In this episode of Learning Matters, host Doug Wooldridge sits down with Regina Dunning, US VP of Learning and Organizational Development at SThree, to explore what it takes to build an L&D strategy that truly drives business results.

Regina shares her journey from accidental trainer to strategic learning leader and offers real-world insights into aligning learning with business goals, measuring impact, supporting leadership development, and integrating AI into onboarding programs. If you’re looking for practical tips on showing ROI, building leadership capacity, or embracing skills-based talent management, this conversation is for you.

🎯 Topics Covered:

• Aligning L&D with business strategy

• Measuring performance and ROI

• Leadership development challenges and solutions

• Skills-based talent management

• AI in onboarding and training

• Navigating hybrid and virtual learning environments

📍 Learn more about Regina Dunning on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginadunning/

At ttcInnovations, we help businesses create lasting change with immersive learning experiences. Through instructional strategy, design, and content development we empower employee confidence, performance, and results.

💡 Looking for custom learning experiences without licensing fees? Contact us for a free consultation! https://bit.ly/4aOhPKq

🤝 Need extra hands fast? Try staff augmentation! Click here to get matched with experts in 48 hours - no job posting needed. https://bit.ly/3RiEfLT

🚀 Simplify outsourcing with our subscription plans - predictable pricing and limitless innovation. Book a meeting for your free first week! https://bit.ly/3RiEfLT

🎯 Boost results with serious games for optimal retention and results. Contact our Sales team to learn more: https://bit.ly/3RiEfLT

Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host, and I'm very excited to be speaking with our guest today. She has over 12 years of experience shaping transformative training programs and leadership development strategies. In a previous role, she established the professional development department and launched a company-wide mentorship program. In her current role, she partners with executive leadership to design and implement a global L &D strategy.

and she's US VP learning and organizational development at S3. Regina Dunning, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

It's all my pleasure. As always, we'll be discussing the latest and greatest developments in the world of L and D. I'd like to start off with this, Regina. What strategy do you think matters most in learning and development today?

Yes, that's a great question. I really think it is critical for learning and development to make sure that they are aligning directly to the organization's business objectives and overarching strategy. I don't think it's enough anymore to be able to just do a delivering of engaging content or standalone programs. For me, if you want to drive real impact, you need to be a strategic partner.

You need to be able to fuel performance, productivity, innovation. And if you can do that, that's really where you become a catalyst for growth for the organization, not just a support function.

I love it. Where's the starting point for that?

It's truly getting involved right from the get-go, making sure that you are understanding what is the organization's strategy and being involved in it, really helping to shape that, and then making sure that that cascade happens all the way down and that there's truly clarity in all of those levels, all the way down to your function, so that it feels like there's this nice thread that's kind of running throughout each of those layers.

Yeah

And has that always been the case or have you had to adapt your mindset over time? Or was there like an aha moment that maybe led you to this?

So it's interesting. I'm what I like to call an accidental trainer. So I actually came from the business. I was a subject matter expert, turned trainer, turned learning professional. So for me, growing up in the business, focused on revenue, quite frankly, and then having to learn how to build an L &D function, I always was co-creating L &D strategies with business leaders.

So I think it comes a bit more naturally for me just because that was always my mindset. So I don't know if there was necessarily an aha moment for me, but now as I'm in it a bit more, I've got this thirst for continuing to refine and improve in this area, because it's not easy. It's not an easy task. And I still think like, I can get better at this. We can get better at this.

So yeah, it wasn't an aha moment. I think it was maybe more natural for me just growing up in the business and on the revenue side of things. But there's always room for improvement. So I have a continued thirst for it.

Definitely. And I know folks are always looking to showcase ROI to their organizations, especially when it comes to L and D. How do you showcase the importance of training, not just to like the C-suite folks, but to learners who tend to have very little extra time during their workday.

if you can help successfully drive performance through skill development, that's one of the best ways to be able to do that. you're looking at, right, what is performance actually mean? And how does that relate to skill development? And how can we kind of tie those together? Then what ends up happening is you get results and engagement that follow. So when you're thinking about this from a stakeholder perspective, results

demonstrate ROI to the stakeholders, right? That's things like increase in revenue, retention rates, et cetera. When you're talking about like your learners or the employees themselves, it's what's in it for them? What do they actually care about? And an example that I can give within our current organization, we actually have adopted a Franklin Covey tagline and it is one of my favorite taglines that I've ever heard in my life.

