I can navigate. If I walk in, I need to go that. We just need food. I'm like, I
Chris Rainey 35:54
can't do this. I don't know how people do that. And then you, you, you walk around about 20 times in the same like, Why does
Dina Yorke 36:01
it take 45 minutes for you to go grocery shopping? It takes me, like, 10 I'm like, because, you know in your head what you're making I go. I'm like, No, where is it?
Chris Rainey 36:10
I'm terrible at that. So what we did with with with Atlas, obviously, we trained it on all of the content, like the practitioner, insights and perspectives that we have. We also then plugged in all of our partner data from, you know, Gartner, McKinsey, Boston, half Bridget review. So we brought their research, and then we actually included our partners, our clients data, AI, if it was your own data, into there, and then the learner we take when they interacting with Atlas D in the in the chat, like Google for chat, GBT, based on what you're asking, it starts to recommend the learning pathways, and you click on a button that says, Learn. And then what it does is asks a few level setting questions, just kind of to gage your level of experience, you know. And then it generates the learning pathway, like using AI, so it like, does it within a couple of minutes to generate. But the difference is, and I think this is kind of where we need to move to, is it's great having the predefined courses, but they're just generic videos that aren't that don't understand the context of the business or the individual. So what we've been able to do now is, like, break that down so it understands this is sort of the core business strategy, or department strategy. This is the person. It knows your job title is who you are, etc, your skills, because it's connected to the business and the other platforms, and then it builds the learning pathway. But one of the cool things we had recently is like, you can say how you want it, so if you want it just video, it will give it to you in video. If you want to, I actually always do my name in voice, so I actually have a conversation. So every single module is me having a chat with our AI. So if I have to give feedback, and it tells me how good my feedback was, and it says, you want to try again, Chris, and then I do it again, and then it also does it in any language. So like for the first time, we it took us two years to get to this point. We know the technology just wasn't there to be able to do it, but it's now taking all of those 1000s of hours of content we have, and then you take the learning pathway, and then it shows little icons, if, like, you want to see where this has been pulled from. So, you know, the reference material. But like, I feel like that's so exciting now that we actually can meet people where they're at and truly make it, you know, like, equitable, and we can do at scale in any language, and just again, I love listening and watching. If it's text, I really struggle to retain it. And I think it's just such an exciting time. No, I think
Dina Yorke 38:33
it's, and I think that's, you know, at least where our partners are going and where we're you know, where our vision is, too, is we want it to be as personalized as possible, right? Especially some of the important learning, you know, things that are important for the safety or for the health and so, right? But some of it's a the content or the meaning doesn't change that much. It's more about, how much have you retained, and where do you Hey, what was that piece of thing that I needed to know, and how do I get to that? It's coming. I think the the technology, you know, at least it's being built, it'll evolve, and it will get faster and better. But, yeah, it's, it's, I see a future of that for sure. We're still on that journey. Yeah, I'm
Chris Rainey 39:13
excited to see what you're up to on that journey as an industry, too, as an industry, I agree, like, I'm seeing now, like, also, like, learning is really becoming a team sport. And one of the things that I've been seeing once you create, like learning pathways, you can share that with your colleagues. And I thought that was something that would be like, maybe two people, a couple people use it. It's the most useful thing in our platform,
Dina Yorke 39:34
really. That's amazing sharing. Yeah, they literally social learning. It's the social learning bit, right? Because, again, if your peer says, Hey, this is a great course, you're going to believe that, versus the tool saying, here is a great course, right? Yeah, it's that whole community aspect of it, right? So, or a piece of, you know, a piece of information that comes from a particular community piece that I see in the world that we're going we really want to bring. In our communities of practice into that learning journey. Because, again, you want to ask an expert, it's sitting in your communities of practice, right? Hey, I had this piece. I had this question, boom, whatever. Then you can get back into your learning pathway. We're not there there, but, yeah, but that is kind of the vision that we
Chris Rainey 40:16
have. Exciting as you look forward to next before we wrap up, like moving forward, what you're most excited about looking at,
Dina Yorke 40:22
oh my gosh, there's so much excitement. I do think you know with with what AI is, bringing in AI enablement, as much as we need to be cautious and make sure that you know the ethical pieces and bias free, I do think it's going to be able to really enable us to learn faster and getting information there and upskill ourselves at a faster pace. I'm excited for my team, because I think some of the AI enabled tools will help us be able to churn out the content faster right now, sometimes it can take up to six months from the time of just trying to get the SME to get you content that can take sometimes three months just to get the content in a way. I think with the way the AI is coming in the future, we'll be able to, you know that six months could be weeks versus, you know, weeks or a month or two, versus, like, half a year or longer or faster, right? And then if things change, you can quickly change it and keep it up to date. I think that, you know, a lot of the challenge we have sometimes with content is, yeah, it's still relevant, but it was done five years ago, and it looks and feels like it was done five years ago. And if, and the thing is with people today, if it looks and feels old, you start discounting that the content is relevant, right? And so you have to kind of keep it that fresh, new place for people to really believe. Yes, this content is relevant. If your example is five years old, they're not going to believe it, right? Or they're going to discount it. So this is, this is the challenge of, how do you keep up with just the ever changing so I'm excited about how AI and the AI tools are going to enable us to be able to really augment and and meet the challenges of the future of trying to keep up with the speed that we need to keep up with.
