Becky Wallace, Head of People at LearnUpon, is a seasoned HR professional with a passion for creating positive and impactful work environments. With over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, Wallace has honed her skills in leadership, strategy, and employee development.
Before joining LearnUpon, she held key roles at renowned companies like Yahoo and Etsy, where she gained invaluable experience in global HR, M&A, and talent management. Her ability to navigate complex organizational challenges and inspire teams has made her a sought-after leader in the HR field.
At LearnUpon, Wallace leads the Operations, Talent, and Learning & Development teams, fostering a culture of innovation, growth, and inclusivity. Her focus on diversity, development, and employee experience has driven significant positive change within the organization.
From Humble Beginnings to Global Impact
Wallace’s journey in HR began in 2008 at Fónua, a supply chain solutions company. Initially planning a short-term role, she quickly became captivated by the world of HR. Her passion for the field led her to pursue a Human Resource Management degree while gaining practical experience in various HR functions.
Seeking international opportunities, she joined Yahoo’s HR shared services, where she supported employees across multiple countries. Her subsequent role at Etsy allowed her to further develop her expertise in talent management and strategic HR.
A Bright Future Ahead
Wallace’s dedication to creating exceptional employee experiences has been instrumental in LearnUpon’s success. Her leadership has empowered teams to achieve remarkable results, including implementing a global competency framework and revamping performance management processes.
As she continues to shape the future of HR at LearnUpon, her impact will undoubtedly be felt for years to come.
In our latest Faces, meet Becky Wallace.
Who is/was your biggest influence in the industry?
There isn’t one key person who is my biggest influence; it’s a combination of the people around me—every leader and team member I’ve ever worked with has taught me something, and these days I’ve got a great network of CPOs who give great advice and insights into how they’re approaching different topics.
What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years! It’s easy to think HR professionals always follow their own advice, but we’re all human. I’ve been unprepared for onboarding, failed to address performance issues, and even hired the wrong person.
Failure is part of growth. We don’t know everything all the time, but we can’t let fear stop us from trying. Some mistakes are avoidable; others are just experiments that didn’t work out as expected.
I’ve learned to own my mistakes and ask for help. People are usually more than willing to step in if you let them.
One recent example: I received feedback from a direct report that I wasn’t living up to our culture code about trying new things and learning from mistakes. This made me reflect and improve, which also helped that team member feel more supported and empowered in their role.
What’s your favorite part about working in the industry? What’s your least favorite part, and how would you change it?
There are a lot of facets that I enjoy about the HR industry, but my favorite part is probably developing people and talent. What’s been so interesting and exciting about working at LearnUpon is that we are customer zero for our own platform. In addition to our 1,500-plus global customers, we use our own learning management system (LMS) to train and upskill our employees.
There’s a recent LinkedIn Learning report that found 80% of people say learning adds purpose to their work. Couple that with a 2024 Gallup poll, which found workers in the UK and Ireland ranked among the least engaged employees in the world. As an Irish-founded and headquartered company that’s so passionate about delivering high-quality learning experiences, we want to “walk the walk,” in addition to “talking the talk.” At LearnUpon, we know firsthand the reward and impact quality learning has on businesses, people, and their careers. We want to offer that growth and longevity to our employees and serve as a role model for others to follow.
Outside of promotions, we are always trying to think of different opportunities we can offer to develop our people and increase their mastery of different competencies and skills for a more well-rounded work experience, be that external training, working on a project in a new area, or being part of a cross-functional group to solve a particular issue. I think combining HR and L&D teams can have a big impact on employee development initiatives because it comes down to people feeling valued and recognized for the work they’re doing for the business and for themselves.
On the flip side, we know that gender disparity in the workplace is a real challenge, and it’s easy to oversimplify the issue by saying “just hire more women in sales or more female engineers”—you might see some traction, but that strategy is limited. We need to identify how to attract more women into our funnel from the start through targeted outreach.
For us, increasing diversity across LearnUpon is an important business goal, just like improving our platform or growing our revenue, and our recruiting and leadership teams have made a deliberate effort to attract more diverse candidates into our pipeline. We now ensure we bring at least one female-identifying candidate into the funnel for each role we’re hiring. This strategy has positively impacted the gender diversity of our sales team, for example, moving us from 13% female-identifying employees at the beginning of this year to 24% by the end of July. There’s lots more to do, but we are committed to continuing this work.
