Phillips 66 Chief Learning Officer: Always align learning strategy with business goals

Multinational energy company Phillips 66 is amid “a transformation to be the leading downstream integrated energy provider” in the world.

For Chief Learning Officer, Phil Rhodes this transformation is exciting because it “really hinges on an investment in our people” –  all 12,600 of them globally.

The message from the CEO Mark Lashier is that people are at the center of Phillips 66’s future business strategy.

In an exclusive interview ahead of his appearance at UNLEASH America 2026, Rhodes shares the investments that Phillips are making in its people and their careers to really “enable that integrated business strategy”.

Read on to get the inside track on how HR and learning decision-making at the energy giant serves the business.

How the shift from roles to skills at Phillips 66 supports business goals

Transformation is where Rhodes shines – “I love change and the challenge” he tells UNLEASH – which is good news given he is leading the transformation of the learning function at the energy giant.

Over the last 18 months, Phillips 66 has shifted from being a role-based organization to being skills-based. This transition aims to enable the business strategy by being proactive, not reactive, when it comes to skills and careers.

This shift requires investment in skills and job architecture, as well as a skills taxonomy.

Rhodes is aware that when it comes to skills-based models, it is easy to “get tied up in the taxonomy”. Therefore, Phillips 66 has taken a simpler approach by focusing on three enterprise skills that are future-focused, which it believes will support and enable the wider business transformation.

The three skills in question are: AI, continuous improvement, and business acumen.

These involve “knowing how your role adds value to the company, leveraging technology and AI, and a continuous improvement mindset,” Rhodes explains.

The energy giant has an engineering foundation where safety and reliability are paramount to our success. By shifting from roles to skills “we’re trying to enable our workforce to build careers that transcend roles by personalizing learning to the employee and their career aspirations”.

This is why, in addition to the three enterprise skills, people can pick one or two skills they want to focus on, and leverage Phillip 66’s brand new interactive learning platform – Learning Central.

Now employees can find opportunities through Learning Central that are personalized to them and their own career goals, accessible in the flow of work in one, easy to use location.

Phil Rhodes, Chief Learning Officer, Phillips 66.

HR must be in ‘service to the business’

Rhodes acknowledges that it has been a culture change and mindset shift for Phillips 66 to move from role-based to skills-based.

Success came from Rhodes’ team building relationships and “collaborating across the organization” with leaders at all levels, “from executive to mid-level to frontline”.

“We’ve elevated the partnership with leaders within the business units”, creating “strategic alignment” and ensuring that learning and HR are not just delivering learning assets, but acting in “service to the business”.

This alignment with the business is absolutely “critical”, in Rhodes view. His believes that rather than focusing on conversations about whether HR has a seat at the table, HR’s priority should be acting truly in service to the business and enabling the enterprise strategy.

If you do that, “they will ask you to show up – they need our skill set, they need more design thinking and adoption of new skills”. The key is tying learning and development to business strategy, and then “showing your value back to the business with data”.

Rhodes adds that the learning and HR functions at Phillips 66 have “touched 90% of leaders in the last 18 months with some sort of investment” to turn them into change champions.

This ensured they truly understand how to communicate with their people “how this [new skills-based] approach enables their continued development”.

Ultimately, this work has shifted the mindset across the business that “leaders are the true enablers across the organization – not HR”.

“Continuing to work in the leadership capability space” is top of Rhodes’ 2026 to-do list.

He and his team will continue to support leaders to “feel confident to lead with new skills and new capabilities” not just in theory, but in practice in their everyday jobs.

Also high on Rhodes’ priorities for 2026 is AI. The learning function is already seeing great success with AI – it is enabling four fold quicker output of learning assets, saving almost $1 million in time to develop, design and deploy learning to Phillips 66 employees.

Top of mind this year is investing in AI Central, an internal AI platform, created in partnership with IT and tech, that exists in a closed, secure environment.

Rather than mandating AI use, Phillips 66 has identified 50 champions from its business units who will upskill and reskill in AI, as well as experiment with AI Central to find new use cases and ways to drive efficiency within the business.

As a result, Rhodes and Phillips 66 believe AI usage will gain momentum “as these champions start working with their leaders and really identifying the top three or five processes you want to work on”.

This is a business strategy that involves a bottom-up approach to AI innovation, rather than top-down – aiming to improve skillsets, mindsets and toolsets around AI to drive continuous improvement for employees and the business.

Phil Rhodes, Phillips 66 and UNLEASH America 2026

Want to learn more about skills-based learning and the decisions required to make it successful? You’re in luck! Phillips 66’s Chief Learning Officer Phil Rhodes will speaking at UNLEASH America 2026.

Rhodes is excited about the Las Vegas show – he can’t wait to have “strategic, forward thinking conversations” with both his learning peers, but also vendors.

It’s not too late to join us for UNLEASH America, March 17 to 19 2026.