Case Studies

People-Led, Technology-Enabled: How Haleon Built a Self-Sustaining R&D Capability

North Highland — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:00:02 GMT

Many digital capability programmes build a content library and call it a learning strategy. North Highland gave Haleon something different: a fully integrated, self-sustaining learning ecosystem, built on over 10,000 pages of research and designed around the people doing the work.

The Situation

Haleon had clear ambitions. A world leader in consumer health, the company's R&D division was determined to build a strong competitive position in the digital and AI era.

But the conditions weren't there to support that ambition. Workforce development was fragmented, with teams working in silos and digital fluency uneven across the function. In a sector where AI capability is fast becoming a competitive differentiator, the pace of change demanded action.

Building digital capability at scale requires more than content. It requires the right infrastructure, the right people architecture, and a learning model designed to last beyond the project itself.

What Haleon needed was not a generic training programme. It needed a more evidence-based and integrated approach to developing its people that was grounded in the realities of the business, designed around the people it served and built on the right technology infrastructure.

Our Approach

North Highland treated technology and skills as one decision. Starting with evidence, not assumptions, we developed a Skills Taxonomy and framework at the intersection of capability and technology. Analysing over 10,000 pages of internal and external research, alongside listening to stakeholders from senior leaders to frontline scientists, we gave the team the foundation to make both dimensions work together and a platform for the talent work that follows.

The evidence base gave Haleon a compass reading, accurate and precise, pointing at the gap. The learning architecture gave it a map: a structured route from where its people were to where they needed to be.

Learning Architecture Grounded in Research

Rather than applying a generic framework, North Highland worked with Haleon’s teams to develop proficiency-based learning pathways tailored to distinct R&D personas, the company’s governance structures, language, and ways of working. Every design decision was built on the evidence base, ensuring the programme addressed real-world needs rather than assumed ones.

70/20/10 Model, Not a Content Library

Building on Haleon's established commitment to the 70/20/10 framework, North Highland partnered with them to bring it fully to life, shifting from a static content library to a dynamic, research-backed hybrid model rooted in in adult learning and behavioural science. Practitioners were empowered to generate their own use-cases, making learning directly relevant to daily work. Measurement frameworks and change metrics were embedded from the outset, giving leadership real-time visibility and the ability to intervene early.

Technology Built for the People Using It

The R&D team, partnered with North Highland, acted as first adopters on Haleon’s new Learning Management System (LMS). Working closely with the LMS team to design the all-important landing pages, the team made up an integral part of the LMS ‘Change Champions’ team and acted as support for go-live. AI-enabled learning interventions were introduced to ensure content resonated with diverse audiences. The result was a learning architecture that was purpose-built and immediately usable, accelerating adoption across the organisation from day one.

Capability Built from Within, Not Imported

A network of change champions was activated across the R&D function. Line managers and internal facilitators were upskilled to cascade change to their teams. North Highland transferred full ownership of the learning architecture, measurement framework and change network methodology to Haleon’s teams, with documentation, drop-in sessions, and train-the-trainer support. As a result, future programme evolution at Haleon does not depend on external support.

Value Delivered

The programme delivered across three dimensions: capability, infrastructure and culture.

Capability

Digital fluency and AI skills, applied problem-solving, impactful collaboration and strategic leadership are now core competencies within Haleon’s R&D function. These are strengthened by a structured learning model and actively reinforced by trained internal facilitators and line managers.

Infrastructure

A complete, proficiency-based learning model was designed, developed and fully integrated with Haleon’s new LMS. Weekly reporting gave leadership real-time adoption visibility throughout the programme. Executive sponsors now have the fluency to interpret data and design their own interventions, meaning the technology infrastructure is owned internally, not managed externally.

Culture

The programme has shifted something more fundamental than knowledge. Haleon's R&D function now has a shared language for digital capability and a change network that operates beyond the project lifecycle, building towards an organisation that approaches disruption with confidence. The foundations are in place for Haleon's R&D to take a leading position on digital capability within the wider enterprise.

This is what the integration of technology and talent makes possible: a programme designed not to end, but to embed, leaving Haleon's R&D with the infrastructure and people to lead their own transformation.