It's ensuring that every employee feels like a valued member of a winning team doing meaningful work in an environment of trust. And I like wholeheartedly believe in that. If they can answer yes to that question, that means we're doing our job. That means that we're giving them skills to roll connection, right? It means that they're getting development and growth opportunity. And it means that there's relevance

to what they're learning. And then also equally, they're going back to their job and they're actually working with leaders who are well equipped to carry them forward successfully in the work too. So it kind of all ties together a little bit. And I think that's how you sort of can shape that together and get all parties within the organization feeling like it's all worth it.

Yeah, I think it's so powerful when learners really feel like you've invested a whole bunch of time and energy and money into lifting them up. So I think that's awesome. How do you, how do you measure that type of success? So once a learner has taken a new program or gone through a new program, what tools are you using to take that data and then showcase those results?

You know, there's a lot of different things that you can look at. Like I mentioned, you can take a look at obviously the different levels of their engagement. How is it tying directly to their performance? And what does that truly mean? How are those behaviors actually being applied to the work that's being done? If I were to give this specifically to...

an example. So I've always worked, like I mentioned, I came from the business and it was always tied to the revenue piece. I've always worked in sales organizations. So if I were to give this an example from a sales organization standpoint, and from an L &D partnering with the sales function, our ability to tie that and showcase it is what is the sales staff ability and speed to landing a deal? That's the easiest way to be able to showcase that.

So if we were to look at, right, what's their ability and speed to land a deal? That's their end goal. And we need to help get them there. Well, we're going to measure their, what we call ramp time reduction, right? How fast can we get them there? How fast can we get them the skills to there? And then how can we get their sales skills or their speed to sales competence? How can we get those skills?

ready where we need them to be so that they can use them just in time in the work that we're doing. So those are just two examples of ways that we've been able to align our measurement to be able to drive that performance or those results that we're looking for.

Do you find that it's easier now with all of the new tools coming out to be able to get to that point and to understand, like I said, the data coming in from training programs.

love it. That's one of the things that I really am excited about is to be able to have more data informed and data led decision making. There's so much that you can do with the data there. Sometimes it is a little bit like, oh my gosh, I could go into analysis paralysis around this. But I think if you have that mindset of

Let's take what we have. Let's test it out. Let's make some hypotheses. Let's use it. Let's refine it. Let's go back. It can be really exciting to be able to shape that and to be able to collaborate with the business on, know, what can we do to see if we can actually move the dial here? And I've noticed being that person who is really excited around the data, my stakeholders, like the

the CEO, the managing the director, the EVP of sales, they're eager to work with me then too. They're like, it's like a little bit of a breath of fresh air. Yeah, you're speaking my language. All right, let's go for it. So it is fun. And there's so much data out there now. So the tools really allow us to be able to move towards that direction.

Yeah, and with that in mind, are there any top trends that you're super excited about that are just being pushed out into the

So honestly, learning decisions based on that data. I think this helps ensure that every initiative is not only relevant, but measurable, helping to be able to close those capability gaps that matter truly most to the business. And then the other one for me is really the skills-based talent management. I'm all excited about the fact that we are moving towards skills.

rather than job titles because I think what that allows us to do is it allows for organizations to be more flexible and more agile. We're going to be able to deploy and develop and retain our people so much better and in ways that really support, at the end of the day, those strategic priorities that we're talking about that align us to the overarching strategy of the organization.

And definitely, think agility is the key to success in today's ever-changing world. On the opposite side of that, what type of challenges do you see within our industry that we might need to solve for as a community?

going to get super real here because I'm leader myself and I think the challenge is leadership demands. It's tough to be a leader today. really is. Everything feels like it's changing and it's changing fast and leaders are being asked to do more quicker with a lot less. I mean, yes, we've got more tools and all of that, but it's almost like you've got.

time and you gotta use it all and it's it's hard it's really really hard to be a leader and I think also you're seeing people kind of coming up in the ranks and they're they're sort of saying like I don't know if I want that job to be honest with you see you're also having like less people wanting to do it and I think that's even burdening the current leader demands as well and to me L &D needs to help support there we need to help our leader

learners to focus on essential skills, where they can truly apply them in the day to day, where you can be able to take this, learn it and then say, okay, I know how I can use it. I know how I'm able to apply this in my work. So it doesn't feel like it's, yeah, that was great. And that was fun going into this workshop, but I don't know what that actually means in my day to day job. Or that

felt like a waste of a time or, you know, I did that six months ago and I'm never gonna be able to bring that back into what I'm currently doing and I don't have the time and space to do that. So to me, that's really, really important. And also be able to balance the performance of the team, but have sustainable skills development. So to me, that's top of mind right now, because it's hard one for me as a leader. And I know I'm talking to a of other leaders out there right now where those demands are just really challenging at the moment.

