The Future of Learning at Work
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Allwyn Dsilva, VP HR & Global Head of L&D, Future of Work & Business HR at Tata Communications, to unpack why the future of learning must be built around business outcomes, skills, internal mobility, and AI-enabled career growth.
Allwyn shares how Tata Communications moved beyond disconnected learning platforms and traditional course libraries to build a more connected ecosystem, linking skills, career aspirations, hiring, learning, coaching conversations, and AI-powered recommendations into one joined-up employee experience.
Most importantly, he explains why learning teams must stop leading with the beauty of their programs and start proving behavior change, business impact, and real outcomes. From AI literacy and dark network operations to internal hiring, AI interview practice, and skills-based career pathways, this episode shows what it looks like when L&D becomes a true business engine.
🎓 In this episode, Allwyn discusses:
How AI can help employees prepare for future roles and interviews
Why learning teams must prove behavior change before selling design
Why skills-based platforms are changing internal mobility and career growth
How Tata Communications is building AI literacy across different roles and levels
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Its AI agents can interview employees, uncover talent gaps, create personalised learning, and deliver it directly through tools like SMS and MS Teams.
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With Arist, AI agents become a way to close skills gaps faster, improve performance, and help employees get the right learning before the business has already moved on.
[00:00]->[00:32]
Because of the academic pedagogy of learning professionals, there is a hunger to show the beauty of the design or the learning pathway or the learning
design.
And business doesn't want to appreciate your design.
Business wants to appreciate outcomes and behaviors if they can't if they can't they can't match with the outcomes and the behaviors they're not
going to listen to your design because that's very academic and that'll only impress impress a dean of or or a phd in that in a college
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it won't impress a business team
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Oh, and welcome to the show, my friend.
How you doing?
[00:53]->[00:54]
I'm doing great.
How are you doing, Chris?
[00:55]->[01:08]
I'm good.
I can't believe how far we are already into the year.
Yeah.
Time has just flown by.
I don't know if you get the same feeling this year.
It seems kind of just like a whirlwind.
[01:09]->[01:18]
Well, it's always been that way, right?
Every year starts with something new.
This year is not any different.
[01:18]->[01:43]
Yeah.
Do you feel like that?
I feel like though, like there's a, like we've always been through periods of, you know, change, just, you know, the VUCA world, right?
We talk about, but like, it feels like now more than ever, it's coming at us in every direction, right?
From a technology point of view, from an economic point of view, from like, you know, like,
I feel like there's a convergence of a lot that's coming at our leaders and our employees right now.
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True.
So that's right.
[01:45]->[01:46]
That's right.
[01:46]->[02:02]
And I know on one side we have AI changing technology and the other side we have, you know,
the entire struggle that's happening for oil all over the world and what it's leading to.
So you got to read a lot nowadays of all kinds of information.
[02:02]->[02:11]
Exactly.
Before we jump in, I want to take a step back and tell everyone a little bit more about you personally and your journey
to where we are today.
And then we'll jump in.
[02:12]->[02:43]
Sure.
So, you know, I am born and brought up in Mumbai.
It's a city in India.
It's called the commercial capital of India for good reasons.
All the dollars are made here in the Indian equivalent.
I've been lucky to have been born and brought up in a family that really believed in learning.
And, you know, my parents invested in me every rupee that they could invest.
They hoped that I would be a software developer.
[02:44]->[03:18]
I couldn't make that dream come true.
And I come from a modest Christian family, God fearing.
And when it comes to my personal life today, you know, I am married, I have two kids.
They are my world, including my wife.
And, you know, I had a passion for being on stage.
And that is something I realized when I was in school, when somewhere midway through my mid-school,
[03:18]->[03:48]
I realized that I couldn't get all the aces in my maths and my science.
But there wasn't an elocution competition that I never won.
There was nobody who could beat me at that.
And I didn't know what kind of a job I'm going to pick up after that.
But here we go.
I did software development and I was freshly out of software.
And I picked up technical support as a career to start with.
And because I was good at communicating, I did well.
And I became a contact center head.
[03:49]->[04:22]
When I was 24, I think I was the youngest contact center head in the data group and managing a team of 300 plus.
And then I realized that everybody comes to me for one subject all the time, and that is learning.
So if my passion is learning and I have to spend my entire career doing something that I love to do,
I need to go to a function where learning exists.
So I wrote an article which says I can't be a doctor in the mill.