“North Highland brought a strong research-led perspective, helping us define what future-ready digital and AI capability truly meant for our R&D organisation, while grounding every decision in our existing governance, language, and ways of working. The train-the-trainer model and change network have empowered our people to lead, not just follow, change.” - Research & Development Capability Lead, Haleon

Selecting Three Platforms in Parallel: A Repeatable Vendor Assessment Framework for a $55B Asset Manager

North Highland — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:00:04 GMT

Overview: Vendor Selection for a $55B Asset Manager

A $55B asset manager faced three high-stakes platform decisions at once: a central trading platform, a security master, and a data catalog, with no consistent way to evaluate them against a common standard. The client had access to the full set of market options; what they needed was a consistent way to evaluate those options across three simultaneous, high-stakes platform decisions without letting opinion, politics, or uneven information shape the outcome.

A recurring pattern in financial services is that decisions are made without involving the practitioners who will operate the systems. This leads to recommendations that are difficult to defend and implementations that stall. We designed and ran the selection process with technology and operations stakeholders engaged from the outset.

The engagement delivered $4.6M in negotiated savings across the three selections, three defensible platform recommendations, and a vendor assessment framework the firm now owns and can apply to future decisions.

The Situation: High-Stakes Platform Selection Without a Common Standard

The three platforms in play touched different parts of the firm’s operating model, but they needed all three in place to support a planned modernization of its front-to-back operating model.

Each decision carried significant operational impact on its own, and together they compounded. A misstep on the trading platform would affect every desk. A mismatch on the security master would create downstream data integrity issues. A weak data catalog selection would leave operational teams without the governance infrastructure they needed. The firm wasn’t short on vendor knowledge; what they needed was an objective process that could be applied consistently across all three selections and would stand up to stakeholder scrutiny when the recommendations were delivered.

Our Approach: Scoring Vendors Against Defined, Defensible Criteria

Our Data & AI team members ran three parallel vendor assessments using a dual-workstream model: Technical and Functional Evaluation on one track, Commercial Review on the other. The Commercial Review track built side-by-side total-cost-of-ownership models, benchmarked pricing against comparable engagements, and developed the negotiation strategy that ultimately delivered the $4.6M in savings. The two tracks ran simultaneously so that commercial terms did not influence technical scoring and technical preferences did not shape commercial negotiation.

Before any vendor was scored, we mapped requirements to the people who would use each platform day to day. Vendor assessments often falter when technology specifications are written by project teams without the practitioners who understand where the operational gaps are. To address this, we engaged portfolio managers, trading desk staff, compliance, IT, and operations directly, capturing their distinct needs as scorable specifications rather than general preferences so that evaluation could be applied consistently across reviewers.

For the trading platform alone, this involved engaging 26 SME groups and scoring three vendors across 35 critical features and 176 functional specifications, assessed against three decision lenses: Functional Fit, Delivery Readiness, and Commercial Value. Every score was documented and every recommendation was traceable back to criteria the organization had defined before evaluation began.

We then applied the same framework to the data catalog and security master selections, calibrating it to each platform's distinct requirements while preserving the underlying structure and rigor.

Value Delivered: $4.6M in Savings and a Repeatable Assessment Framework

The $4.6M in negotiated savings came primarily from the trading platform and security master selections, with the data catalog selection contributing additional commercial improvements. Across all three engagements, leadership walked away with recommendations they could defend at any level of the organization, grounded in documented criteria rather than vendor pitch materials or internal advocacy.

Following selection, we immediately got started on implementing the chosen platforms. That transition moved faster than is typical because the practitioners configuring the systems had been part of the evaluation process and understood the reasoning behind each decision: which components were critical, where the edge cases sat, and what had been ruled out. The assessment framework remains in place at the firm and can be applied to future platform decisions without rebuilding it from the ground up.

North Highland partners with financial services firms on high-stakes platform and vendor selection decisions. Interested to learn how we can help your organization build a defensible, repeatable assessment process? Let’s talk.

A Modernized Medicaid System Built to Serve and to Last

North Highland — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:00:01 GMT

Georgia's Department of Community Health (DCH) processes $37 million in daily Medicaid benefits and bears healthcare responsibility for over 2-million residents. When federal regulations required a shift to a modular Medicaid architecture in 2016, the stakes of getting it wrong weren't measured in delayed timelines. They were measured in disrupted care. This state DCH needed a partner accountable for the technology and the organization at the same time.

When the Technology Changes, the Organization and Operations Must Change Too

Most agencies experience this pattern. Technology deploys on schedule, but adoption lags. No single technology provider owns the outcome that requires both to succeed, so the system goes live, and the value becomes dependent on the agency’s organizational and operational standards to absorb the gap. For an agency under federal oversight and accountable to millions of residents, any gap between the technology change and the organizational and operational impact has consequences too large to absorb.

