Compass Staff |
Earlier this year, Guild surveyed CHROs and L&D leaders to understand how they prioritize their learning investments. From that experience, it became clear what sets the winning talent strategies apart: They are relentlessly focused on supporting, and in some cases driving, their companies’ business strategies. In fact, the research found that leaders who tie learning directly to their organization’s business strategies are 122% more likely than their peers to meet their top-priority metrics.
“There’s no business strategy without a people strategy or talent strategy,” said Jeanine Carlucci, head of talent and employee experience for JPMorgan Chase, speaking during a Guild Opportunity Summit 2025 Wednesday.
That premise framed a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Guild CFO Chris Garber — and joined by Carlucci; Laura Dannels, chief talent officer at Wellstar System; and Dallis Howard-Crow, chief HR officer for UC Health.
One insight that came through the discussion: When HR is embedded in the rhythm of the business, organizations move closer to the elusive ideal of becoming a true learning organization: innovative, resilient, and able to adapt to any changing competitive environments.
What follows distills how Carlucci, Dannels, and Howard-Crow are meeting that challenge head on — by putting learning inside enterprise planning, proving impact with business metrics, and treating talent strategy as business strategy.
More than a quarter of HR leaders can’t tie their learning investments to revenue or profit, according to Guild research.
Put learning inside the business (not around it).
One way JPMorgan, Wellstar, and UCHealth have found success is by transcending the role of service providers to act as “business-transformation” consultants. For these three leaders, that’s meant getting in the room early, listening closely, translating business needs into capability-building initiatives and, in some cases, proactively diagnosing the performance need before the business even recognizes the gap.
But in all three cases, they effectively integrated themselves and their teams into enterprise-planning cycles and, by doing so, positioned talent development not as a cost but as a lever for growth and agility.
“We’re never not at the table,” Carlucci said.
In healthcare in particular, Howard-Crow said most items on a senior leadership agenda today ultimately depend on people. Even if “HR” isn’t called out, she said, nine out of ten topics require talent to deliver, so the conversation in the room inevitably becomes: How will we get the people, and how will we keep them?
“We are the people people. It’s logic. It’s business,” said Howard-Crow.
“When the organization understands the way that you’re bringing value — and you’re able to shift from ‘HR programs’ to investments linked heavily to enabling the business — you see a real shift in the conversation.”
- Laura Dannels
Shift the conversation from programs to business investments.
“I’m a business person first,” said Dannels. “When the organization understands the way that you’re bringing value — and you’re able to shift from ‘HR programs’ to investments linked heavily to enabling the business — you see a real shift in the conversation.”
To be sure, this took hard work. Dannels made a deliberate decision to shift the way she and her team talked about talent strategy at Wellstar, where human capital was historically framed as an “expense.”
“We know that the value in organizations is driven by intangible assets: R&D and, most importantly, people,” Dannels said, pointing out that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reclassified human capital as a driver of value in organizations. “So, I've talked so much with my team about the importance of linking what we're doing in talent strategy to business outcomes.”
Reframe ROI as capacity, revenue, and outcomes.
Most importantly, embedding L&D in the business — not around it — changes the perception of ROI and the business value of investments in people.
For example, Dannels can now demonstrate with data that investing in career pathways for “revenue-generating” roles like nurses and imaging technicians impacts Wellstar’s revenue growth. She can also show that temporary labor contractors result in suboptimal patient outcomes when compared to full-time supported employees.
Along the same lines, Howard-Crow shared a story of a staffing shortfall that forced UC Health to temporarily close several patient rooms. With machines sitting idle and appointments backing up, the crisis quickly morphed from a routine talent shortage into a “business problem.”
“The first person my CEO called was me,” Howard-Crow said. “I don’t run the clinic. I didn’t even know where the clinic was. I had to look it up. We have hundreds of clinics. And the first person [the CEO] turned to was me … to ask, ‘how come those rooms are closed? Do you understand how that’s impacting our patients?’”
Yet here’s the silver lining: Once business leaders see how talent impacts the top and bottom lines, the conversation about return on investment (ROI), key metrics, and the impact of learning and talent investments becomes easier. “Your ROI case might not be perfect, but if you’re able to tell the compelling story about the simple supply and demand of talent in today’s market, they understand at a meta level,” Dannels said.
Measure what matters, but move at speed.
One success factor for tying talent and learning strategy to business strategy, which Carlucci, Dannels, and Howard-Crow share, is data. Every organization has loads of data. The difference here is that these leaders know how to access it and what they should do with it once they get it.
According to Guild report, the highest-performing CHROs and L&D leaders are 40% more likely than their peers to report using tech and data analytics to guide their L&D strategies.
Unsurprisingly, JPMorgan Chase, Wellstar, and UCHealth all use data as a strategic asset to identify trends, make decisions, and show the impact of talent and learning investments.In Wellstar’s case, Dannels pairs wage-growth evidence at the community level with guaranteed job placement for program completers. That combination not only secures internal workforce-development investment; it also draws alternate funding from philanthropic and corporate partners.
In UC Health’s case, Howard-Crow leverages data sets to demonstrate a clear ROI for an education-benefits initiative called the Ascend Career Program. She can illustrate, for instance, that every dollar invested in the program results in a net-positive talent-development benefit.
And at JP Morgan, Carlucci and her team operate based on a “what gets measured gets done” ethos. They focus on a core set of metrics — from hiring and retention to how the firm develops and rewards talent — and address the chronic “building-versus-buying talent” question by making workforce skills visible across the enterprise, regardless of career path. The organization tracks employee net promoter scores (NPS) to understand how people experience learning programs. And because data is always changing, Carlucci and her team keep it “hydrated” and favor “speed over perfection.” In a business like JP Morgan’s, small, well-aimed moves — even 1% changes — can have outsized impact, she said.
Prove it in business terms.
Their stories demonstrate how HR leaders can go beyond course completions and satisfaction scores to connect learning with real business outcomes like retention, engagement, and internal mobility — and build trust with the business in the process.
