Overview

Skills | Talent Marketplaces | Learning Platforms

Skills-Based Organizations - Overview

Executives around the world face an immense problem finding the right talent. Four out of five CEOs cite skills shortages as their biggest concern. The global talent shortage is forecast to reach 85.2 million people by 2030, and only 41% of companies say they have the skills they need to deliver their business strategy.

Knowing what talent and skills exist in your organization, including traditional and contingent workers, is essential to planning your business strategy. Skills-based organizations (SBOs) place skills and capabilities at the heart of their talent strategies, unlocking agility and innovation. Deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills and allocating them to the optimal workforce category or automating is a crucial transformation goal to create a sustainable, agile workforce.

Supporting clients to capitalize on the rapidly advanced talent intelligence and workforce automation has led to the rise of SkillTech, Talent Marketplaces, and Learning-Based Platforms to deconstruct jobs into skills, democratize careers, and empower employee learning.

At QuantumWork Advisory (QWA), we guide organizations to understand the new landscape of talent management transition to a skills-based and more agile organization. We review current talent journeys and recommend the best technology for their unique business needs to identify hidden and adjacent skills, upskill, and facilitate seamless redeployment to high-demand areas.

27% of C-Level executives consider themselves highly agile
92% believe organizational agility is critical to business success*

*Source

The Problems of Traditional Jobs

Most companies currently follow a job-based approach to talent development, using a well-established jobs architecture to define levels, grades, career paths, spans of control, the criteria for career progression, and compensation based on perceived job value. The problem is that job frameworks are too rigid for companies operating in unpredictable or rapidly changing skills environments.

Data make it clear that jobs and skills requirements are quickly evolving requiring new ways of managing the workforce:

By 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labor between humans and machines— but 97 million new roles may emerge.*
An international survey found that nearly one in four organizations said their current HR infrastructure was ill-suited to deploy a new strategy to tackle and address emerging skill gaps.**
According to Deloitte Insights, the most fundamental building block of work—the job—could be hampering many organizations. Instead, many are now applying skills-based models to meet the demand for agility, agency, and equity.***

Skills not a Fit
“For employers and HR managers, the problem is similarly complex: Our most recent studies found that more than 70% of all C-level leaders believe their skills are falling behind, and more than 80% of the companies we've talked with worry about not being able to hire the right people.” (Eightfold)

Transformational Impact on How we View and Manage our Workforce

Workforce Planning: A stronger understanding of the skills and experiences present in the total talent pool (internal and external), which can help match people with jobs and projects. Identification of skills gaps, particularly in high-demand or emerging new skills.
Integrated EX: An enterprise-wide approach to skills that spans talent and other important human capital processes, such as learning and development, people analytics, and strategic workforce planning.
Skills as a Common Language/Currency: Greater transparency in talent processes, with skills serving as a common currency for job selection, development and certification, reward, and career progression.
Job Design and Career Pathing: Less rigidly prescribed job tasks to facilitate a more fluid workforce adding spontaneous problem solving and experimentation. The ability to design career paths based on skills and related skills that can help people navigate a career that suits them.
Scalability: Foster high mobility that scales with resources with demand.
Performance Appraisal: Substitute annual performance appraisal by ongoing feedback. Development and evaluation discussions should be separated so that there is time for more focus on the employee’s growth. Further, since work will be organized by projects, leaders will lack complete awareness of employees work and will need to source feedback from multiple sources.
Promotion and Rewards: Provide instant rewards that reinforce desired behaviors when they occur. Promotions should also be clearly linked to results rather than tenure or seniority.

Exciting EMEA Start-Up

TechWolf is a Belgian start-up that provides HR Tech solutions for enterprises to become skills-based organizations.

TechWolf secured a €10M Series A investment round led by Stride.VC. with participation from Fortino Capital, Acadian Ventures, and prior investors, including PMV.

Using AI, their Skills Intelligence platform helps multinationals and governments find, activate, and upskill their workforce by providing insights into skills and skill gaps.

With TechWolf's Skill Engine, they deconstruct workforce elements down to the level of skills and show the intelligent connections between projects, people, and learning that make agile work possible.

TechWolf creates unbiased information on the workforce's skills and empowers employees to take ownership of their careers and close skill gaps by showing learning paths that bring people to their desired destinations.

SkillsTech
Vendor Spotlight

Sample Clients:

We need to change the foundations of how we view and manage our workforce. The common approach to segmenting the workforce is by level and function. However, to become agile it is essential that we segment by skills.

Key Fact :

According to McKinsey, skills-based practices used by Skills Based Organizations “help companies find and attract a broader pool of talent filled with candidates who are better suited to fill these position in the long term. These practices open opportunities to nontraditional candidates who may not have “typical credentials” – as well as women and people of color.