Modular architecture made the challenge harder with multiple vendors, interdependent workstreams, and a workforce that needed to govern and sustain something it had never managed before, all running at once. DCH needed every part of the transformation moving in the same direction.

One Governance Model. One Shared Outcome.

North Highland created a governance model that held technology and people accountable to the same desired goals - better access to health care and better health outcomes.

A Program Management Office coordinated vendors and workstreams with standardized processes and shared decision rights, so no team optimized in isolation. A Testing Center of Excellence held quality consistent across every modular component, regardless of which vendor owned it. Hands-on procurement support for Claims Processing, Electronic Visit Verification and Third-Party Liability ensured the right partners were selected with governance to manage them.

A comprehensive focus on the agency’s workforce and operational imperatives including organizational enablement, stakeholder engagement and training ran in parallel throughout. Dozens of training modules reached thousands of providers and other stakeholders, paired with readiness analysis across provider and member communities. Readiness is a design requirement. When it’s treated as one, the transformation delivers.

The Results Belong to Georgia, Long After the Engagement Ended

DCH secured federal approval and funding. A flexible, scalable Medicaid Enterprise System Transformation built to consistently and incrementally deliver improvements to 2-million Georgians and the 80,000 providers and Care Management Organizations serving them. Governance and reporting infrastructure gave the agency real visibility into a high-volume program for the first time, because the people managing it were equipped to use it, and that partnership continues today.

The lasting proof is this: project management processes developed through MEST have informed broader PMO practices within DCH. Rather than starting from scratch, the agency now has a stronger foundation of processes, tools, and institutional knowledge to build upon as new priorities emerge. North Highland's measure of success is helping agencies strengthen their ability to lead and sustain transformation over time.

Turning strategy into value means designing technology and organizational readiness together, holding both to the same outcome. When that integration is real, results land and carry forward.

Is your agency navigating a large-scale technology transformation? The gap between implementation and adoption is where most public sector initiatives lose ground. Talk to our Public Sector team to get started.

Rethinking How Retailers Manage Materials

North Highland — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:00:02 GMT

The Situation: 50,000 materials and no easy way to find them

A global retail leader had a materials problem that went deeper than anyone initially admitted.

With more than 50,000 materials in its library and teams across supply chain, technology, and product creation working in separate functional lanes, finding existing materials was nearly impossible. So, teams defaulted to creating new ones. The results showed: quality became inconsistent and cost savings never materialized. With material strategy sitting at the intersection of cost, sustainability, and supply chain resilience, the stakes were too high to keep patching around the edges.

The company had brought North Highland in to get their new cost savings program back on track. But as our team dug in, what started as a program management engagement quickly revealed something more fundamental: this was a strategy problem, not a process problem. The initiative at the center of the work wasn't just a program to manage, it was a new way of working that needed to be built into how teams operated permanently.

Client Challenge: Everyone solving a different problem

It became clear that what this team was missing was a shared starting point. Teams across supply chain, technology, and product creation were working to solve materials problems, but none of them were solving the same one.

Business and technology teams were operating from different maps. Technology solutions were being designed against existing processes that weren’t working, which meant the wrong things were being automated, and no one had a single source of truth to course-correct against.
Cross-functional roadmaps existed in silos, with each function solving for its own version of the problem. That meant initiatives regularly collided mid-flight; one team's material consolidation effort would conflict with another's product development timeline, and there was no mechanism to reconcile priorities before resources were already committed.
A seasonal structure existed, but the material palette decisions and deadlines that needed to live along it didn't. Choices about which materials to prioritize for a season were revisited repeatedly, eroding confidence in the process and slowing everything down.

The ask evolved from "help us manage this program" to "help us operationalize this strategy into how teams permanently work." That's a meaningfully different challenge that requires a different kind of approach.

Solution: Decisions first, tools second

North Highland's team started by asking a question most programs skip: what decisions actually need to be made, and who needs to make them?

Rather than jumping to tools or process maps, the team worked with cross-functional leaders to define four core capabilities that would deliver value regardless of org structure or technology. From there, they mapped every key decision within each capability so business and technology teams finally had a shared language and a common starting point.

