HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Transformative Learning and the Future of HR with Sarah Danzl, Skillable
In this HRchat episode, we look at ways to provide employees with the tools to build and validate skills to drive business performance.
Bill Banham's guest is Sarah Danzl, Chief Marketing Officer at Skillable, a company that helps pros create hands-on experiences that connect learning to work, validate employee skills, and accelerate job readiness.
Unlock the secrets of transformative learning as Sarah guides us through the revolution in skills development. Sarah shares her expertise on blending innovative technologies with traditional training methods to cater to diverse learning styles, making a bold promise to equip individuals and organizations for growth.
From her passion for philanthropy to advocating for neurodiversity, Sarah reveals how Skillable is changing the HR landscape with its hands-on experiential learning approach. With the integration of AI, and the challenges posed by market volatility, she emphasizes the shift towards a skills-based approach, highlighting how validated skills are becoming more valuable than traditional metrics.
The conversation also looks at the future of remote work culture, as we discuss the balance between virtual and in-person interactions. Explore how scenario-based training can develop practical skills and the importance of customized learning experiences tailored to organizational needs.
We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.
Speaker 2:Sarah, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the HR Chat Show today. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I am so great. Bill, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure to have you on the show. Let's get into it then. Why don't you start by taking a minute or two and telling our listeners all about yourself?
Speaker 3:I will do so, thank you. My name is Sarah Danzel. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Skillable. I live in Boulder, colorado, this incredible place. We're getting a bit of snow now actually, which is so nice, cool things off. I have been in the learning and development and tech space now for oh goodness aging myself perhaps be just around 20 years and have seen a lot of transformation over that time. So really excited to kind of talk with you, bill, through some of those pieces and things that we are seeing today.
Speaker 2:Boulder, Colorado. I did a big trip across the US a few years ago, 22,000 kilometers I did in the end oh my Awesome.
Speaker 3:And I stopped in Boulder end oh, my Awesome.
Speaker 2:And I stopped in Boulder an amazing city. Love it, you're very lucky. Okay, so let's talk a bit about Skillable. Can you just give us, at a high level, the mission of Skillable?
Speaker 3:Absolutely Skillable exists really to help organizations create and deliver hands-on experiences that effectively build the skills necessary for driving growth and business success. And when we say that, what we really mean is that we want to inspire growth and confidence for both the individual and the organization through these practical learning experiences that allow everybody to thrive in their careers. We're really starting to see this idea that hands-on experiential is such a crucial methodology for building skills, so that's where we're really investing our time, especially in the technical and digital skill realm.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at HRGazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we will, of course, be talking about the tools to build and validate skills to drive business performance in today's conversation, but before we get there, let's just learn a little bit more about you. You don't mind, I understand that you're on the boards of several local animal and mental health charities, including longwoods humane society, windhorse community services and mental health partners. You're also a big advocate for neurodiversity in the workplace. As a as a dyslexic person, I get all behind that. Tell us about some of these good causes that you get up to when you're not busy at Skidable.
Speaker 3:It's kind of you to ask. Yes, philanthropy is a big part of myself and a big part of my passions. My causes seem to be the less fortunate. Generally, I have seemed to align myself with the homeless, with mental health and, more specifically, folks inside of that that are in indigent care, and then also I am an unashamed pit bull mom, so advocating against breed specific legislation and some of those pieces. I think those of us that have been really blessed in our lives and in many ways you know, have a responsibility to take care of those that aren't. So. I am an investor and on the board of several of these folks, one of which is a social enterprise helping people learn life skills who might have experienced challenges due to mental health setbacks.
Speaker 3:That's the wind horse or the mind works here in Boulder. I also love animals to spending a really good amount of time helping with the local humane society here, getting to help them, raise awareness and take care of the good animals inside of our community. And then homeless is just something that I'm passionate about. I think so many folks I have been personally really blessed and I think that we all have overcome something at some point in our life and some people just need a little bit of extra help to get back on their feet. Denver actually had a program last year that did an experiment around homelessness and actually gave out I think it was around $1,500 US, don't quote me and we actually saw the rate of homelessness decrease significantly by giving people this monthly allowance inside and so just helping get to do things like that in the community. That the truth is we're all better for. We are all better when lots of folks are contributing and that takes a community to do so. So thank you for asking.
Speaker 2:We have some lovely folks on this show listeners. Okay, let's get into the meat of today's discussion then. Sarah, in your opinion, how has training evolved with the rise of Gen I, with agentic agents, with quantum computing, with market volatility that we've seen over the last few years? What has all that meant for training and the evolution of it?