It's like a doctor in the mill can only forever remain a doctor.
[04:23]->[04:44]
But if a doctor is in a hospital, he might be, who knows, who could own a few hospitals for himself.
And that's why I left all the pleasure of a large function and all of that.
And I joined HR and I didn't get learning, by the way.
I got employee engagement.
I got all sorts of HR jobs to do.
And finally, one day I got what I love to do, learning.
[04:44]->[04:48]
And yeah, I'm happy and I live my dream.
[04:48]->[05:06]
And my boss tells me that you've lived this dream, you need to have a new dream.
But, you know, being the chief learning officer of the organization, heading learning was my dream and I live it.
And that's very close to my heart.
Every day when I wake up, I'm really excited about what I do in the organization.
[05:06]->[05:22]
Yeah i suppose um we we don't know it at the time but all of those roles that you've probably had is what helped
shape and prepare you for this role right absolutely absolutely i think i think one important thing for all hr professionals is that
[05:23]->[05:54]
If they start their career only in HR, they have some level of knowledge of business.
But if you start your career in business and then you go to HR, like you gave the example of the L'Oreal CHRO,
I have a very strong hold of the business.
That's what separates me from some of my other HR colleagues and I don't say that I'm the best.
But I have a strong hold of the business because I've been in the business.
I've done many roles in the business.
And then I went to HR.
So if I need to take a whiteboard and I need to explain a product, I can do that.
[05:55]->[06:24]
If I need to explain our undersea cable, I can do that.
And I can choose how deep in terms of the understanding of business do I have.
That allows me to design learning interventions which they can connect with.
They can see a connection between the design.
They can see a connection between the program.
Otherwise it's all about arranging very nice sessions, right?
A lot of topics are covered and that's not the intent.
So yeah.
[06:24]->[06:56]
And that makes sense, right?
Because we spoke before we hit record that one of the issues for learning has always been the ROI of learning and connecting it
to the business.
That's always been a challenge.
But the fact that you came with the business lens first,
And then I'm sure reversed and designed your L&D function around the business and the systems and the tools from almost like the reverse
of how learning functions typically build.
They kind of do it the other way around and then figure out, okay, how do we now serve the business?
[06:56]->[07:27]
You just kind of reversed engineered that.
But I think what's also exciting based on what I know about you and what you shared is that
Being in the learning function right now i think more than ever you're also having to constantly learn yourself and absolutely on risk as well
so not only you serving all of your employees and your customers but you personally are having to constantly change and adapt do you
think that's something that's also kept you really engaged well absolutely you know um
[07:29]->[08:03]
I was tasked with a goal last year, which was we need to make the organization AI literate.
They all need to have AI literacy.
They need to be AI literates.
And then I said, okay, that sounds cool, but AI literacy means different things for different people, right?
The literacy required at a CXO level is very different from the literacy required at a DevOps engineer.
So, you know, I had to learn myself.
I had to learn a lot.
And it was not just about knowing, you know, LLMs and agentic apps, but I had to go much deeper.
[08:04]->[08:38]
And I could not recommend a course before doing it myself.
So I had to do a lot of learning and not just AI.
I mean, we need to keep learning all the time.
But my heart and soul is very strongly connected to the Kirkpatrick framework of learning where everything starts with results, right?
You first define results.
What results do we wish to achieve?
And that's the question I had asked my leaders, what do you want to achieve after doing AI?
And they said, we need 10 AI use cases that have bankable benefits.
[08:39]->[09:11]
Okay, you begin from there.
Once you have that very clear, the next thing,
what behaviors that people need to then practice or act out every day for which I need to develop skills and then eventually I
need to design a program.
So that's how I look at learning.
And I do not design anything until I don't know exactly what results you're looking for or if you are not able to define
what's the problem that you're trying to solve.
[09:11]->[09:21]
Because some people really don't know what they're trying to solve for.
And learning is not the solution for every problem.
So that's the way I go about it, Chris.
[09:22]->[09:58]
No, I love that.
I think over the years of doing these interviews, I've seen so many companies spend years, quite frankly,
You know, chasing the new technology, the new platforms, the new solutions.
And it's kind of like a, you know, you can't see a target.
You can't hit a target that you can't see, right?
So if you're not starting with the why and the problem you're solving, then you're just going to be constantly caught in the...