With the "what" defined, the technology team took it from there. Using the key decision map as their foundation, they landed on the most effective solution design and, within a month, had built an AI-enabled proof of concept. The tool could analyze a library of tens of thousands of materials, surface consolidation and selection recommendations, and automatically model the cost, sourcing strategy, and lead-time implications of each scenario. Analysis that used to take months could now be done in weeks.

Designs weren't handed off and built in isolation; they were iterated on together, with business teams testing and refining as the operating model evolved alongside the technology. grounded in real business logic. Designs weren't handed off and built in isolation, they were iterated on together, with business teams testing and refining as the operating model evolved alongside the technology.

Within a month, the approach enabled the development of an AI-enabled proof of concept that could analyze a library of tens of thousands of materials, surface consolidation recommendations, and automatically model cost, sourcing strategy, and lead time implications across scenarios.

That's the talent and technology equation working the way it should: people-centered design informing what gets built, and the right technology amplifying what the right people can do.

The final phase focused on making it stick. Every key decision was sequenced across the seasonal calendar, which let us define the critical meetings and handoffs plus their owners, inputs, and outputs. Change management wasn't a separate workstream—it was embedded directly into the operating model, so teams could shift into a palette-first mindset without depending on the program or any single tool to keep them there.

Results: More value, faster timelines

A unified operating model spanning global materials and supply chain replaced the siloed functional roadmaps teams had been working from. And because the multi-seasonal calendar and decision ownership were built into how teams work, the gains didn't walk out the door when the engagement ended.

Teams now own and continuously improve the system. That's the measure that matters most: not what we built for the client, but what the client can build from here.

Ready to see what that looks like for your business? Let’s talk.

Modernizing Public Health Lab Operations

North Highland — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:03 GMT

How North Highland helped a state public health agency build a financially sustainable laboratory system, from initial assessment through operational transformation.

The Situation

A decade of drift between pricing and reality

Public health laboratories do work that cannot be paused or outsourced without consequence. They test for disease outbreaks, support emergency response, and deliver services that state and local health departments depend on daily. But doing that work sustainably requires sound financial management, clear service priorities, and operational infrastructure that can hold up over time.

A state public health agency faced a growing gap between those two realities. Its laboratory fee structure had gone unchanged for more than a decade, leaving pricing disconnected from actual service delivery costs. That misalignment made it harder to reinvest in modernization, align resources with evolving public health priorities, or make strategic use of available federal and state funding. The agency needed a clear-eyed view of where its lab operations stood, and a credible path toward long-term sustainability.

Our Approach

Two phases, one continuous arc of improvement

North Highland supported the agency across two phases of work, bringing together financial expertise, operational analysis, and strategic planning to address the challenge from multiple angles.

In Phase 1, the team conducted a comprehensive assessment of operations across multiple state Public Health Laboratories, evaluating service demand, performance metrics, and fee structures, and benchmarking against peer labs to identify where agency stood relative to comparable organizations. The result was a data-driven foundation for decision-making, including a roadmap that clarified which services should be kept in-house, when to explore outsourcing, and where operational improvements would deliver the greatest impact.

Phase 2 addressed the financial systems and decision-making infrastructure that determine whether improvements hold over time. North Highland developed four interconnected workstreams, each translated into practical tools the agency could use independently after the engagement ended.Together, these workstreams gave the agency significantly sharper visibility into its costs, its funding, and its service priorities across laboratory operations statewide.

Value Delivered

From financial pressure to operational confidence

Across both phases, the work gave the agency the tools, data, and strategic clarity to run its laboratory system on sustainable financial footing. Fee structures were brought into alignment with actual costs and market conditions, while a predictive funding model enabled the agency to anticipate funding gaps and optimize drawdowns rather than react to shortfalls. The engagement strengthened pricing alignment, improved cost and funding transparency, enabled more proactive financial planning, and gave leadership a clearer framework for service prioritization across laboratory operations statewide.

Pricing that reflects reality. Fee structures unchanged for over a decade were brought into alignment with actual service delivery costs and current market rates, strengthening cost recovery, and expanding the lab's capacity to fund ongoing operations and improvements.
Visibility into where money goes. A standardized cost attribution methodology gave leadership a clear, auditable picture of expenditures across operations, replacing guesswork with data-driven budgeting.
A funding model that plans ahead. The agency can now anticipate federal and state funding gaps before they become crises, optimize drawdowns, and approach funding allocation and oversight with greater confidence and strategic intent.
Clarity on what to keep and what to change. A service prioritization framework gave the Public Health agency a principled, repeatable way to decide which laboratory services are core to its public health mission and which can be transitioned or discontinued.

