About Yzly
Learning belongs where the work happens.
Yzly, pronounced “wisely,” was created to make workplace learning easier, more practical and more human. Most organisations know their people want to grow. Engagement surveys say it year after year: teams want more development, better support and learning that actually helps them in their day-to-day work.
But too often, not much changes.
What if learning sat in the hands of leaders and teams, not just HR or external providers?
The familiar pattern
Good intentions. Leaders and teams left waiting.
A consultant is brought in. A few generic programs are rolled out. HR is asked to “do something.” Learning and Development teams do their best, often producing thoughtful programs, but they are stretched thin and can only move so fast.
Meanwhile, leaders and teams are left waiting.
It should live where the work happens: in conversations, team meetings, shared challenges and everyday moments of growth.
That belief shaped everything we do.
A different learning model
Built for real teams and real work.
Yzly workshops are small, practical learning experiences that leaders can run with their own teams. Every course includes expert-designed guides, resources and activities that make it easier to spark useful conversations, build trust and grow capability—without turning learning into a big, complicated event.
Led by your leaders
Learning is guided by the people who understand the team, the work and the context—not separated from them.
Ready to run
Complete facilitator guidance, practical activities and resources remove the need for professional facilitation experience.
Designed to become practice
Short, connected workshops help teams discuss, practise and apply one useful capability at a time.
Doug Hawkins · Founder & CEO
Experience behind the work
Built from the realities leaders face.
Yzly was founded by Doug Hawkins, an enterprise capability leader, instructional designer and digital-learning practitioner with more than 30 years of leadership experience and over 20 years designing learning, capability and organisational change.
Doug has led capability work for organisations including TELUS in Canada, City West Water, Bunnings, Coles Group, Grill’d and Stockland. His responsibilities have ranged from leading specialist teams to shaping enterprise learning for workforces of more than 115,000 people across Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
His career spans telecommunications, utilities, retail, hospitality and property, with additional project experience across government, engineering, media and energy. Across those settings, Doug has worked where people strategy meets operational reality: leadership and culture, safety, customer experience, organisational change, digital transformation and responsible AI adoption.
That breadth matters. Yzly is shaped by the real conditions in which leaders work—limited time, competing priorities and the challenge of turning good intentions into consistent behaviour.
Doug works with a network of learning, development and business practitioners, drawing on specialist expertise wherever a subject requires it. Every Yzly program brings together current research, subject-matter expertise and evidence-informed learning design, then translates that work into complete, leader-led sessions teams can use without requiring the leader to be a professional facilitator.
From knowledge to behaviour
Research only matters when people can apply it.
Yzly courses are designed as short, connected workshop series that help teams discuss real situations, practise relevant behaviours and put agreed actions into use between sessions.
No jargon. No tick-box training. No bloated programs that disappear after launch. Just clear, practical tools that help leaders build stronger teams, improve conversations and support healthier ways of working.
Our goal is simple