Do have any tips for folks that are just getting into that leadership role type of position in their companies and how they can really embrace these changes and challenges?

have that growth mindset, stay curious. It's a little bit of going back to the basics. Have some fun with it, be vulnerable. It's okay, it's kind of one of those things where it's okay to be uncomfortable, it's okay to say I don't know and to take a breath and leverage the resources around you.

I think that that's really important right now and we need to be able to support each other to be able to grow through this because it's a challenge at every level, I think too. So that would be my biggest piece of advice at the moment is we're all in it and we should be able to recognize that because we'll be able to help each other work through these times.

And are there any initiatives that you and your team are working on this year that you're most excited about?

Yes. I mean, there's a ton right now. So some of them, we just implemented a new, new starter onboarding program. I know we might broach the topic of AI, but we're bringing in some really cool AI tools for our new onboarding experiences. So I'm hoping I can share a little bit on that. That's one project that's been really exciting for us. The other one, as I talk about leadership development, is we're also looking at a new leadership.

leadership indexing and leadership scorecard to help bring some visibility for our leaders and to, hey, how can I be more effective and where do I actually stand and what do I need to do to help support myself in my own development and.

and really take a look at all of the different components that go into my leadership capabilities. So a new leadership indexing framework that is also tied to our new behavioral framework within the organization. Those are some major priorities for us right now that I think are gonna help move the dial in super meaningful ways. So they've been very excited for us to be able to roll up our sleeves and get working on this year.

That sounds super exciting. And we will get to that AI here in just a second. But off the top of your head over the last couple of years, is there like a massive challenge that you and your team had to overcome and that you're just super proud of?

Yes, the back and forth of virtual in-person and distributed workforces. So it's been one where we've really just had to listen to our learners and figure out what's going to work best for you. And I think, you know,

Yes.

there are going to be times where we might not always get it right and we've got to make virtual work for us because that's going to be the most cost effective or efficient way for us to roll out some trainings. But we've been able to adjust some of our programs where we get really cool, where we've got programs where we're able to bring people together just in an isolated area. And we've got what we're calling like

hyper care systems and floor walkers and getting everybody immersed together to practice these tools and make sure that they can actually apply what they've learned in our learning programs and in our workshops. And so we're really being agile in our delivery methods. And that's been extremely fun for us to be able to adjust and adapt to that and meet our learners to their preference styles of how to learn and what's going to be most effective for them.

That's awesome. think a lot of folks really struggled with taking, taking the step into the virtual world and having folks working out of office or doing, you know, a couple of days in office, a couple of days at home. And I just, I think a lot of that gives companies much more freedom. And as long as you embrace that freedom and, find new ways to connect with folks.

and make sure the productivity is still at a high, then it ends up having a workforce that is much more happy with their work-life balance. you find the learners are excited to try new things and just give things a chance. And I think that's awesome. So before we transition into some more you questions, let's get back to AI. How are you guys leveraging AI in your current environment?

Yes. So like I mentioned, with our new onboarding program, we were able to bring in a couple of really cool internal AI tools that has helped us in a few different ways. One, we a couple of years ago set forth on a digital transformation journey for our whole organization. it's been a journey. It's been really fun. L &D has been involved in it a lot.

Our L &D team has used this to really help our learners strategically adopt AI and our systems and our tools by integrating it into our learning content and our repertoire. We've been taking this into a lot of our programs where we're bringing it in as a way to test the waters, do some of our activities with the AI tool.

Instead of doing human to human role plays, we now have a role play tool that they can use that is AI based. It gives them little bit of a space to just test things out and it gives them a chance to, I think, feel a little bit more comfortable with the tool and test it out before they have to go in and do something with another human. That's been a lot of fun.

And then also just it's one of those things where we have our own internal GPT and we've been actually saying like, hey, you've got a question. Have you asked GPT? Let's bring it in. Let's see what that has to tell us. And so it's really just one of those things where we're trying to say this is a way for us to leverage the technology that we have. And

we're getting our learners involved in it right from the get-go. And we're almost making it be one of those things where it's like, that's one of our first places that we're going to go. And that's going to be something that we're going to allow it to help assist us in the flow of our work right away. we're trying to get this mindset of early adoption with the tools, which has been really fun.

