Workday Podcast: Creating New Opportunities Through Disruption

The global pandemic has presented businesses with extensive new challenges, but it’s also pushed them to find new and different ways of working. Joel MacCharles, vice president of learning and innovation at Bill Gosling Outsourcing, explains how his company uncovered new business opportunities through uncertainty.

The world works a lot differently today than it did a few months ago. Due to global disruption, organizations have had to completely transform their operating models to sustain business. And chances are, they won't look like they did before, ever again. 

However, this new world of work also presents new opportunities. On this episode of the Workday Podcast, I chatted with Joel MacCharles, vice president of learning and innovation at Bill Gosling Outsourcing, about how his company uncovered new business opportunities amidst the adversity.

Listen on SoundCloud: Creating New Opportunities Through Disruption

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Below are some insights that MacCharles shared with me during our conversation. You can find our other Workday Podcasts here.

  • “As we've navigated the pandemic, we've invented new ways to train that are best in a remote environment, whether that's bringing in new hires, upskilling and reskilling, or leadership development. These programs that we've been building for our clients are now being productized and purchased by clients. We’re using Workday Learning to bring other people into it so that we can actually be the start of a profit center that’s selling training as a solution for other industries.”

  • “We haven’t fundamentally changed the value that we offer to customers, but we’ve changed the understanding of the need within our customer base. For example, we're in conversations right now with a partner and the original conversation was, ‘Could you help us onboard? Could you help take our calls and build some short-term training while we build a longer-term piece?’ But now we’re able to pivot that conversation to one about an ongoing partnership—a way to work together on an ongoing basis to provide training at their site so it's consistent, motivational, and interactive, with learning offered as a product.”

  • “If you have employees who are not as comfortable with the technology as others, you need to use communication to bridge that knowledge gap. We have team members right now who are making key organizational decisions and changing the future of the organization based on their technical knowledge, who maybe didn't have a voice two months ago, to our own shame. So it’s key to involve people who understand the systems that you're using. Get as many diverse voices as you can at the table because I think most of us have the solutions already at our fingertips, we just might not be able to see them all.”

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