Right now for example the ai hype we saw loads of companies last year make huge investments in technology and tools and now they're
[09:59]->[10:23]
kind of unwinding all of that because it didn't start with what are we actually solving for and does that require ai right for like
you know because a lot of it doesn't require ai for example could you share with um everyone like give me a concrete
Example of one of those areas that you like, you talk about AI literacy, but give me an example specifically that you,
where you identify the business problem.
[10:23]->[10:54]
Okay.
Let's take this example because, uh, okay.
It's a telecom example, but I'll try and simplify it as much as I can.
Uh, we want to make sure that the, the, uh,
We have a concept called the dark knock.
It's called the dark knock.
And I want you to imagine a knock, a network operation center.
Imagine of any large tech company.
It's a lot of engineers, huge screens.
That's how a network operation center is.
And I want you for a moment to think the lights are switched off.
[10:54]->[11:30]
What's going to happen?
It's going to go dark, right?
That's a dark knock.
Just to give you a connector as to what I'm going to now speak.
Is everything that happens in the network operation center or a service operation center need not be done by humans, right?
Now AI is capable of reading logs from equipments, picking up errors, picking up the frequencies and picking up data points from the system,
identifying a problem, raising a trouble ticket, informing a customer,
[11:31]->[12:04]
Trying to heal the problem, trying to troubleshoot, and all of this, whichever point it is able to do on its own,
after which it hands it over to a human being.
And all of this has already happened.
And if I, for a moment, don't have a dark log and I switch the lights on, all
of this has to be done by humans.
You go, you check the logs, you log into the equipment, you log into the network, you check for things, you start troubleshooting,
you look at your list of things to do, you run the command, you try to replicate the error, right?
[12:05]->[12:36]
So using AI, we had to develop an entire framework of agents and agentic AIs that could actually do this.
We've been able to now simulate this and achieve this for our interaction business.
And we're very excited about what potential it holds.
And it allows the engineers now to rather than doing the basic stuff of finding the problem, but focusing on
[12:36]->[13:12]
What are the implications of this problem on the other customers?
What can I do to avoid that this problem is managed in a planned maintenance rather than an unplanned outage?
How can I help give the customer a stronger root cause analysis?
So now the quality and the quality of work of the engineers is going to go to the next level because they're not going
to do the transactional work.
So this is one example of how, you know, a use case came alive.
And I'm able to talk to you with such detail because when we were looking at this,
[13:12]->[13:44]
we had to imagine what the future role will look like, right?
And when we had to imagine the future role, a role which doesn't exist,
like what will Chris's role look like 20 years from now, 10 years from now?
Will he be actually sitting in this, you know, on Zoom and doing it?
We don't know.
And when you're trying to do this, you know, you really need platforms, right?
So we built, we have built two platforms.
One is called the Talent Central and the other is called the Tata Communications Learning Academy.
And on the platforms, we've taken all our roles, okay?
[13:45]->[14:15]
And we have enabled an AIJD enhancement that can allow you to
To at best be able to see what is the intermediate impact of AI on all the jobs in our organization.
And then you wet it with human intervention.
Do you agree?
Do you see this?
And then we also try and create a North Star role for that role in the future.
Which is very visionary, but again, it's human vetted.
[14:15]->[14:46]
Obviously, human intervention and knowledge has only that much information, but we've built this platform.
And on this platform, anybody, all our employees can go there.
They can log in.
Everybody who logs in, they can choose, do I want to grow vertically or do I want to grow horizontally?
You can choose a career path.
And the moment you do that, it immediately tells you what are the gaps.
What are the gaps to getting there?
Okay, I know the gaps and now I don't agree with this gap.
[14:46]->[15:18]
I agree with this gap.
I agree with these three gaps because I know myself better than AI.
Okay, great.
These gaps, they go directly into my next platform, which is Data Communications Learning Academy.
And when you come to work the next day, it starts recommending content for the job that you're aspiring for.
So that's how we created a domain AI-based platform and only startups work in this space, right?
You know, people who are very established, they don't work in this space.
So we work with startups and they are the ones who entertain such visionary ideas.
[15:19]->[15:52]
And Chris, all of this was inspired by our ex-CHRO and his dream was to create LearnFlix.
He was inspired with Netflix.
And his inspiration was, why can't we have Learnflix?
When I log in, I can choose a variety of entertainment to watch.
Why can't I have a variety of content?
Why doesn't it understand me and recommend content to learn?