It sounds like through your experience you really care about people, and you want to help them feel safe and comfortable, which is important in the industry. Please elaborate here.
As a leader, showing genuine empathy and compassion is extremely important.
Along with the rest of the LearnUpon leadership team, I’m passionate about developing and implementing tangible, authentic practices and people strategies that strike the right balance between people and process. For instance, in 2023, we spent a lot of time as a leadership team discussing and aligning on our approach to diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We didn’t want to roll out a blanket, one-size-fits-all, “ChatGPT version” of a DEI statement or strategy—it had to be something that felt authentic to LearnUpon.
Nowadays, people care about the type of company they join and want an employer that shares the same values as they do. We’re not the kind of company that just wants to tick a box and call it a day. That’s why, as part of our DIB strategy, we’ve created an Inclusion & Belonging Council run by employees across the business who all have different locations and bring unique perspectives, which is led by our Learning, Inclusion, and Enablement team.
The Council typically focuses on one major ‘Belonging’ event per quarter that means something to our community and has an executive sponsor from our C-Suite team. We’re driving these initiatives from the top down and fostering connections between our leaders and team members. It’s very easy to look at what other companies are doing; just take it off the shelf and rinse and repeat what’s worked for them.
Ultimately, I think what we’ve developed instills a more connected, impactful, and authentic strategy to support our LearnUpon community and atmosphere, and that is reflected in the feedback we get from employees. Most recently in our mid-year pulse survey, we saw an increase of 10 points in the question “Leadership prioritizes diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) at LearnUpon,” up from 71% in December 2023 to 81% in July 2024. In fact, we received Bronze in the highly coveted Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards for “Best Learning Program that Supports and Promotes Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” which was really exciting to see.
How can HR most effectively demonstrate its value to the leadership team?
I see my role as setting the people strategy for the company, making sure that what I and my HR team are working on ultimately ladders up to support the company’s goals.
If we’re focused on growing our revenue by “X” amount, it’s my job to consider the people’s impact of that. What does my team need to think about for us to be able to hit those goals? Is it development plans for existing employees? Or is it hiring new employees?
Success to me looks like attracting and retaining the best talent for LearnUpon so we can achieve our annual OKRs and targets. My role is to keep the people who are committed to the long-term success of LearnUpon engaged, motivated, developed, and ultimately successful so that we can continue to grow the business together.
Where do you see the industry heading in five years? Or are you seeing any current trends?
Companies are beginning to really hunker down and focus on employee skills development. They’re recognizing that if employees can develop their skills and competencies at their job, they have more to gain from their role and want to stay longer—thus, boosting retention.
In fact, overall, across the company, we saw reduced employee attrition numbers this year as opposed to last year. I think that has to do with more macro factors like the global economy and desire for stability, but I do think that some of our recent development programs that we’ve implemented have had a significant impact on that, too.
Actually, a recent Personio research study found that 71% of employees say their organization is more focused on skills-based hiring than five years ago. The report also found that 68% of those asked stated degrees and qualifications were less important than skills and aptitude. I think that shows how valuable developing your skill set is, and companies that can provide that learning to their employees will come out on top.
What are you most proud of?
In the past year, we have implemented incremental changes to our performance management processes. Its goal is to introduce more objectivity to the process and reduce bias with the addition of our global competency framework last year. We also made changes to our review process this year.
We want to use consistent criteria and guidelines across all our teams to minimize any potential for bias. I feel confident in the progress we’ve made here and have updated our performance management processes to align with a more objective point of view.
We have also introduced compensation bands and job leveling to ensure consistency. We still have more work to do on this, but I’m proud of our approach to this so far.
Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
I have three pieces of advice that I have been the compass for my career so far:
- Broaden Your Skill Set: Spend time understanding different sides of the business or consider moving laterally into a new area. While promotions are the obvious and tangible way of marking success, there’s more longevity in diversifying your toolbox. You’ll be able to figure out what you want to do and, maybe more importantly, what you don’t.
- Face Your Fears: Doing new things can be scary, but going outside of your comfort zone is the only way to progress. Change can be hard, whether by a new role or a new company. The best-case scenario is that everything is perfect and better than you had dreamed; in the worst-case scenario, you tried, failed, and learned something new.
- Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help: It’s so important to put ego aside and ask for other perspectives and opinions, whether from a team member, peer, or friend. People are more willing than you think to offer their support and guidance, and it will ultimately lead to a better result.
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