Well, I think it sounds like S3 has a very open mindset to adopting new tools relatively quickly or quicker than most organizations out there. Do you have any advice for folks that are a little trepidatious about dipping their toes into the world of AI and how they can try to start leveraging AI in their

Yeah, think as an organization, work to find what tools are going to be best suited for you. And if you do find the right ones, have that right mindset. If you get the right ones, it's not going to be considered cheating. It's going to be considered leveraging, for sure. And then make sure that you can get your human approach afterwards to make the right refinements.

don't have it do any kind of replacement. You've got to come in and you've got to actually make sure that you're fine tuning after you've leveraged it. But so recently, of the things that we did, like I mentioned, we had this huge digital transformation. And so we actually wanted to test all of the organization, how well were they using the tools? How well are they landing? So we did something called an open book assessment to see.

how well was this newly implemented system landing in the business? And the rules for this assessment was really simple. You can take this test however you want, and you can use whatever resources you want. And those individuals that actually came together, collaborated as a team, and ended up using things like our internal GPT, scored higher.

than those that didn't. So it proved to us, collaborate. Collaboration is essential. Collaborate as a team and leverage those tools because tech is going to constantly be changing. You need to have this open mindset that this is going to help assist you and it's going to leverage you in your work fast to get things done faster and more effectively and efficiently and potentially more correctly than if you're not

being open-minded and leveraging these tools. And we have proof in the pudding with the results of this open book assessment that we did. So that was a really fun way for us to be able to sort of test our theory there. And it's landed pretty well in our business. So that's what I would say is it's not considered cheating. It's considered leveraging. And hopefully other people who might be a little bit apprehensive around it can kind of take that example and say, all right, let's give it a go.

Yeah

Well, I think that's such an incredible use case for this and the idea of utilizing collaboration really keeps the human element in there. You're just using it's like using calculators, you know, it's just a tool to help get the data to you faster or get the responses that you need or get things planned much quicker, but you're still having that human element in there. So I think that's

incredibly powerful and it sounds like it was a great success. So now I'd like to get into this more personal side of things. Tell me about you, Regina. Take me back to little Regina days. What led you to get into the world of learning and development and how did you become the US VP learning and organizational development at S3?

It's funny. Now I mentioned to you, I consider myself accidental in this area. So it was not designed or planned. I really think what got me here are the incredible leaders and role models that I could look up to at the end of the day, starting with my mom and my sisters and my family. But then everyone else that shaped me along the way, that's really the primary thing that I'm going to credit.

these, all these individuals, these people that I'm seeing in my head right now, they showed me what good looks like. They had faith in me and gave me the opportunity to practice my own skills in all those ways possible. They coached me through first time situations and recognized me for a job well done. I even at the start of my career, I had a group of colleagues that I still actually call really good friends.

who helped me believe in myself as a leader. And I will never forget, there was a time I was doubting my own ability and taking that first step into a people manager role. I for sure had imposter syndrome. It got me really early on and I was like, I'm just gonna stay as an individual contributor. Like why fix something that's not broken, you know? And they pulled me aside, they took me to a happy hour. were having a,

a drink and they said, how many people are you going to give your next job to? You're the best person for this promotion. I leaned back, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. But that was a really important major moment for me in realizing, okay, you've got to believe in yourself and you need to have a community like this that supports you through these decisions and through these moments.

whether you call it your personal board of directors, your tribe, your allies, your Wolfpack, whatever that group's so critical and I thank them for it. That's what got me to where I am today. So anyone out there find yours. They're crucial.

Yeah, that's incredible advice. I think so many people feel when they get into a career that they don't know where the next step is. And oftentimes it is your mentors or your best friends that can see that path laid out for you. And you just need to have someone there in your corner to be like, you can do this. And

That leads me to my next question, which is if you could go back in time to let's say just coming out of college age, what advice would you give to yourself?

Embrace the growth mindset. I've got to say it, I'm a lifelong learner. I got to plug the L and D route, right? That's right. Network, leverage your community to learn as much as you can because every opportunity, every conversation is a learning opportunity. Leverage those role models, leverage those leaders that you look up to.

Yeah, and just continue to have that curiosity and that thirst for learning and for growth. And the other one that I would say is play where the puck is going. Don't underestimate the power of small games. Those are the other two big ones.

Awesome. Well, thank you for that. And before I get you out of here today, where can people connect?

Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. I would love for people to connect with me on there. It's pretty easy, just the standard LinkedIn and then Regina Dunning. And if you're interested in learning more about my company, my global company is called S3, but we're also US based on Instagram at specialist staffing group.

Awesome. We will have those links in the show description. And thank you so much for sharing your incredible insight with us today, Regina. I really appreciate you coming.

Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure.

Awesome. If you learned something new or had a laugh, please share the show with someone you know. Thanks again, Regina. Thank you. This has been another episode of learning matters as always like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don't hesitate to reach out to us here at TTC innovations to see how we can assist you with all of your training needs. See you next time.