Chris Rainey 42:07
Well, you said earlier in our conversation that you love learning so you're in the right job, you're definitely going to be kept busy.
Dina Yorke 42:16
I am Yes, and it's fun, and I, like I said, I have an amazing team and amazing group of colleagues and peers that I work with on a daily basis. So we're all challenging each other and collectively working towards what we want to achieve, which is to upskill our our employees, to be ready for for today and tomorrow.
Chris Rainey 42:33
Before I let you go dinner, what would be like your parting advice for others that listening to maybe just starting their journey, you know, in this space.
Dina Yorke 42:41
So my first piece of advice, I think I said early on, was, don't put internal barriers. Right? Do not, do not let those stop you from putting your name in, right? Because, like I said, I wouldn't have been in this amazing role that I had been if I, if I listened to myself and not to my champions. And the other thing is, get a good group of a sounding board, be it one, two, yeah, or, you know, maybe three or four people that you trust, that could be people that you work with. It could be people that you've worked with before I go, and I have a couple of business partners that I worked with in previous jobs that I call up when I'm thinking about a change in my career. My husband's on that sounding board, obviously, too. But you know, it's those people that you trust, that you can have those conversations, and they know you well enough to say, you know yes or no, does that? Is that where you make that calculated risk so? But you know, take chances, right? If you don't put your name in, this is what I tell my daughters all the time, put the resume in, apply try, because if you don't, if you don't try, you'll not, you'll definitely not get it right, but you definitely have to take those kind of calculated risks. And if you get it, and I also say, when you look for a job, if you're, if you do not have, like, a pit in your stomach a little bit about that job, meaning, can I do, like that, sucking in and going, can I do it? Yeah, if you don't have that feeling about the job, don't take the job, because that's the piece that you're you know, that's the little bit of energy that's going to push you through, to take that risk, right? And challenge you, because you need to be challenged.
Chris Rainey 44:09
Yeah, I love that. I talk about that all the time. Me and Shane, we describe it as seek discomfort like that. We talk about that all the time in everything we do that, if we don't have that feeling we're not, probably not challenging ourselves or our products, or what we're offering to customers, like, so we're like, it's this term that's used in our office a lot, like, seek discomfort.
Dina Yorke 44:32
My mind's that physical, like in the, you know, the stomach clenching in a little
Chris Rainey 44:36
bit like, Yeah, but that's but also there's part of that. The the more you do it, it's like putting the reps in. So for me, that becomes my default, if that makes sense, like, whereas most people will see that as like, scary, I now it sounds weird, but when I feel that, I get excited exactly like, is this a framing changed and so and. Suppose, rather than, Oh, what if I fail, but like, what if you don't? Like, just, just flip the framing of it,
Dina Yorke 45:07
if you fail, you learn from that failure. Like, there, like, you learn some. To be honest, you learn so much when you you do make mistakes, right? Because you ain't gonna make that hopefully you don't make that mistake again, right? That's where you learn, fast, fail, fast, learn fast, right? And then and don't do it again. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 45:24
I'm like, I always my friends, like, Don't rob yourself of the opportunity to fail. And I like, What do you mean? I'm like, No, it's like, you're like, I do that with my team. I try to step out the way, because I used to try and save them from everything in the past. I'm actually, I'm robbing them of the opportunity to learn from that. So it's my job is not to always come in and be trying like, save the day actually, let me just step back and let this play out, and they'll learn from that and become better from that as well. So I had to kind of let go of the reins at certain points,
Dina Yorke 45:56
which was tough and do. And it goes not just for professional but also personal. Oh
Chris Rainey 46:01
yeah, we can have a whole, not, we can have a whole nother conversation about that, my six year old, but listen, you know, thanks so much for coming. I'm so happy we managed to chat, and I appreciate you sharing your experience. I think it is really important, like, given your background and journey, many people really thought that wasn't possible for them listening right now, but you're probably giving them a different perspective. You know, of, you know of, why not? Why not me? Why shouldn't I put myself forward for that? You're a great example that. So I really appreciate you sharing that with everyone, and it's been fun, yeah, and fun. And I wish you all the best, until we next
Dina Yorke 46:33
week. Oh yes, you too. Good luck with all the events coming up. Thanks.
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Michael D’Ambrose, Board Director at SHRM and Former EVP & CHRO at Boeing.