Laura Bartus
Head of Learning for Humana's pharmacy division, and volunteer chief learning officer for the Human Health Project
Humana
Episode 320
Future of L&D: Prove Your Impact, Empower Humans in an AI-Driven World
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleJanuary 31, 2025 · 12:58
Thesis
“Learning and development must strategically adapt to evolving business needs and an AI-powered future by leveraging data to prove impact, fostering continuous learning and agility, and prioritizing human-centric skills like empathy and well-being for true organizational success and individual fulfillment.”
Show notes
Laura Bartus has a rule for leaders navigating organizational change: before you can guide your team through the disruption, you have to manage your own response to it. "As leaders in an organization, when you're going through change, you have to manage your own response to that change — you cannot project that onto your team." It sounds obvious. It's not common practice.
Laura is Head of Learning for Humana's pharmacy division and volunteer Chief Learning Officer for the Human Health Project — a combination that gives her unusual perspective on L&D in both corporate and nonprofit healthcare contexts. She came to the field through high school English teaching, which sharpened her instinct for what separates learning that changes people from learning that fills time. At Humana, she's applied that instinct to build L&D programs that connect directly to business metrics — not because that's what learning "should" do, but because it's the only way to demonstrate impact that leadership will fund and expand.
Her framework for talent development in an AI-powered world is grounded in a clear-eyed view of what's coming: reskilling is no longer a talent strategy option, it's a table stakes requirement. The organizations that survive the AI transition won't be the ones with the best technical tools — they'll be the ones whose people have the critical thinking, data literacy, and learning agility to work alongside those tools effectively. And equally important, Laura argues, are the human elements: empathy, well-being, and the kind of psychological safety that makes continuous learning feel less threatening and more generative.
- Leading yourself through change before leading others — the self-management prerequisite that most change frameworks ignore
- L&D tied directly to business metrics — moving beyond completion rates to outcomes that drive organizational performance
- Talent development in an AI-powered world — reskilling for critical thinking, data literacy, and human-AI collaboration
- Empathy and well-being as L&D components — why sustainable learning requires psychological safety and human-centered design
- Adaptive leadership in organizational change — the mindset and practices that allow leaders to guide teams through uncertainty
- Learning agility as competitive infrastructure — building organizations that can continuously reskill faster than the environment changes
Built by People is sponsored by Previ, the private pricing network that saves employees an average of $2,200/year on essentials like cell phone and auto insurance — free for companies to launch and maintain.
What you'll take away
- 1Leaders must first manage their own emotional response to organizational change before effectively guiding their teams.
- 2Learning and Development (L&D) programs should move beyond completion rates to directly impact and improve business metrics, proving their value through data.
- 3Talent development strategies must prioritize reskilling for an AI-powered world, focusing on critical thinking, data literacy, and mental agility.
- 4Successful L&D integrates human elements like empathy and well-being alongside technical skill-building to foster better employees and humans.
- 5When considering career moves, prioritize roles that bring personal joy and pride, not just advancement, to ensure long-term professional happiness.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Challenges the idea that leadership is a destination, emphasizing continuous learning for leaders: "Some of us feel like once we're in leadership, hey, we're done, we've arrived. And I think the lesson for all of us is that in order for us to, first of all, stay relevant, and then second of all, adequately lead our team through terrifying pace of changes that are going on right now, We actually have to be the ones to grow and change ourselves."
- •Challenges the conventional wisdom of simply 'moving up' without considering personal fulfillment: "don't take that leadership job unless you know that there will still be elements of things that you find joy in, in that next role. A lot of people get to that leadership role and they realize, oh, the thing I really loved doing, I don't get to do that anymore."
In Laura's words
“as leaders in an organization, when you're going through change, you have to manage your own response to that change yourself before you can help anybody.”
This highlights the critical self-awareness and emotional intelligence required for effective leadership during transitions.
“Anything you, you want your team to do, you have to model yourself.”
Emphasizes the importance of leaders demonstrating the behaviors they expect from their teams, particularly agility.
“The most important thing is, are we building things that actually make things better for the business? Are we improving metrics? Are we fixing problems?”
This directly challenges traditional L&D metrics and calls for a focus on tangible business impact.
“we have less manual work to do, right? We have more critical thinking that we need to do. We have more analysis that we need to do. So we are trying to focus on building skills that enable associates to succeed in an AI-powered world.”
Explains the shift in required skills due to AI and how L&D must respond by developing critical thinking and analytical capabilities.
“in order to truly be happy in our careers, it's really important that we think through what is it that would actually fill our professional cup in our careers.”
Offers profound personal career advice, prioritizing joy and fulfillment over traditional notions of advancement.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Organizations struggle with leaders effectively guiding teams through change if leaders haven't managed their own emotional response first.
- •Learning and Development departments often build programs without clear, measurable links to business outcomes or problem-solving.
- •Lack of integrated data sources makes it difficult for L&D to demonstrate ROI or proactively identify business trouble spots.
- •The advent of AI is creating a skills gap, requiring a pivot from manual tasks to critical thinking, data analysis, and mental agility.
- •Companies face the challenge of balancing data-driven decision-making with fostering empathy and employee well-being in talent development.
- •Individuals frequently pursue leadership roles that ultimately diminish their professional joy, leading to unhappiness.
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
Laura Bardes started her career as a high school English teacher
Top Learning Executives: Starting Out
Laura Miller shares her insights on adaptive leadership and helping teams navigate change
Adaptive Leadership: Leading Teams Through Change
Learning and development needs to become more directly embedded in the business
The Future of Learning and Development
How are you leveraging data to enhance learning and development initiatives at Humana
How Business Intelligence is Leveraging Data at Humana
For any organization, we have to focus on reskilling our talent
What are some approaches to talent development?
Laura, in your experience, what makes a successful learning and development program stand out
What Makes a Successful Learning and Development Program?
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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