Speaker 3:I think that it is a couple of things, but mostly it's an opportunity when we think about how people build skills. Traditionally, we have looked at things like knowledge-based articles, videos, courses. You fly your whole team to some location for a couple of days, and I want to be conscious that that's still an important part, right, but I want us to start thinking about it a little bit more broadly as an ecosystem. You mentioned that I am neurodiverse, which I am. I have had attention deficit disorder since I was young, but I really believe that it doesn't matter how your brain functions. We all like to learn different ways. My brain tends to be spicy, but everyone learns differently, which means we as organizations have to offer different modalities inside of that, and I think the rise of all these technologies, specifically around AI, has shown us, and even knowledge, that the skill data that comes from those things is incomplete. It's just not enough. You don't know that a person has actually developed a capability simply by watching a course and, self-admittedly, half the time I'm skipping through to get through it quickly. Have I really retained or have I developed something new as a result of that knowledge-based activity? And so, for us at Skillable, what we're really honing in on is the actual skill application, the idea that until you've performed or behaved that skill, you don't really know if you have it. And I think Gen AI, for example, has only added to that, and even things like the web and Google search. You can essentially get a piece of knowledge at any moment, at any moment of your fingertips. You can even represent yourself through that right, whether it be a resume or someone writing an answer for you.
Speaker 3:So, again, I think what we're seeing now is that that behavioral element, that hands-on element, is more crucial now than ever before to prove that you actually have the skill and, on the personal side, the confidence that you can actually do it.
Speaker 3:We see so many times in organizations that, oh, they got a completion course, they got 100% on this thing, but in their moment of need they aren't actually able to do the skill because whether it wasn't in the environment that they were going to have to perform, or whether they didn't actually develop that skill, in that moment they aren't able to do. Whether it's the job at hand, whether it's through a crisis, whether it's through a cybersecurity attack, whatever it might be that there is that missing link between kind of learning and work application, and so I think that's one of the primary ways that this has changed, as we will continue to see the rise of the behavioral or the skill application, or even skill demonstrability, the ability to demonstrate a skill, become even more important, both for the self but also for the organizations, in knowing what skills they have in their teams and in their organizations.
Speaker 2:You mentioned at the top of your answer there, sarah, the importance of getting together, and actually I was on your LinkedIn profile earlier on today as part of my homework and there was a post from a couple of months ago, as we record this today, where you're talking about exactly this how important it is to to get the team together, as many as the team together as possible uh, on a fairly regular basis. Why do you believe that? What does that add to company culture and what are the professional development benefits?
Speaker 3:Oh, love that question. I have been a remote employee for the last probably 10 years and let me be very clear I will never go back into an office full time. I think I am more productive, my family is better, I am better mentally and emotionally, having that flexibility to kind of do what I need. I think sometimes we forget that our, that our people are adults. I am against this, this culture of bringing everybody back into the office all of the time most regularly. That said, there are absolute productivity gains in having people together, whether it be live collaboration, whether it be just being able to peek around the table and ask a question instead of sending a Slack or sending a Teams and having it take time.
Speaker 3:I also think we as humans and it's part of the reason I'm involved so heavily philanthropically is we crave human connection.
Speaker 3:Not everyone right, and some people are introverts and need their own time to recover, so, again, with different types of brains, but I believe ultimately we crave human connection and it makes us better for it. It's a reason that our company strives, even though we're remote, to get together. Our leadership team gets together on a quarterly basis. Our executive leadership team gets together on a quarterly basis as well. I try to get my team together two times a year in person, because you just can't replace not only the work time that happens then, but also the camaraderie. You learn so much about a person in those moments, who they are, and I think it comes with empathy. When you have a shared experience and that happens in doing things both at work and not you're able to see that person in a different light, and I think it helps you show up knowing that most people are coming to most experiences with the best of intentions. So I could not believe that at least a little bit of in-time person is more important than anything.
Speaker 2:I am a big believer in getting together in person. I like you. Most of the time I'm working remotely, but there's a reason why I'm involved with producing 25 plus events for HR pros and leaders.
Speaker 2:A year because I'm a terrible extrovert. I love to get out there and shake hands and meet people and whatnot. Just a quick follow-up to that. Actually, my concern is when I started my career, I was in a physical location. I was learning from my peers, even just learning from osmosis, you know, listening to what's happening at the water cooler. That doesn't exist now for a lot of folks entering the workforce. How do we get around that?
