Can you prove your graduate programme is changing behaviour at work?
Graduate leadership development case study
GSK’s Ahead Start helped supply chain graduates make the leap from university into a regulated manufacturing environment, building the leadership capability they needed both immediately and for future progression.
To achieve this, People Untapped partnered with StoryTagger to embed reflection, peer learning, and storytelling, creating real-work evidence of behaviour change.
As a result, the programme created a repeatable way to turn learning into leadership habits, with stronger cohort connections, regular chances to practise skills, and clear proof of impact.
The challenge:
How to build early career leadership skills faster
This graduate leadership development case study highlights the need to accelerate early career leadership capability in a complex, regulated environment.
In 2024, GSK wanted to strengthen its leadership pipeline by helping their supply chain graduates build the behaviours and core business skills earlier in role.
Specifically, they needed to:
- Support the move from university into a regulated manufacturing environment, building strong workplace habits from day one
- Shift a traditionally technical graduate pathway towards behavioural leadership skills
- Build core business skills early
- Create an inclusive, connected global cohort network for future collaboration
- Show evidence of behaviour change in day-to-day work, not just attendance or satisfaction scores
As a result, this required a scalable way to build practice into the flow of work and make progress visible between sessions.
The solution:
Reflection, peer learning and practice
For Ahead Start, People Untapped combined structured skill-building with repeated opportunities to practise, reflect and apply learning in role.
StoryTagger was plugged into the programme so participants could practise communication skills, learn from each other, and share real work examples of what they were trying day to day.
What this looked like
Ahead Start at a glance
Watch Marisa on the impact of this approach
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- Build connection, accountability and learning transfer
- Transform qualitative data into actionable AI insights
- Flex delivery and measure impact in real-time
How it worked in practice – real work stories
People Untapped used StoryTagger as a storytelling and impact thread across the core modules, enabling participants to reflect and learn from each other between live sessions.
To help, they curated story highlights to celebrate progress, reinforce behaviours, and maintain momentum, bringing practical insights and montages into workshops and cohort communications.
Participation and engagement
148 stories in total – creating a living set of real-work examples that participants, managers and stakeholders could learn from and use as evidence of behaviour change.
Story 1: Introductions (75 seconds)
Prompt: introduce yourself, your goals, and your biggest learning so far.
Story 2: Teach-backs (90 seconds)
Prompt: participants took turns sharing what they applied and what they’d do next linked to the module focus.
Measuring impact
What changed on the job
In this graduate leadership development case study, impact is measured through real-work behaviour change rather than attendance or completion.
As a result of Ahead Start, participants reported an average +32% improvement in capability from Communication to Personal Impact, with Influencing rising to +42%.
Measured through self-assessment against the skills framework, this was backed up by a second layer of evidence: StoryTagger’s impact reporting captured short, real-work examples that showed behaviour change in practice – not just attendance, completion or NPS. 100% of participants could identify three specific examples of how they had applied their learning in role.
The reporting also showed a shift from wanting tools and confidence to using those tools in real situations – a clear sign that learning was turning into new habits.
Examples of what graduate participants shared
“I don’t have to be loud to be heard. When I show up clearly and calmly, people listen.”
“When I applied the SPARK model in our team meeting, I was able to share a complex update clearly without preparing much in advance. It made me feel more in control.”
See how you can harness peer learning in your next cohort. Request your demo.
Stakeholder ROI: Proof beyond surveys and attendance
StoryTagger outputs helped programme sponsors and facilitators in three practical ways:
- Evidence of application: structured stories showed how learning was used in real work, with specific examples in participants’ own words, over time.
- Progress visibility and reporting: themes and capability shifts could be tracked across cohorts and timepoints, aligned to programme goals, without relying on post-programme surveys alone.
- Momentum between sessions: highlights and insights could be shared back into the programme to reinforce learning and support next-step actions.
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Why it worked:
A repeatable model for making learning stick
StoryTagger worked because it made learning easy to apply, easy to share, and easy to see – across a global cohort.
- Practice built into the flow of work: short prompts created a simple “commit → try it → reflect” rhythm, so behaviour change wasn’t left to chance.
- Connection at scale: seeing and hearing each other built familiarity and psychological safety across regions – helping the cohort feel “in the room” early.
- Confidence through repetition: every story doubled as communication practice, helping participants build presence from day one.
- Proof stakeholders could trust: real-work examples sat alongside self-assessment results, showing what changed over time.
Commissioning cohort-based development and need stronger evidence of application?
People Untapped and StoryTagger can help you design an end-to-end learning journey that builds connection, behavioural skills capability and credible impact evidence.
