On the AllVoices Reimagining Company Culture podcast, we sat down with Maria Neve, Senior Vice President, People Experience, Americas at Sony Music Entertainment, to dig into unlearning old norms and redesigning the employee experience. A head, heart and hope connector, Maria believes people are resourceful, creative and whole. That people show up in their full greatness when they are accepted and valued for who they are, and they feel safe and courageous enough to show up as their full, fabulous, and flawed self.
The conversation moves past the usual talking points. Instead of treating unlearning at work as an HR theme, Maria Neve treats it as an operational discipline that sits in the daily decisions managers make about people, priorities, and trust. Below, the takeaways HR leaders, employee relations specialists, and executive teams will find most useful.
The discussion below pulls on several threads from the episode and connects them to current research and what AllVoices sees across hundreds of People teams.
What Unlearning at Work Looks Like in Practice
Unlearning at Work is one of those words HR teams use freely, but the on-the-ground version is much messier. In the conversation with Maria Neve, several patterns showed up that mirror what HBR analysis of talent strategy in transformation also highlights about effective people work. The gap between the slide-deck version and the daily practice is where most programs fall apart.
The data backs the case. McKinsey research on diverse leadership performance shows that organizations treating unlearning at work as a real discipline outperform peers on engagement, retention, and the cultural metrics that matter most over a multi-year horizon. Companies that treat it as messaging see short-term lift and long-term decline.
For HR leaders building Company Culture programs, that means starting with the everyday touchpoints where unlearning at work either lands or fails: hiring loops, onboarding, manager 1:1s, and performance conversations. These are the places where intention turns into experience, and where employees decide whether they trust the company enough to stay, speak up, and do their best work.
The pattern across high-functioning HR teams is consistent. They write fewer policies, run more pilots, and spend more time in conversation with managers who are actually doing the work. That discipline is harder than rolling out a campaign, but it is the difference between unlearning at work as a phrase and unlearning at work as a result.
How HR Teams Make Unlearning at Work Operational
The shift from concept to operation is where most teams stall. Two questions usually surface in workshops with People leaders.
Where should unlearning at work live in the org?
Ownership matters. Programs that sit only with HR rarely get traction. The strongest organizations pair central ownership in HR with distributed accountability across people managers, with a feedback loop into leadership. DEI can help build the capacity to run that distributed model without losing visibility, and gives the People team a single place to track what is actually happening.
What does success look like in 12 months?
Most teams need a one-year mark with concrete outcomes: a measurable change in psychological safety scores, a defined set of policy and process changes, and named owners for the work. Without that, the program drifts and budget questions become harder to defend. The honest version of a 12-month plan also includes two or three things you tried and decided not to repeat.
What Actually Works When You Lead Unlearning at Work
Three patterns repeat across People teams that get this work right. The principles cut across industry and company size.
Name the assumption out loud
Old norms persist because nobody articulates them. The first move is making the assumption visible so it can be challenged.
Replace before you remove
Asking people to drop a familiar practice without offering a replacement creates anxiety. Always pair an unlearn with a relearn.
Run experiments, not edicts
Big rollouts of new norms tend to fail. Pilots build evidence and supporters.
These three principles also depend on the underlying culture. Without a baseline of change management, most operational changes get rejected by the organization's immune system. Build the foundation first.
Where Employee Relations Fits Into Unlearning at Work
Whatever the topic, employee relations sits underneath. Unlearning at Work programs that ignore the ER reality get blindsided by a case that should have been resolved early. AllVoices builds investigations management and HR case management so HR teams can connect the surface-level work on unlearning at work to the deeper work of resolving issues, tracking patterns, and acting on what employees raise. The two are tightly linked: when employees see issues handled fairly, they trust the rest of the work too.
How ER data informs Unlearning at Work strategy
Issue patterns, response times, and resolution outcomes give HR a clearer picture than survey data alone. When the ER data is integrated into Employee Engagement workflows, leaders can see how unlearning at work translates into the lived experience of employees who raise concerns, and what to do about it. The teams that move fastest tend to review case themes monthly and feed those insights into the broader people strategy, instead of treating ER as a separate, reactive function.
For a real example, see Intercom's culture story. The same pattern applies: connect the strategic intent of unlearning at work to the operational rhythm where ER, HR, and managers actually meet employees.
Frequently Asked Questions About Unlearning at Work
What does unlearning at work mean?
Unlearning is the act of identifying and stepping away from outdated assumptions, behaviors, or processes that no longer serve the organization. It's harder than learning because it requires letting go.
Why is unlearning important for HR?
Most HR practices were designed for a workforce that no longer exists. The function evolves only when leaders are willing to question what they inherited and try something new.
How do you help people unlearn?
Surface the assumption, share data that contradicts it, model the new behavior at the leadership level, and give people room to experiment. Unlearning at scale is a multi-year effort.
What gets in the way of unlearning?
Identity, ego, and short-term incentives. People resist unlearning when their status or expertise depends on the old way. Leaders have to make psychological safety real before unlearning happens.
Can a company unlearn without disruption?
Some level of disruption is the point. Unlearning that doesn't make anyone uncomfortable usually isn't real unlearning. The job is to make the discomfort productive.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Unlearning at Work is not a posture. It's a set of decisions, repeated over time, by people who control budgets, promotions, calendars, and the daily experience of work. The HR leaders who get traction stop treating this as a campaign and start treating it as ongoing operational practice. That reframing matters because it changes how you measure success and where you put your energy week to week.
That shift requires data, follow-through, and a clear point of view. HBR analysis of talent strategy in transformation and the broader research community make the business case clearer every year. The companies that act on it consistently win on retention, culture, and outcomes that show up on the financial statement. The ones that keep treating the work as branding tend to lose ground quietly, then noisily.
The conversation with Maria Neve is a useful reminder that the work is doable. None of it requires a huge HR team or a massive budget. It requires clear thinking, consistent execution, and the willingness to adjust when the data tells you to. Pair that mindset with the right tooling and the right partners, and unlearning at work stops being aspirational and becomes a measurable part of how the business runs.
Want to see how AllVoices supports HR teams running this work? Book a demo.
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