This engagement is a demonstration of what sets North Highland apart: the ability to combine deep public sector knowledge with analytical tools and implementation discipline. No assessment stays relevant if it sits on a shelf. What the agency gained was not just a roadmap. It was the financial infrastructure and decision-making capability to follow it.

Ready to strengthen your public health lab's financial and operational foundation? Let's talk about what's possible.

Cost Savings That Stick: How North Highland Helped a Major UK Retailer Build the Capability to Sustain the Results

North Highland — Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:02 GMT

Overview

Most cost programmes fix the gap once. This one was designed to close it permanently and leave the organisation running the process on its own. When a major UK retailer needed to close a significant cost gap without compromising customer experience, North Highland redesigned how technology and people worked together across 18 business functions.

The Challenge: Operating Model Redesign at Scale

The retailer needed to translate a high-level vision into practical, function-level changes across 18 diverse business areas, which was no simple task. Two needs shaped the work:

Pressure to increase productivity and cost efficiency without compromising customer experience
The imperative to create lasting impact that would go beyond initial structural changes

The Vision

The strategy had to do three things at once: reduce costs without eroding customer experience, redesign the operating model across all 18 functions, and leave the organisation capable of sustaining change on its own.

Our Approach: Practical Precision

The programme required both analytical precision and practical implementation, with technology and talent working together throughout. Four elements defined the approach:

Function-Level Analysis: North Highland examined each of the 18 retail functions in detail, identifying the specific challenges and opportunities within each before any solutions were designed.
Operating Model Redesign: Looking beyond headcount reduction, the team addressed structures, processes, governance, culture, and technology in depth. Data and digital tools were used to identify where inefficiencies sat and how work actually moved through the organisation, giving leaders a clear picture before any structural decisions were made.
Collaborative Change Leadership: North Highland worked closely with business leads throughout, keeping the commercial goal in focus while building confidence and capability at every level.
Capability Transfer: The retailer’s teams were equipped with the tools, methods and confidence to drive ongoing change, ensuring the redesign was owned internally, not dependent on external support.

The Impact

The partnership delivered measurable outcomes across cost, people and operations:

1,400+ employees supported through organisational redesign
Decision-making streamlined and brought closer to the customer
A culture of continuous improvement and retail workforce transformation embedded across the business
A governance model and capability framework the organisation now owns
Millions in projected cost savings

The result was a retailer that no longer had to choose between cost discipline and customer ambition. The operating model now belongs to them; not to the programme that built it.

What This Means for Retail Leaders

Most cost programmes solve for this year. The question worth asking is whether the organisation will still be finding efficiency in three years' time or whether it will need another programme to do it again. The difference is whether capability transfer was built into the design from day one. For retailers facing similar pressure, that's the starting point.

Global Biopharma Company Puts £30M of R&D Digital Value on the Map

North Highland — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:00:02 GMT

Overview: Turning Ambition into Accountability

A top-ten global biopharma company had invested heavily in digital tools across R&D, manufacturing, and IT. The natural next step was creating two things that would ensure ROI: 1) a consistent way to track and measure whether the technology was delivering what it needed to, and 2) the shared ownership to make that measurement meaningful.

North Highland designed a value framework that addressed both at once: bringing financial discipline and shared accountability to a portfolio of more than 200 initiatives. We did this by building a measurement capability with the people responsible for delivering results, not simply for them. The outcome was £30 million in identified value, and an approach the organisation continues to use.

Client Situation: Building Tech with People in Mind

This global biopharma company was executing an ambitious, multi-year programme spanning R&D, manufacturing, and IT, with hundreds of initiatives in flight. The central challenge was finding a shared definition of success for that work that would translate across the organisation.

That goal led to a key discovery: Despite substantial investments in digital tools and platforms, the biopharma company still lacked an operating model that connected those investments to the people, teams, and decision-making structures responsible for realising their value. Technology and talent were being managed as separate workstreams, and the gap between them was where value was being lost.

Without a shared language for value, teams were measuring progress against independently defined metrics. Finance struggled to validate estimates produced without its input, business sponsors could not demonstrate ROI for their initiatives, and senior leadership lacked the visibility needed to make confident prioritisation decisions.

This went beyond simply improving reporting capabilities. The client needed an operating model rigorous enough to earn the confidence of sceptics, scalable enough to span a large and diverse portfolio, and credible enough to give programme leadership a reliable basis for assessing whether its investments were delivering.