Why doesn't it see my peers and give me content to learn?
Why doesn't it understand my next career move, give me content to learn?
[15:52]->[16:22]
So that was the inspiration.
And today we have this domain AI-based platform for which we won Brandon Hall's for it back to back two years in a row.
And for the AI initiative that I told you that we've done, and for our Service Assurance Academy,
we won the Kirkpatrick Award this year, which is the most recent award we've won on implementing
And achieving business outcomes with the learning intervention.
[16:23]->[16:25]
So that's how we enable it, Chris.
[16:26]->[16:57]
It's a domain AI-based platform.
Now I've got like a thousand questions.
Shoot them, shoot them.
Yeah.
Why do I even start?
There's so much to say.
So those two platforms that you built, are they something you built with partners?
And can you share who those partners are or you can't share those partners?
Because I know everyone listening right now is going to be asking that question.
I can hear it.
Right now, like who did you work on with those two platforms?
[16:58]->[17:31]
So let me tell you, I mean, when I had to build this platform, I got no money and no partner.
I had to build it in SharePoint first myself.
Okay.
And I built it on SharePoint and I had to prove, you know,
minimal viable product to my CHRO so that he gives me the money to invest in these platforms.
Then I had to go and look for partners who are ready to do something like that.
You know, and I won't take names of people who didn't participate, but we worked with Degree to build our LXP, Learning Experience Platform.
[17:31]->[18:12]
And I would give them due credit for the work they did with us.
And they honored our partnership and our work, not just mine.
I mean, all of my leaders who worked with me, they've given us the Degree to Visionary Award, which we won last year.
Uh and we build the tata communication learning academy that's our learning experience platform and for our talent management platform we work with an organization
called spire.ai okay
Uh and uh spy.ai uh you know was very generous to try all our crazy ideas and you know invest invest in building them
[18:13]->[18:46]
uh today they they definitely take the benefit of taking it to many other customers and uh there was a third leg chris which
got which took birth because we work with these partners right because it wasn't just enough to know your career and learn right
If it doesn't translate into you getting a job, getting an opportunity, what's the use, right?
What's the use of me knowing what I want to do, learning for it, but I can't get it, right?
So we were able to add the third pillar, which was the recruitment pillar, which is the hiring pillar.
[18:48]->[19:20]
So what happens today is, I mean, in many companies today, still people go, there is a job request.
And after the job request, the talent acquisition specialist books time with you and asks, Chris,
what kind of a person are you looking for?
What skills?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then after a few days, sends you a few resumes and then says, Chris, are these resumes making sense?
And then you say, no, one of them makes sense.
And then you get better resumes.
So we moved on from all that.
The moment you raise a JR, you raise a job request,
[19:21]->[19:53]
immediately the system tells you all the candidates within the organization whom you can look at hiring.
So you can look at talent and we are okay with
Managers being able to see talent available in the company because talent doesn't belong to a manager it belongs to the company love it
right so that's how it is and you can see it secondly all of the people who tried for applying for jobs or uploaded
their cvs in our job database it immediately pops up those resumes you don't have to wait for a talent acquisition specialist to spare
[19:53]->[20:26]
you know spend time with you you could start seeing resumes immediately you could start even saying i'd like to interview this person
And no talent acquisition person has met you, everything has happened instantly.
Now what this also did was, because you start seeing people who are internally ready, and more often than not,
people who are internally ready, they know the context of the business, they understand the organization, the systems, the processes,
There is a higher pull to hire talent from within because the acclimatization is not a problem.
[20:27]->[20:58]
And if the skill is there, and you know, I'm sure the whole world believes in that if you hire people, if they're 60,
70% ready and have the right attitude, you can always train them, right?
So the big success for us, I'm not going to talk about learning success.
I'm going to talk about 65% of our open positions in our company were hired internally.
And we didn't have to force people.
We simply had to be able to project that these people are available.
In the past, there was no such system.
We empowered them, right?
[20:58]->[21:19]
We empowered them.
Yeah.
In the past, they couldn't even...
I mean, as a manager in my previous roles,
the fact that I could take charge of that myself without having to wait for the recruiting team or the HR team,
and I could go and look and see.
And that's very empowering.
And that was an ATS that you worked with as well or something you built internally?
[21:19]->[21:24]
No, that's something that was built by Spire in their platform.
Oh, I see.
[21:24]->[21:27]
And we leveraged it.
Okay, so that's part of Spire.
