In this episode of The Science of Excellence, I sat down with Laura Bartus, Head of Learning and Development at Humana, a Fortune 50 healthcare company.
We talked about how change is emotional before it's organizational, why cohort-based learning with accountability partners drives results, and how to measure impact with metrics leaders care about.
These 4 insights stood out:
- Address the Emotional Change First
- Build Accountability Into the Design
- Lead with Stakeholder Wins, Not Your Program
- Reinforce Until It Sticks
1. Address the Emotional Change First
In Laura's Words: "When we have massive changes, we have to know how it's impacting our associates inside themselves. We have to let them deal emotionally first. Help them understand what they're really afraid of. Change triggers fear. Figure out what's the worst that could happen and what you can do to alleviate those shifts."
Leaders focus on organizational shifts and forget the internal changes happening inside people. Laura uses three steps with employees facing change.
First, name what you're actually afraid of. Most people haven't named it specifically.
Second, make a plan. If you're afraid of losing your job, update your resume, talk to your network. Move your brain from ruminating to solution finding.
Third, approach change with curiosity. People who navigate change well think about value they contribute rather than just their role.
2. Build Accountability Into the Design
In Laura's Words: "The programs that work best are cohort-based where people are accountable to other people. If you cancel a meeting with your accountability partner, it's your responsibility to reschedule. You belong to each other. The third is timed reinforcement. The biggest drop off is between day one and day 30, because most of it's gonna leave their brain."
Programs at scale fail without accountability built in from the start.
Laura's design has three elements. Cohort-based learning puts you in a group. Accountability partners hold you responsible, and Laura doesn't track them because the partners track each other. Timed reinforcement happens at 30, 60, 90, 120 days. Most content leaves people's brains between day one and day 30. If it sticks for 30 days, it worked out. Programs without these become the flavor of the month.
3. Lead with Stakeholder Wins, Not Your Program
In Laura's Words: "As a potential stakeholder, the thing I most want to know is what's in it for me? I'm not going to approve something I don't feel has real tangible value to me. Before I suggest the program, I need to figure out the what's in it for me for that stakeholder. Hook them immediately with the wins."
Leaders won't approve programs without tangible value for them. This is how humans work.
Before proposing anything, identify the stakeholder's WIIFM. What business metrics improve? What HR metrics? What efficiency gains? Lead with wins, then details. Laura tracks four metrics to prove value: voluntary turnover reduction (high cost at large organizations), engagement improvement (engaged employees perform better), performance improvements, and promotion rates versus the general population.
To deliver on those promises, she builds data infrastructure by getting one-time access to data sources from HR and business teams and pulling it into a data lake. Data visualization capabilities make L&D a serious partner showing results instead of smile sheets.
4. Reinforce Until It Sticks
In Laura's Words: "A program is not gonna be impactful if it's just run once and then that's it. The best programs have refresher training or timed reinforcement at least for the first year. The biggest drop off is between the first day people leave class and day 30. If it's stuck for 30 days, it's probably gonna stick. We need timed reinforcement that helps people recall the biggest concepts."
Most programs deliver training once and hope people remember it. They don't.
Laura builds reinforcement into every program with refreshers at 30, 60, 90, 120 days. Most content disappears from people's brains between day one and day 30, so that first month is critical. She also ensures people practice the skills immediately with accountability partners who track each other's progress. Laura still has a plaque from a workshop years ago that said "wherever you are, be there" because she applied it every single day.
The best reinforcement comes from skills people use daily, but planned refreshers keep everything else from becoming flavor of the month that everyone forgets.
Until next time,
Vince
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