Capital One's CPO Susan Zettergren explains why companies that don't invest in young talent risk falling behind
For Susan Zettergren, Chief People Officer at Capital One Canada, the business case for investing in young talent couldn’t be clearer: companies that ignore upskilling today’s workforce will find themselves less relevant tomorrow.
In a market defined by change and heightened employee expectations, she emphasized that organizations risk falling behind if they don’t evolve in step with their people.
This risk is highighted by a recent Capital One Canada survey, which found more than half of recent Canadian graduates working in business and tech are considering switching employers and 28% feel they don’t have the required skills to progress in their career.
“If you look at global trends with engagement for employees in any industry, any company, you'll see that there's been some downward trend there,” Zettergren says. “So, if you're thinking about really having people energized to work and drive outcomes for your company, there's something in it for the employer and there's something in it for the employee.”
This goes hand in hand with data from Randstad’s 2025 workplace trends report, which showed while over a third of Canadian workers say employers have made strides in skilling support, many are taking matters into their own hands. 32% of employees are willing to invest in upskilling themselves, while 30% continue to see reskilling as something employers should lead.
Despite growing interest, access to training remains uneven. Younger employees and managers are currently seeing the most benefit, but with ongoing talent shortages, organizations can’t afford to limit development opportunities. Just two in five workers trust their employer to invest in continuous learning, especially when it comes to AI and emerging technologies, the report said.
Many are questioning whether their current employers can provide the tools and growth opportunities they need. That puts pressure on HR leaders to not only rethink career pathways but to redesign work cultures from the ground up.
“I don't think that employers or employees that choose to opt out [of upskilling] are going to be happy with their choices longer term,” Zettergren says.
Capital One is committed to bridging this gap and investing in talent development that starts as soon as employees are hired.
“We do a lot around onboarding and upskilling talent,” Zettergren explains. “It lives within our values. It also lives in what we, in a concrete way, offer to associates.”
That includes tuition reimbursement, coaching, asynchronous learning platforms and “Invest in Yourself Day.” Once a month, the company clears calendars and cancels meetings so employees can focus solely on professional development.
“The whole purpose of that last Friday every month is to minimize meetings and give associates a chance to have time to actually focus,” she says.
The results from the Capital One survey shouldn’t surprise employers, but they should concern them. And for Zettergren, it confirms what many HR leaders already suspect. Upskilling isn’t a bonus. It’s a necessity.
“It’s a little bit disappointing that almost a third of folks feel like they don't have the required skills that they need right to progress in their career,” she says. “That just makes me think a little bit back to my early career days and how important it was to feel like that I had the right support, that I had the right people around me.”
For employers unsure of where to begin, Zettergren recommends knowing your audience and what upskilling opportunities employees are really looking for.
“Spending time engaging, however that looks for your company, and making it easy to do those things is important,” she says.
Ultimately, the employee experience doesn’t live in mission statements or slide decks. It lives in the everyday decisions companies make about how people grow, how they’re treated and whether they believe they’re part of something moving forward.
“More and more people will adopt, will engage, and it kind of becomes the story that employees tell each other,” she says. “’Not only does my company pay well and the leadership is good, but we also have x, y, z, which has really helped me out.’”
This is particularly important in the age of generative AI, which continues to reshape the workplace; companies have to help employees adjust, especially those at the start of their careers.
“We know roles will change in companies because of AI,” Zettergren says. “We don't want it to pass us by. We don't think that's right for our employees. We don't think that's right for our customers, either.”
For employers, part of that work involves normalizing the technology and embedding it into the culture in a way that’s neither overwhelming nor patronizing.
“We have policies that we’ve had in place for a while now, in terms of what are the boundaries and how people can and should use generative AI tools within the work environment,” she says. “We have an entire internal process, like a risk and process-based forum to help us make sure that we're identifying risks and caring for the rollout.”
None of it works without intention. Change management is treated as a discipline at Capital One, and Zettergren believes that discipline is what separates performative efforts from real ones.
“Part of it is having the same level of intentionality around managing change that you have around the thing you want to put in place,” she says.
But perhaps most critically, the company tracks sentiment constantly.
“We have a regular routine of surveys, quick hit surveys with some targeted questions, where we check in with our entire associate population,” she says. “We feed that into how we think about what we might want to focus on in the future.”
