Toby Kheng

Corporate social learning has been a buzzword in HR and L&D for years, yet most organisations still haven’t figured out how to make it work. Despite investing in new learning platforms, champion models, and internal social networks, engagement remains low and impact is questionable at best. Why? Because most companies are forcing social learning instead […]

In Moneyball, Brad Pitt’s character, Billy Beane, is trying to build a winning baseball team with zero budget. He goes to the team owner, asking for more money to bring in the best players, only to be turned down. Sound familiar? HR teams know this struggle all too well. We want to create outstanding employee

Ever wondered what stand-up comedians, Esports influencers, and professional wrestlers have in common with workplace leadership? Probably not. But stay with me. A while back, I found myself in a wrestling ring, attempting to become a professional wrestler. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out. But what I learned in that process—and in my experiences with

HR is at a crossroads. We’ve survived a global pandemic, the Great Resignation, and now we’re staring down the AI revolution. And yet, for all this talk of change, HR is still operating within the same tired systems—just with shinier tech and more engagement surveys. Here’s the problem: We’re optimising a system that was never

Let’s be honest—HR is broken. It’s stuck in old ways of working, tangled in outdated processes, and failing to deliver what businesses actually need. Worse still, the big players in the corporate world are never going to fix it. They’re too slow, too weighed down by legacy systems, and too far removed from what really

When you think of HR, you probably don’t immediately picture a wrestling ring. But if you’ve ever worked in HR, you’ll know that sometimes it can feel like you’re in one—dodging hits, trying to strategise, and occasionally finding yourself in a chokehold of policies, processes, and expectations. At DisruptHR Cambridge, I took to the stage

What do HR and professional wrestling have in common? At first glance, not much. But after an eight-week intensive wrestling course, I realised the ring holds some serious lessons for how we shape employee experience. This blog is based on my talk at DisruptHR London, where I shared how my time in the wrestling world

I recently found myself standing in front of 450 people, wearing a leotard, under a ridiculous pseudonym (which I’ll reveal later). It was the culmination of an eight-week wrestling training course, and I’d just performed a full wrestling match—bodyslams, suplexes and all. If you’d told me a year before that I’d willingly throw myself into

If you’ve worked in HR, you’ll know that we tend to exist in a world of two extremes—the light side and the dark side. Most of my career has been on the light side, working inside HR teams, trying to make things better from within. But now, I’ve switched to the supplier side, working with

When I took the stage at DisruptHR London, I knew I was about to ruffle some feathers. Why? Because corporate learning is broken. Despite the millions spent on e-learning platforms, training courses, and leadership programmes, most of it doesn’t stick. Employees click through mandatory training, sit through uninspiring workshops, and then… nothing changes. The problem