Speaker 3:I think you have to take time to do those things in addition to the regular work hours. I'll give you a great example. It is the holiday season right now, so we're in a bit of a unique time. But one of the things the remote team here, and we have a remote and operations culture team, which I think is just crucial, and it actually reports directly into our CEO in a business function, showing how important culture and remote operations are to the team at Skillable. But one of the things that they're doing and that they do really regularly is plan fun non-work activities for everyone at work. So I'll give you an example we had a barbecue show earlier this week as part of the holidays.
Speaker 3:We're doing, of course, the typical virtual games and things like that.
Speaker 3:We had a making cocktails with the CEO or, excuse me, with our co-founder Corey, and, I think, making time for that water cooler chat and making it safe, whether it be finding time once a month to get together with your colleagues virtually, whether it be finding time as leaders to make that safe space.
Speaker 3:We have water cooler channels, we have interest channels inside and encouraging people to use them. Also, starting your meetings, I think, is an important way to. We so are driven by productivity in this day and age, but taking time at the top of your meetings to how was your weekend or one of them. My favorite activities is to start meetings with a moment of gratitude who's somebody that each of you went above and beyond for that you had a really exceptional experience this week to just start on both a positive note, but also something that might not necessarily be work related, and it helps us have a little bit of that water cooler chat while also getting to know our colleagues, and so I just think making time and setting that as a priority is one of the ways that we can do that.
Speaker 2:Very good, I agree with everything you said there. Okay, you've indulged me with some extra questions here. Our listeners like a pretty succinct episode of 20 to 25 minutes. The average episode at the moment listeners is 23 minutes. So really good, that's interesting. So, with all that said, I'm going to challenge you for the next question In 60 seconds or less. Why is scenario-based training essential to learning strategies?
Speaker 3:Scenario-based training is essential to learning strategies because we often don't develop the skills that we need through traditional methods of learning and I think our chat a little bit about what GenAI has brought and kind of how the world is pivoting exemplifies that it's one thing to take a course, it's one thing to get a completion certificate. It is an entirely different thing to be able to perform exactly what you need in the moment of need, for both you and for your organization. So those scenarios that replicate exactly what you are going to experience continue to be a really crucial method for kind of validating skills in that challenge centric way as we go forward. Hang on a minute. I was at 60 seconds.
Speaker 2:You had like 15 seconds to spare. Okay, let's do it again. Let's do it again. I'm going to challenge you again. Okay, In 60 seconds or less. How do validated skills feed into aspects of HR, talent and learning Go?
Speaker 3:Validated skills are a really important part of the skill based organization. Today, many organizations are moving to this skill based or skill first methodology, where we are making decisions about people's careers and all of these things based off of skills, which is an incredible, pivot right. Looking at people as a collection of skills, instead of their degree, instead of their job title, instead of the biases that we might be coming in on. It opens up so many possibilities for all of us. But without having high fidelity data around what those skills actually are and the associated skills, we don't actually have a true or authentic picture of what this person is capable of. So I think validating skills through these scenario-based or hands-on experiences becomes an incredibly important data point for what they can actually do.
Speaker 2:Oh, she's good listeners. She's very good, all right, all right, um, okay. So I mentioned earlier that, as part of my homework, I was all over your linkedin profile looking at your recent posts. In another recent linkedin post you wrote the following skillable wants to make it simple for organizations to build and deliver lab environments as part of their learning and training offerings. Sounds fantastic. The partnership between Skillable and Cornerstone on Demand is a key part of this, bringing labs and all of their benefits to the wider HCM and learning community. So, sarah, my question for you is if I need to make a case for hands-on labs to my stakeholders in learning, hr, the C-suite, et cetera. What should I focus on?
Speaker 3:Oh, I love that question. Cornerstone and a lot of the other content and training providers are a really important part of the scalable ecosystem, and it kind of speaks to the answer before that. We know that the LMS, the LXP content, are all important parts of delivery in terms of training and the overall experience, but it's just not enough to understand what people are actually capable of, and I think that's the case to be made. The case to be made for bringing in labs is getting people to actually perform the scenario that they will experience, and there's a variety of those things. Right, skillable is the holistic, hands-on provider which looks like everything from sandboxes to simulations, to actual custom labs based off of how someone would use it. And I'll give you an example An organization might want, let's say, terraform or Databricks, but the way that they use that skill is going to be different by organization to organization, and so you want to be sure that the way that the person is experiencing that skill or the subset of that skill or the specific action of that, sure that the way that the person is experiencing that skill or the subset of that skill or the specific action of that skill, is the way that it will be used in your organization, because no two organizations are going to define that or implement that in the same way.
