Reflecting on The WildHearts Talent Leaders Summit

Last month, we hosted the annual WildHearts Talent Leaders Summit at HPE’s Customer Innovation Centre in London. The event brought together Learning & Development (L&D), and HR thought leaders from across the business landscape to share their perspective on current trends, challenges and the innovations influencing the profession.

Key Takeaways

Panel: The Future of Essential Skills Development

Featuring Victoria Sears from Mills & Reeve, Emily Payne from Siemens, and Janette Evans-Turner from Zurich.

This year’s first panel focussed on L&D challenges and trends. Members of the panel described the need for foundational skills within their businesses, and how Essential Skills such as, the importance of building relationships, communication skills, and presentation skills, are still areas for development in early careers. To combat this, the panel recognised the importance of doing things differently and fostering multi-generational collaboration between early careers talent and business leaders.

Fireside Chat: Changing Demographics of the Workforce

During their fireside chat, Mick Jackson, CEO of the WildHearts Group, and Stephen Isherwood, Co-CEO of the Institute of Student Employers, discussed the changing demographics of the workplace and the need to address the shift in priorities within early talent joining organisations. Stephen also shared insights into the forces driving the change in demographics and the demand for Essential Skills.

Panel: Resilience and Career Progression

Featuring Thomas Gaskin from Ocado Group, Matt Nicholls from Siemens, and Sarah Adams from Veolia.

Building on the conversation between Mick and Stephen, the second panel shared relevant examples of the current challenges they are facing with early talent onboarding and development, contextualising the data shared from ISE. The panel described the need to establish a safe place for early careers individuals to practise new skills and found creating this environment allowed them to step outside their comfort zone.

The panel noted that this safe space allowed early talent to build resilience by being able fail in a controlled environment. All panellists echoed this point and raised the challenges of giving and receiving feedback, stating that getting this right, fosters accountability and self-awareness in early careers personal development.

Closing Discussion: The Impact of AI on Talent

To conclude the day, Dan Samson, Senior Manager of HR Business Partnering UKIMEA at HPE, discussed the rise of AI in the HR and L&D sectors, and how HPE are adapting their training model to reflect this. Dan also looked at how we can use Essential Skills development to equip the future workforce to embrace technological development, and what this means for the evolution of Learning and Development.

Key Announcements

Expansion of The Micro-Tyco Challenge

Following feedback from our current partners, we have expanded our signature programme – The Micro-Tyco Challenge – to cover multiple development areas. The Micro-Tyco Challenge has now been carefully curated to provide specific programmes for Early Careers development, Departmental training, Leadership teams and our latest launch, Cross-Functional Collaboration. This new offering was created to promote a culture of collaboration in a multi-generational, cross-functional cohort. It is designed to connect colleagues who do not usually work together, creating opportunities to take on roles and develop skills outside their comfort zone.

New Challenge by Choice Workshop

We also announced our new Challenge by Choice Workshop. The Challenge by Choice workshop was developed in partnership with WildHearts Partners L&D teams in response to the increasing need to build resilience in today’s rapidly changing business environment. This workshop builds agility, adaptability and accountability in employees, driving higher performance and role satisfaction.

Summary

Throughout this year’s Talent Leaders Summit, attendees were invited to discuss a variety of industry trends and challenges, embracing the opportunity to network with other leading L&D professionals and build meaningful connections with a peer group who share common challenges and values. The conversations and ideas generated from this year’s summit are set to drive further collaboration and new projects for WildHearts Talent and our partners throughout 2025.

You can find out more about WildHearts Talent and the ways our learning experiences could support your business here.