Learning Uncut

You've chosen your learning technology and a launch date draws near. Then what? Peter Elkhuizen, Partner Capability and Growth Manager at Starbucks Australia, shares how he moved around 1,600 partners from paper-based learning to a gamified mobile platform, and kept them using it two years on.  We cover launching with baristas first, using leaderboards to keep people engaged, blending digital with...

Most L&D teams don't choose the wrong learning platform because they're careless, they choose it because the process is confusing, rushed, or driven by shiny demos. In this episode, Audrey Chan and Adam Hepper join Michelle Parry-Slater to explore how L&D teams can make better decisions when choosing learning technology. They unpack what a good RFP process looks like, why getting clear on your req...

What does alignment really mean when the stakes are high?  Drawing on a global banking case study involving a major regulatory deadline, Lindsay and John share how surfacing different perspectives and working through tensions enabled hundreds of people across multiple geographies to coordinate action and deliver results. This conversation offers practical insights into collaboration, performance,...

The choices we make in education today shape the workforce thirty years from now. In this episode Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Jeff Davis, Executive Head at Hillcrest Christian College on the Gold Coast and author of Leading the Learning Revolution , about what happens when a school decides to turn education on its head. From teaching curriculum on Coolangatta Beach to a framework of six secr...

What happens after the award, is won? In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater welcomes back Millie Law, Enterprise Capability Lead at ANZ for an 18-month update on the Better Business Development programme first shared in Episode 161 for reflective practice in action The BD program delivered a 20–25% improvement in a key business metric and a four times return on investment. This revisit episode ex...

Michelle Parry-Slater is joined by Andrew Lawson (2026 AITD L&D Professional of the Year) and his client Alice Smith, about a deliberately different approach to leadership training.  Instead of two days out of the office, where delegates leave with overwhelmed brains but make little change back at work before the learning gets totally forgotten, Andrew offers a leadership programme deliberately de...

For three years running, AI topped the list of what's hot in L&D. This year it dipped, and Donald H Taylor is taking it off the survey altogether. Don has run the Global Sentiment Survey for over a decade. In this Elevate episode, he joins host Michelle Parry-Slater to go back across five years of data and unpack what it actually tells us about where the profession is heading. They get into the tr...

It will take 118 years, at the current rate of change, before an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person can go to work without hearing a racial slur. This is not history. This is what is happening in Australian workplaces right now. In this Elevate episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Professor Nareen Young and Josh Gilbert from the Centre for Indigenous People and Work at the Universit...

Recognition is often written off as a "nice to have." In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Sarah McVanel, Canada's recognition expert and founder of Greatness Magnified, and Lisa Anstey, manager of Medical Device Reprocessing at Waterloo Regional Health Network, to make the case that recognition is not soft. Recognition is one of the most powerful learning and behaviour-change tools...

Eight years. Nearly 200 episodes. One consistent heartbeat.    In this special Elevate episode, Michelle Parry-Slater sits down with Learning Uncut founder Michelle Ockers to reflect on eight lessons from eight years of the podcast.    From community as the engine that started it all, to the quiet discipline of showing up and being of service without knowing where it leads...   Transcript and rela...

The brief was simple: we need an L&D function. Go and start one. In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Elyse Toomey, Head of Learning and Development at Ironbark Financial Group, about what it really takes to build an L&D department from nothing in a fast-moving financial services business, from coaching coaches to become trainers and launching peer-to-peer onboarding at scale, to dou...

Most leadership programs start with the how; the workshop, the elearning, the coach. The business case often comes later, if at all. In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Tina Robinson, founder of WorkJoy and author of Developing Your Business Leaders, and her client, LaTanya Foster, VP of People at global travel accessories brand BÉIS, about what happens when you start with the why i...

We rarely stop to look back. One achievement blurs into the next, and before long we've accumulated years of practice without ever taking stock of what we've actually learned. In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater invites Greg Wilton - a St. Louis-based L&D practitioner with a career spanning darkroom photography, web publishing, global e-learning, and generative AI - to do exactly that. Together...