Our Approach: Changing How Organisations Make Decisions

As it became clear that the client needed to address a deeper organisational challenge (and not just build a measurement tool), our team recognised that they would not only need to deliver a better model but take a new approach to building one.

Development was iterative and grounded in live use cases rather than theoretical constructs. North Highland worked directly alongside the finance, portfolio, and delivery teams who would own and apply it, pressure-testing assumptions and refining four core value levers (Time Saving, Cost Avoidance, Better Product, and Faster Launch) until they accurately reflected how the organisation defined success. The people who would use the tool helped build it, and that co-design is central to what made the methodology work.

The design was kept deliberately lean. A governance instrument with high overhead tends not to be used, and a tool that sits unused solves nothing. The goal was a model any team could apply without specialist support, while producing outputs that finance could substantiate and defend.

Agreed baseline benchmarks were developed in direct partnership with both portfolio and finance teams. That collaborative approach converted what could have been a point of contention into a foundation of shared ownership, and ensured that when leadership made decisions based on the numbers, the people closest to the work had already confirmed those numbers were right.

Value Delivered: £30M Identified. A New Way of Decision-Making.

Adoption was rapid. Within four months of deployment, the model had been applied to more than 200 initiatives, a rate that reflects both the tool's usability and the confidence the organisation had placed in how it was built.

The model identified more than £30 million in potential value across the portfolio. The significance of that figure extends beyond its size. It represented a shared, finance-endorsed view of programme value at a point when scepticism had been a genuine obstacle to decision-making. Having a credible, consistent number changed the nature of those conversations.

Equally important was what this approach did to the people using it. Teams that had previously operated with separate definitions of success developed a shared vocabulary, one that held up under scrutiny because they had built it together. The technology and the people around it were, for the first time, working from the same page.

With a common view of value established, leadership could assess the full portfolio through a consistent lens, identifying which investments were on track, which required intervention, and where the highest-value work was concentrated. Prioritisation moved from advocacy and intuition to evidence.

The most enduring outcome is the capability North Highland left behind. The model did not depart with the engagement team. Client staff own it, understand it, and continue to apply it as the programme evolves. That is what successful transformation looks like at the intersection of talent and technology: not a tool handed over, but a way of working embedded in how the organisation operates, sustained by the people who helped create it.

READY TO PUT VALUE AT THE CENTRE OF YOUR TRANSFORMATION?

North Highland helps organisations build the measurement capability, shared accountability, and decision-making confidence needed to deliver on complex transformation programmes. If your teams are managing significant investment without a consistent way to measure its value, we can help.

Intelligent HR at Scale: Global Bank Saves 15,000+ Hours by Redesigning Employee Support

North Highland — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:30:02 GMT

Overview: Great Tech for Customers, Not for Employees

For one global bank, building an intelligent virtual assistant on an AI-ready platform required more than the right technology. It required a rigorous operating model, a disciplined content strategy, and a deliberate investment in the people who would own and evolve the solution after launch. North Highland designed and delivered all three, demonstrating that technology and talent, treated as one integrated investment, produce results that neither achieves alone. By building robust base functionality on an AI-ready platform, our Financial Services experts gave the bank a virtual assistant that delivered value from day one and a foundation designed to unlock AI capabilities as the technology matures.

Client Situation: Build the Platform. Build the Team.

Employees at one of the world's largest banks were spending too much time searching for answers to routine HR queries. Pay, benefits, time, and personal information questions were flooding HR service centers with call volumes that strained resources and slowed resolution times.

The bank had already invested in sophisticated customer-facing technology, and wanted to give that same seamless, intuitive experience to its employees. But closing that gap would require more than a new tool; it necessitated a new way of designing and delivering HR support.

The bank had selected a platform capable of supporting AI in the future. What it needed first was the base functionality, an operating model connecting the technology to the complexity of global HR processes, the diversity of its workforce, and the people who would ultimately own and evolve the solution after launch.

Our Approach: Capability That Lasts

North Highland's engagement began with the data. We reviewed a range of HR interaction sources to identify development priorities and the highest-volume query types, ensuring that the first capabilities deployed would deliver immediate, measurable impact for employees and the business.

From there, the team examined the full capabilities and constraints of the banks virtual assistant platform, building a content learning and modelling strategy that matched technical reality to business ambition. North Highland then analyzed and translated existing HR processes across Time, Pay, Benefits, Life Events, Personal Information, and more into precise development requirements, accounting for the location-specific intricacies of a global workforce operating across multiple countries.

