Democratizing L&D at Thoughtworks

Michelle Jewell, Head of Learning & Development, and First Year Experience at Thoughtworks shares her experience partnering with ExecOnline

Michelle Jewell, Head of Learning & Development, and First Year Experience, Thoughtworks

I know other folks have mentioned this idea of the broad content library. I think that’s been the most impactful to help us really enable that democratization.

We started the year with two really specific needs for two very different populations. And with that content library, I was able to work with the ExecOnline team to craft two different leadership development journeys that really catered to the needs those specific leaders had.

One team was our delivery principals who are out in the front lines – working with our client teams. And the other focus was actually talent leaders on the operation side of the business.

We have two very different journeys all through AEP (Applied Experience Platform), which is just so valuable. And so we’ve definitely taken a more personalized approach trying to tie the content from the library really specifically to what folks need, but at the same time we’ve taken some of those courses, like after the year we’ve had, we’re talking a lot about managing burnout.

So we took the building resilience and preventing burnout course and offered it very broadly across the organization. And we’ll continue to do so with really thematic tied courses so that we can bring people and help focus them.

If you’ve got 10 hours to give me this quarter for leadership development, let me help guide you to the best content that’s going to serve your needs. So I really come back to that expansive and ever growing library.

I think every conversation I have with the ExecOnline team, they’re like, here’s some of the stuff coming up soon, and it’s all really relevant and really valuable to us.