Most conference chairs open with applause and slip off stage. At Learning Technologies, chairing starts two months before anyone sets foot in the room. In this Elevate episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with three Learning Technologies 2026 chairs: Niall Gavin, Helen Palmer, and Anit Mahay. Join our range of Chairs, both new and experienced, as we discuss what it really takes to prepare speaker...

Hearing loss is more common than most workplaces acknowledge. Around one in six Australians, one in eight Americans, and one in five UK adults lives with some form of hearing loss, tinnitus or D/deafness. Yet at HSBC UK, only a handful of colleagues had formally disclosed a hearing loss before this project launched. In this episode, Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with Georgie Cooke from Lima Delta a...

Arnika Knight and Michelle Parry-Slater share the decade-long journey of modernising L&D for 80,000 volunteers at Girlguiding UK. From navigating change resistance to building a multi-modal learning ecosystem, their story is packed with practical lessons for any L&D professional working at scale. The conversation explores respecting volunteers' time, supporting motivation and using a clear learnin...

Sydney Trains frontline staff face customer aggression daily. They knew the de-escalation models. Applying them under real pressure was another matter entirely. And they'd made one thing clear: no more role play. In this episode, The Two Michelles speak with Ryan Byrne from Sydney Trains and Dr Nathan Moore from Frameless Interactive about Project CIVIL: Customer Initiated Violence Interactive Lea...

Matthew Peade from TFE Hotels discusses their award-winning People Leaders Program, a 12-month leadership development initiative that's seen 300 graduates and an impressive 86% promotion rate. Matthew shares how the program weaves together a blend of three learning streams of on-the-job experience through business change projects, peer learning with dedicated mentors, and formal sessions led by le...

Michelle Ockers speaks with Learning Uncut co-host, and author, Michelle Parry-Slater about her book, The Learning and Development Handbook, A Learning Practitioner's Toolkit . Sharing ideas from within the book, Michelle talks through why practitioners "…must be advocates of the right solution, for the right problem, for the right people, at the right time, for the right reason, delivered in the...

Liz Seskus and Kate Schultz from Australian Red Cross Lifeblood discuss their development of a virtual tour to support the induction of new hematology registrars. They share how they applied learning science, user testing, and a co-design approach to create a practical, cost-effective learning tool that reduces cognitive load and enhances understanding of blood processing procedures. Winner of 202...

Michelle Parry-Slater speaks with co-authors Michelle Ockers and Laura Overton about their book, The L&D Leader. Principles and practice for delivering business value , released in October 2025. They reflect on the collaboration behind the book, the research and evidence that informed it, and its practical relevance for learning professionals. The conversation offers insights into leading with imp...

Peter Brace from Sodexo Australia shares how his path into L&D, including training under trees in Papua New Guinea, shaped his practical and learner-centred approach. Hosted by Michelle Ockers and co-host Michelle Parry-Slater, this episode explores adapting learning to diverse environments, building flexibility into facilitation, and the value of connecting learning to real-world settings. Transc...

In this year-in-review episode, Michelle Ockers and Michelle Parry-Slater reflect on 2025 through the lens of Learning Uncut. They discuss professional highlights, patterns emerging across the podcast's case studies, and what the year revealed about relevance, value and the human role in L&D. The conversation explores learning culture, co-design, learner agency and the normalisation of AI, alongsi...

This episode explores NAWIC ACT's award-winning mentoring programme for women in construction. Jo Farrell from Build Like a Girl and Jana Clyde from Wisdom Learning discuss addressing gender equity challenges through structured mentoring. They cover participant matching, workshops, psychological safety measures, and the importance of time in building trust. Jo shares her journey from apprentice to...

Donald H. Taylor joins Michelle Ockers and co-host Michelle Parry-Slater to unpack findings from the latest instalment of his multi-year research on AI in L&D, conducted with Eglė Vinauskaitė: The Race for Impact . They discuss how AI has reached an inflection point, becoming a standard part of the L&D toolkit, along with its growing use in research and analysis. The conversation also examines thr...