"The goal was never to hand over a finished product. It was to leave a team that could keep building."

North Highland structured delivery around an agile release train, enabling significant deployments at pace while steadily building the bank's internal capability in agile methodology. Higher burndown rates and larger volumes of work completed within sprints were a direct result of this framework.

Throughout, the talent side of the equation was treated as equally important as the technology. Employee communications drove adoption, including targeted change management campaigns that guided employees through a new way of accessing HR support. User experience design drove engagement, and a deliberate focus on capability transfer meant that the people inside the bank grew alongside the platform.

Value Delivered: 950 Hours Saved. With Capability That Outlasts the Engagement.

The results of this HR transformation reflect what happens when people and technology are invested in as one decision rather than two separate workstreams.

The HR virtual assistant was deployed to all employees globally, a scale of rollout that required both technical precision and change management discipline. From launch, the platform resolved over 100,000 HR-related interactions through the virtual assistant rather than human intervention, directly reducing service center call volumes and freeing HR teams to focus on higher-value work.

The bank has also seen improvements that went beyond these statistics: Service center query volumes fell considerably, employees complete common HR tasks faster, and the delivery framework that serves as a lasting foundation for how the bank approaches technology delivery.

It's also worth noting, the skills and methodology North Highland built did not expire when the engagement ended. The client teams who worked alongside us throughout the engagement emerged with the confidence and expertise to continue evolving the platform independently. That is the difference between a technology deployment and a transformation: one ends at go-live, the other is just beginning.

READY TO BUILD EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE THAT LASTS?

North Highland helps organizations close the gap between technology investment and employee experience, designing and delivering solutions that your teams are equipped to own. Whether you are starting a new program or scaling an existing one, we bring the talent and technology expertise to make it work.

Technology Assessed, People Equipped: Building AI Capability Across 50,000+ Civil Servants

North Highland — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:00:02 GMT

Overview

Over 50,000 civil servants shared one ambition: to become an AI-enabled workforce where every member of staff could use AI to improve productivity and drive innovation. To realise that ambition, the Department first needed to understand the current levels of AI competence, confidence, and sentiment across the workforce, in order to define a clear strategic roadmap for AI skills development and responsible adoption.

North Highland combined strategic workforce planning and AI capability development expertise to segment the ~50,000‑strong workforce, establish a robust baseline of AI capability, and design targeted AI learning pathways and change interventions. Together, these learning and change interventions defined the requirements for building sustainable AI capability and enabling consistent, responsible adoption across the Department.

The Situation

The Department had set itself a set of ambitious goals. Its 2030 Digital Strategy committed to transforming its digital services using AI and increased automation, signalling AI as a core enabler of future service delivery rather than an emerging or experimental capability.

However, AI workforce development was constrained by two systemic issues: an over‑reliance on a one‑size‑fits‑all AI capability model that failed to reflect diverse operational, functional, and strategic use cases, and the absence of a centrally defined AI people and capability strategy. As a result, the AI training provision was fragmented and poorly targeted, leading to inconsistent engagement with AI and significant variation in AI skills, capability, sentiment and adoption across its workforce.

What the department required was a structured AI learning needs analysis: a rigorous, data-led process to baseline current capability, identify gaps, and design targeted learning that would translate into lasting behaviour change.

The true value of AI is realised not by technology alone, but by the skills, behaviours, and change required to embed it into everyday work.

The Department needed a partner who could quickly baseline current AI skills and sentiment, and design a persona-based AI learning framework, enabled by targeted change interventions and underpinned by proportionate, sustainable governance.

Our Approach

North Highland structured the project across two phases: "Analyse and Plan," where we assessed existing AI competency, sentiment and priority use cases across the organisation. Next was "Develop, Test and Learn," where we designed and validated tailored AI skills frameworks and learning pathways aligned to the diverse operational, functional and strategic needs of the workforce. The capability assessment prepared the ground, the learning design enabled the skills to take root.

What made it work was the integration of technology and talent at every stage. We used digital survey tools to capture workforce insights at scale, and advanced analytics transformed responses into robust, actionable insights directly informing AI skills design and learning pathway development. Expert learning design and people-centred change management then converted insight into six distinct learning pathways that would resonate with real roles and lived experiences. Neither dimension alone would have delivered a learning programme that was both evidence-led and genuinely relevant to staff.