Okay.
[21:28]->[22:00]
That's how they built on our vision, right?
And it doesn't stop there, Chris.
The most recent thing that we did is when you apply for a job in the company, you apply for a job,
it immediately says, Alvin, would you like to...
Do an AI interview round with the persona of the person, the hiring manager, and the job that you're applying for.
And you could just give an AI interview.
With the AI keeping in mind the persona of the hiring manager, that's going to be interviewing you.
[22:01]->[22:32]
And you can get some inputs on how well you're doing in an AI interview.
Obviously, the AI interview is not going to be as equal to the real person taking the interview.
But it at least prepares you and lets you know where do you stand.
Maybe you can prepare better.
It tells you which topics you don't seem to have a hold on.
You need to speak slower.
You need to articulate better.
You need to focus on
And you know, AI is able to do that.
So I think that was also a game changer, because we're seeing a lot of people after they apply jobs, they're like, wow,
[22:33]->[23:04]
I can practice right now?
And they are practicing.
And when they go after the practice and we try to check with them, did it make a difference?
It did, you know, because at least 20, 30% of the questions
What AI asked me is what the hiring manager asked me.
So it was like interesting.
And for me, it was very useful because as a learning person, when they do that and when they are taking this AI interview,
I get to know where they are struggling and then I can give them the relevant learning so that they can actually get their
[23:04]->[23:35]
aspired job.
And for me, success is, we call them aspired roles.
So every time you apply for a job or you identify a future job,
Every aspiration that I bring to life is a proud moment for me.
Because what's the use of learning if people aren't achieving their aspirations?
And you asked me, right, I've spent 26 years in, I told you I spent 26 years.
It's because every time I had an aspiration in this organization and I thought I should look outside, that aspiration came true here.
[23:36]->[24:03]
And if I wouldn't have grown in this organization,
I started right at the bottom of the pyramid when you start after you're out of college, right?
And today I am a CX on the organization.
It wouldn't have happened if aspiration wouldn't come true.
But technology can help you.
But the culture of the organization already was one of allowing and enabling aspirations.
So technology only enabled that culture.
[24:03]->[24:33]
But in our organization, we have that as a culture on enabling aspirations.
I'm happy you mentioned that because that was something in the back of my mind.
Because if you added this tech stack to a company that wasn't prepared culturally and that it would be a disaster because you would
have, for example, leaders or managers that are talent hoarders rather than talent exporters.
And that would become very uncomfortable that now my talent is up for grabs in a way.
But again, I don't own the talent.
The organization owns that.
[24:33]->[24:56]
That's a big mindset and cultural shift.
That companies embed these technologies and don't really pay attention to.
And it can become a disaster by doing that.
Did you have to do any work with your leaders and managers to coach them on that journey?
Because that is a very radical, different way of working, especially for such a large organization.
[24:56]->[25:34]
Honestly, Chris, it wasn't a challenge for us because in the Tata group and not just Tata communication, but in the Tata group,
we definitely see talent not just for any part of the company, but even we see talent as part of the Tata group.
And we allow our talent to move across the entire Tata group space that's available.
There will always be a certain percentage of managers who want to hoard their talent.
But you know uh you can vote talent when talent doesn't have opportunity when talent has opportunity how will you hold them right the problem
[25:34]->[25:48]
is when talent doesn't have opportunity yeah and when you make opportunities available to talent right and and there is there there is that innate
Culture that we want to grow leaders from within.
Even if you want to hoard them, you can't hoard them.
[25:48]->[26:00]
They'll leave anyway.
Yeah, they'll leave the business.
So you'd rather have them.
I suppose you are a perfect example of this, your career.
How long have you been again?
Remind me how long you've been in the business.
[26:01]->[26:34]
I've been in this business for 24 years and two years in Tata Internet, but it's all Tata Group companies and telecom.
Even I at times felt I should explore outside.
Because people are telling me, you can't work in the same company all your life.
It just doesn't make sense.
And then I tell them, I've not done the same role for more than two years.
I'm not doing the same thing for 26 years.
I'm doing 14 to 15 roles in the last 26 years.
[26:35]->[27:05]
I mean, who gets to do that?
I mean, I don't feel I'm doing the same thing.