Speaker 3:There are some things that are basic, like how to run a VLOOKUP in Excel, but then there are others that require a little bit of different scenarios. Same for I'll give you an example in cybersecurity, skillable runs, capture the flag activities. That's one of our capabilities. To actually defend against a live cyber attack. That's going to look different. No coder is going to be coming in and attacking the same way, and so what you want to do is kind of have depth and breadth in terms of how you solve those things, and the best way to do that is experience. We talk all the time about you get on a plane you're a traveler as well for all of your events, and if the captain came on and she said, hey, I'm really excited, welcome today, I'm glad to have you here, this is my first live hour you are getting off the plane, because that is the experience is such an important part of knowledge and retainment of information. So that would be the case is that you know really validating skills. True validation can only be done through behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd be straight off that plane. You know, when I'm not enjoying recording podcast episodes and we're we're approaching 800 episodes, I think, on the hr chat show, I'm never happier than when I'm doing a v lookup or a pivot table in an excel sheet. Actually just possibly very sad. I don't know, um, what one tip, sarah, would you offer to a learning or hr leader currently planning their 2025 strategy?
Speaker 3:oh, it's a good one.
Speaker 3:I would say leave room for experimentation and and I know that that's hard right, myself as an executive goodness knows it is very hard to leave dollars in a budget for the ability to experiment, but I think the truth is we can't predict the future. Gen AI became something that we experienced and all of a sudden had to somehow work into all facets of life almost overnight, and none of us planned for that. One of the things I leave in my budget is some dollars for exactly this the ability to work in whether it be training, whether it be a platform, whether it be an experience things that we can't account for for today. Inside of that, the other thing I will say is there are lots of niche technologies popping up all the time that have the ability to really transform the game. We sometimes get caught up with big providers or big vendors, but the reality is there are some incredible things that are happening at smaller scales that can really be transformative inside of organizations. So I would say leave room for experimentation, as hard as that is.
Speaker 2:Okay, very good, we are almost at the end of this particular conversation already, sarah. Just two more quick questions for you. We missed each other at Unleash this year. I covered it last year, but we've got a very small baby at the moment at home and I'm only allowed to go to a certain amount of events, so we didn't get to see each other there. But you guys, you go to all of the big conferences all over the place each year. Where can folks expect to see Skillable next year? Will you be at, for example, hr Tech? Will you be back at Unleash America? Will you be at SHRM? Tell us more.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I will be honest with you, bill, my event strategy has pivoted a little bit. Events are a really big part of the marketing strategy at Skillable. We love events. So, yes, you will see us add things like Unleash at Learning Technologies, the SHRM events, atd all of the amazing bedrock events inside of the learning and tech industry. But I'm also doubling down on one smaller proprietary events. One of the things that we have seen is that especially executives love to get together with their peers to ideate, to strategize, to talk about what's going on inside of the peer perspective. So we're investing in some of those smaller events. We are very blessed to be the lab provider and credential or certification provider for some major events around the globe, and so having a marketing presence at some of those events is also something that we will do. And then, last but not least, some smaller actual tech events DevOps, cisco Live, for example, where people are building those technical skills. We will also be at those events.
Speaker 3:So everywhere, basically yes that's the goal, right when you're building a brand.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I've forgotten about ATD. Of course. I love ATD. That's an awesome event. Okay, and just finally for today, how can folks connect with you? I bet you're super cool and you're all over the TikToks and the Instagrams, but, of course, LinkedIn. Maybe you might want to share your email. And how can folks learn more about Skillable?
Speaker 3:I so appreciate that opportunity. Yes, please, if any of you want to talk about hands-on learning, mental health, whatever it might be, ping me. These are my happy places, but you can find me on LinkedIn, sarah Danzel, and also from a Skillable perspective, just skillablecom. The other place to check is YouTube. I think right now, video is so important when we're able to describe and explain and really have that visual element of pieces. We just launched this super fun brand campaign called that's BS. Now, I'm not swearing on your show, bill. That's BS stands for Before Skillable, and what we've done is really have this campaign that looks at kind of some of the traditional methods for learning and, being really candid, calling out why some of them are not as effective or as efficient as possible. So I'd love for you all to check out that video, but we've got lots of good stuff on YouTube, youtube. You can find us on linkedin, skillablecom, and no matter. I look so forward to connecting with all of you and so appreciate the time bill and thank you for not swearing, sarah.
Speaker 2:I've had, uh, over these near 800 episodes, twice two episodes where folks sweared and we had to bleep them out, so I appreciate you not doing that today. Um well, that just leaves me to say for today Sarah, you're an absolute delight. I'd love to hear from you again soon, but thank you very much for being my guest today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me, Bill. I wish you all a wonderful day.
Speaker 2:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