Capability Baselining at Scale

Generating insights from 10,500+ survey responses across the organisation enabled us to establish a clear, evidence-based picture of current AI competency, confidence and readiness for change. This was not a top-down view: it reflected the real experience of staff across every function and grade, giving a statistically grounded baseline for the first time.

Persona-Based Learning and Change Design

We developed and validated six bespoke workforce personas. Each persona captured the defining characteristics of a defined group of the workforce, documenting their goals and motivations, pain points and challenges, relationship with technology, and learning preferences. These personas became the foundation for designing tailored, persona‑specific learning pathways and change interventions, ensuring capability development was grounded in real role contexts and user needs. This was expert design work, not template delivery: every pathway reflected the starting point, behaviours and expectations of the people using it, from frontline officers to strategic leaders.

Each learning pathway was supported by tailored learning interventions, curated to meet the specific needs of each persona group, moving beyond generic content to ensure every learning journey reflected the starting point, priorities, and working patterns of the people following it.

AI Skills Framework: Technology Grounded in Behaviour

North Highland built an AI skills framework specific to the Department and its key workforce personas: proficiency levels, key behaviours, skills and competencies, grounded in discovery findings rather than generic best practice. The framework gave the organisation a shared technical and behavioural language for AI capability, built on the understanding that AI adoption demands both technical proficiency and cultural readiness in equal measure.

Built on survey findings, departmental goals, and sector best practice, the framework set out a clear skills pathway from Unaware through to Expert, giving every role a defined route for developing AI capability in the context of their day-to-day work.

Crucially, the framework went beyond skills and proficiency levels. In a government context, responsible AI adoption requires more than capability building. The skills framework explicitly addressed safe and secure AI use, equipping staff to identify risks, apply appropriate governance, and adopt AI in ways that protect data and uphold departmental security standards.

Sustainable Learning Architecture

North Highland curated existing learning content into six bespoke learning pathways and integrated these within the Department’s digital skills academy, enabling staff to access AI learning through a familiar platform and accelerate uptake. Built‑in metrics were designed to measure engagement and effectiveness, capturing participation, progression, and outcomes, while automatically updating individual learning records to support ongoing insights into workforce skills. A robust but proportionate governance model was developed to ensure the pathways remained current and clarified roles and responsibilities as the learning pathways transitioned into BAU.

Value Delivered

The programme delivered results at three levels: a robust evidence base the Department had never held before, a scalable infrastructure for AI learning, and the cultural foundations needed to make it stick.

Evidence

For the first time, the Department had a statistically grounded, comprehensive picture of AI competency, sentiment and workforce readiness. The findings were telling: AI literacy scored 2.5/5 on a Likert scale, sitting between Aware and Working level, and relevance to role emerged as the lowest scored dimension for learning opportunities. These were not comfortable numbers, but they were exactly the honest baseline needed to design learning that would make a real difference.

Infrastructure

Six persona-specific learning pathways were built and made available to over 50,000 civil servants, each supported by 45 tailored learning resources and 8 hours of structured learning. All six pathways were integrated with the Department's existing digital upskilling platform, ensuring staff could access AI learning through a familiar environment and removing barriers to uptake from the outset.

Culture

The programme was designed from the outset to address more than knowledge gaps. Change materials built to foster trust, establish psychological safety and secure leadership sponsorship ensured AI learning was embedded as a sustained priority, not a one-off initiative.

The Department now holds what it lacked at the start: a technology-grounded evidence base, a people-centred skills framework, and six tailored learning pathways designed to move every member of staff from unaware to confident. That is what becomes possible when technology assessment and talent development are treated as one investment, not two.

“We brought North Highland in to assess AI skills and sentiment across our ~50,000-person workforce and to develop a skills framework to build AI literacy and confidence. Their work provided a clear baseline and set of learning pathways and change materials tailored to the diverse needs of our workforce, giving us a groundwork to accelerate the development of an AI-enabled workforce.”
Senior UK Government Leader

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Accelerating Enterprise AI Adoption Through Community-Led Innovation in Pharma

North Highland — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:19:22 GMT

North Highland partnered with a leading global pharmaceutical organization to accelerate AI adoption from 35% adoption in isolated pockets to 53% adoption enterprise-wide. In under two months, we stood up a 1,400+ member AI community spanning 35 business units. Within six months, that foundation converted into measurable capability gains across the organization.