Obviously, if I was doing the same thing, which I started, and I was just in that role and that scope,
I i i would have i would have fatigued in our left long back but uh i think i think the more you get
to do new things and you get to grow if you don't get to grow you go right so i i'm and and i
believe we need to help our employees to grow because if you don't have them grow they will go
[27:06]->[27:07]
I've never heard that before.
[27:07]->[27:40]
If they don't grow, they'll go.
That's so true.
Yeah.
How have you made one of the big frustrations?
I've been speaking with many CLOs and heads of learning over the last couple, I mean, for years,
but mainly in the last couple of months, that one of their big frustrations they share with me,
and I'd love to understand how you solve this or solving,
is that a lot of these systems are disconnected and it has a real impact on the employee experience.
So if you think about your talent marketplace, you think about your academy, your HRIS, your agents, your LLMs.
[27:41]->[28:15]
In many organizations, it's fragmented.
So I have to go over here to the talent marketplace.
That's disconnected from my learning.
I have to go over here if I want to take a course or some learning.
And if I want to get a new role, I've got to go over here.
And if I want to interact with my agent, my agent is disconnected to all of that.
And I just go over here.
You end up having five or six different systems.
The data doesn't, you know, connect across all and it creates a terrible employee experience.
So I'd love to understand how you've approached that.
[28:16]->[28:46]
Yeah.
So we were not any different, just like any other company.
We also had A separate system for HRIS and where you can do your mandatory courses.
We had a Coursera, we had a LinkedIn.
You got to log into Coursera, you got to log into LinkedIn.
And then, hey, you want to look at your career?
There's a different website.
You go here for your career.
Obviously, they were all disjointed and everybody starts disjointed.
And therefore, before giving me any money, I was asked to prove on a MVP.
[28:47]->[29:19]
And on a SharePoint, I was able to put it all together.
And then I worked on these partners.
So I still have two platforms.
I don't have many.
I just have two now.
One is my platform from DeGreed for Learning.
And I have the other platform, which is from Spire, which has my entire talent management suite.
It has my hiring suite.
My entire hiring system sits there.
And between the two of them, right, right from buying talent, which is hiring and building talent,
[29:20]->[29:57]
all of that happens in one seamless way.
So you have two platforms, but they are jointed and married with skills.
They work on skills, right?
They don't work on competencies we work on skills we soon realize that competency managing competence is going to be way more difficult in the long
run with with so much change happening yeah you've seen you can't do that right and it takes months with a consultant to do
the competencies once again so we always always always believed in skills because you need skills in a different flavor in a different role
[29:57]->[30:32]
and therefore we we built our platforms on skills
So when you're looking for a talent to hire, it's based on skills.
When you're looking for a career and you're looking for the next career move, it talks about skills.
When you're learning or you're looking at a learning program,
And now in our learning LXP platform, which is TCLA packed by degree, I have a lot of platforms underneath.
I have LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, I mean, the academy, the likes of the world, but nobody gets to see them or worry about them.
You can access it from my interface of the learning experience platform, which is my academy.
[30:33]->[31:04]
And all my career platform and all my hiring happens on my talent central platform.
And they both are domain AI platforms, right?
They have AI not at an API level or at a scripting level.
They are domain AI-built platforms.
And how do you read it is that they are able to learn on an ongoing basis at the domain level,
which means every time you raise a job request, you sometimes change the skills.
[31:05]->[31:40]
And when different people raise job requests for the same kind of a job, they change skills.
The domain AI keeps learning.
And then the same thing happens with learning.
When you're creating your learning experience,
Different managers have different needs of those skills.
Different skills come together.
It keeps learning.
And all of this knowledge for us, you know, comes together for being able to build a strong skills taxonomy, which is very relevant.
And we keep testing it with human review at each time.
[31:40]->[32:11]
And it's very easy to do it.
You know what?
There will be some attrition.
Somebody is going to come and raise a job request.
And that's where we get affirmation that skills are correct.
If the domain AI is working properly.
So that's how we get the chance to validate what the AI is building in the background.
That's how we simplified it.
I still have two platforms.
I have a lot of platforms in the underlay,
but my overlay is very clearly the Tata Communication Learning Academy and my Talent Center platform.
[32:12]->[32:45]
No, thank you for laying that out.
So you spoke about the underlying, right?
You've got the platform, the two platforms.
What about the layer on top?
Because that's also an area which companies are missing in terms of the communication layer so that learning is embedded in the flow of work.
And, you know, because in the past, learning was something you had to go to as opposed to learning in the moment of need
or in the flow of work.
Is that something you've worked on as well?
How do we embed learning into work itself, if that makes sense?
[32:46]->[33:19]
That's the topic that I really need to be able to do something awesome this year.
I have an idea.
I'll place that idea.
But some work we've done, definitely.
One successful implementation of that I will share.
We don't have a yearly appraisal format.
We have a quarterly coaching conversation where the manager and the employee discuss about the KPIs
And the rest half of the conversation, they discuss about my career, the career of the employee.
[33:19]->[33:51]
What do you need to develop?
What do you need to skill?
What's next for you?
What do you need to be able to do in the next six months, one year, et cetera?
Now, all of that was happening offline, right, Chris?
So we bought it inside Microsoft Teams, okay?
So what we did was we integrated the coaching conversations, which are inherently built
Within SuccessFactors, which is our platform that we were using, and we embedded it into the Microsoft Teams app ecosystem.
[33:52]->[34:12]
So now what happens is when you schedule a coaching conversation, the AI switches on and it goes and sends a calendar invite.
You start the conversation in Microsoft Teams, and as the conversation is happening,
It helps capture what are the learning needs.
It helps the manager after the coaching conversation.
[34:12]->[34:15]
It's transcribing the conversation.
It's transcribing, exactly.
[34:15]->[34:52]
It's transcribing the conversation.
So it helps the manager become a better coach.
You know, you should have listened to more of that feedback.
And for the employee, it tells the employee, you know, you could have done ABC things better.
And you know what?
These are the skills that emerge in the conversation.
And now i think you should go and learn these these skills on our learning academy love it so exactly so i i've been
able to embed and i and the leaders of target communication be able to embed learning in the flow of work at least on the four
crucial coaching conversations you know what's my dream chris my dream is that and and no one has been able to do it for me
[34:52]->[35:23]
yet Is we use Copilot currently as one of the GPT interfaces.
I would love that the number of Copilot queries in a day are growing per user at enormous rate, right?
I was looking for a partner who could basis the query and basis the search that the person is doing,
not just give the information, but also says, you know what, you want to learn this as a skill?
[35:23]->[35:43]
Click here and it takes you to the learning platform and allows you to learn.
So while you got your just-in-time information and whatever GPD could do, but it could take you to, you
want to do a deep dive on this?
Let me take you to the learning platform.
And I haven't found that startup who can build that for me.
And I'm working on it, Chris.
[35:43]->[35:48]
I'm working on it.
Well, we have to have a conversation offline now because I've built that.
[35:49]->[35:50]
Oh, wow.
[35:50]->[36:20]
That's amazing.
So my co-founder, Guillermo, is the former chief learning officer for IBM and Boeing.
So about two years ago, we went on this journey because that was our dream, what you just spoke about.
And then we partnered with the chief learning officers of L'Oreal, Kindrel, Prudential, Mastercard.
We all invested to build it together.
So this is not just me and my baby.
[36:20]->[36:52]
It's all of your peers and others that we built.
Atlas Copilot is the name of the business.
I wish I was there.
Yeah, on the journey.
And we already have that right now in our customers, like Netflix, like HelloFresh.
It's embedded directly into Teams.
It does exactly what you described.
But it also builds the entire learning pathway in real time.
Wow.
And it's always on in the back end, listening and understanding what those challenges are.
And it brings that information back to our platform.
[36:52]->[37:29]
It builds the learning pathways and sends it straight back to them in real time.
Oh my God, my North Star is your South Star.
And then for the coaching conversations, both the manager and the employee have coaching conversations directly inside of Atlas with the AI voice assistant.
And then off the back of that, it builds the learning pathway for both the manager and for the employee.
Uh yeah for example so uh we've embedded it in slack into teams um into any into existing agents so um service now agents
[37:29]->[38:01]
for example wherever work whatever communication layer companies use
But the most important thing is it has the needs analysis element.
So it's constantly going out to, imagine if you had a sales population, right?
Which is a big use case for us.
It will go out to the entire sales population directly through Teams, have a conversation with them to understand their key challenges,
bring that back to you and the team in the dashboard, show you where the gaps are for that team,
automatically build the content and then send the learning pathway straight back.
[38:01]->[38:33]
To those within within hours like a dream yeah so anyway i'll show you that after but it's it's it's kind of like um
i obviously through these conversations over the last 10 years this is constantly being something that you know has been a big challenge uh
because even now within the traditional lxps you know it's still an ai recommendation
It's a recommendation.
It doesn't know you, Chris Rainey, my role, my responsibilities, my personal challenges, what keeps me up at night.
[38:34]->[39:05]
It doesn't know that context, whereas we capture all of that context through the communication layer, to your point,
to be able to gather and multiple other sources to bring that in as well.
So we sit on top of the LXP.
And connect all of the different platforms that you mentioned because that layer was always missing as well.
What would you say is like, I won't go into detail on that because I'll talk to you another time,
but what would you say is a big, many companies are just starting this journey you're describing.
[39:05]->[39:16]
So you are quite ahead of the curve.
What advice, what was the biggest challenge let's say that you face and that you can maybe continue to face and what advice would
you give to people listening?
[39:17]->[39:49]
See uh the biggest challenge i faced was you know uh you know was to get investment right in the idea and uh i
had to learn the hard way that you have to build a minimum minimal viable product and i think if you build something and if
you're able to showcase that it can work and that is where you get the investment
And when it comes to business uh and in if in the initial stages of this i think i've learned that you need to proactively
[39:50]->[40:24]
without being asked repeatedly keep sharing the business outcomes that are being generated by the learning intervention because you know that's something they're eventually
going to ask you and if you are proactive to talk about them first and then talk about the program and then talk about
the design and then talk about everything else
I think that's what they really want to know.
But because of the academic pedagogy of learning professionals,
there is a hunger to show the beauty of the design or the learning pathway or the learning design.
[40:25]->[40:47]
And business doesn't want to appreciate your design.
Business wants to appreciate outcomes and behaviors.
If they can't match with the outcomes and the behaviors,
they're not going to listen to your design because that's very academic and that'll only impress a dean or a PhD in a college.
It won't impress a business leader.
[40:47]->[41:22]
Yeah.
Man, listen, we were supposed to have a 30 minute podcast and it's been one hour.
I could talk to you forever.
So I have like a million more questions.
But I do want to say firstly, congratulations to you and the team.
And I know it's a journey, not a destination.
So this is, you know, this doesn't end here.
But what an incredible job that you guys have done so far.
I'm excited.
I mean, I wish I had to connect with you offline because I want to learn more.
Uh about what you're doing um as well looking back um on the journey again for everyone listening is anything uh you would have
[41:22]->[41:30]
done differently now you know what you know uh that you could share with everyone oh i mean uh if i could go back
[41:31]->[42:03]
and you know uh do everything again um i i would do it do it differently for sure i think i think sometimes procrastinating
whether my idea Will make sense you know that that is something uh you know keeping the idea to myself and asking myself and you know uh
you know trusting whether this is good enough to be pitched uh you know that's something i wouldn't do if i have to relive
i'll go and i'll be wild about my ideas you know i'll be bold about my ideas uh i i think i think that's
[42:03]->[42:34]
something i would do differently uh and the other thing is you know uh i learned uh through experience that
You know you can only achieve so much if you do things on your own but if you if you take people along uh
if you are vulnerable to tell i am struggling at something yes uh you know uh you can i would have done many things
faster so i think somewhere you know there are things that i kept to myself and i thought i will build it
I'll code it.
[42:34]->[43:00]
I will work with this.
I think that I, when it becomes V and I think that I would have changed that I would have involved many other people
very quickly and maybe I could have scaled things much faster.
So I think those are two things I would go back and change.
I wouldn't be worried about, you know, who gets credit, you know, because, you know,
I think sometimes the me sometimes takes over the V, right?
I think, I think, I think that's, that's the only thing I would have, I would go back and change.
[43:00]->[43:26]
For everyone watching right now, the link will be in the description wherever you're listening and watching to connect with Alwyn on LinkedIn.
I also follow you there.
I know you post quite often.
So definitely connect with Alwyn on there.
You're going to get a lot of messages.
So don't blame me.
I'm just saying that right now because you're going to be like, what's happened to my LinkedIn inbox?
And I really appreciate it.
I'm glad we finally made this happen.
And I look forward to chatting to you again soon.
I appreciate you.
[43:27]->[43:35]
Same here, Chris.
Look forward to connecting with you offline and understanding that amazing stuff that you've built.
Because my North Star seems to be your South Star.
Appreciate it.
Allwyn Dsilva, VP HR & Global Head of L&D, Future of Work & Business HR at Tata Communications.