Infographic: Start Your Skills-Based Journey on the Right Path

Start your skills-based journey on the right path.

Why companies want to become skills-based:

57% more likely to anticipate change and respond effectively
52% more likely to innovate
47% more likely to provide an inclusive environment
98% more likely to retain high performers
~90% of executives say they are now actively experimenting with skills-based approaches

-Source: Deloitte

Most organizations are inclined to start with a skills taxonomy:

45% of companies have a skills taxonomy
47% of HR leaders have identified skills needed for specific jobs, only 28% have mapped skills to employees
8% of organizations are using AI to infer skills, while 22% have no formalized process for capturing skills

-Source: Mercer

Challenges of deploying and managing a skills taxonomy:

Building requires:

Resources with expertise
Time to build, test, deploy
Ongoing maintenance to ensure relevance

Buying requires:

Budget
Assessing skills libraries
Adding your company’s unique skills to the model

Skills collection and verification hurdles:

How will you collect and map employees’ skills? What if only 10% of your workforce completes their skills profile?
How will you ensure self-assessment surveys, performance reviews, and peer feedback aren’t biased?
How much additional budget and time will you need for skills-based tests or professional assessments?

One skills taxonomy vendor “typically collects 50-200 skills per employee” which means a manager with 10 employees “will have 500-2000 skills to validate.”

Ongoing maintenance requires:

Monitoring performance and skill development
Getting feedback from employees, functional leaders, and L&D
Tracking learning and training completion rates
Measuring the impact of applying new skills

“ The amount of effort it takes to build and maintain taxonomy updates is wasteful because as soon as the model is built, the skills and technologies have already changed. SeekOut’s AI tracks all our employees’ skills and allows them to update in real time.”

-Cari Bohley, VP of Talent Management, Peraton

Read the full case study of Peraton

When will a taxonomy deliver on its full value?

It can take:

6-12 months to assess, design, calibrate, and publish a skills taxonomy model
3-5 years to map and create learning content to fulfill the model
3-6 years to realize the full value

-Source: Chief Learning Officer

With AI, there’s a better way. Adopt an AI-assisted dynamic skills system to get a holistic view of your workforce’s capabilities and growth potential.

Go beyond keyword matching and understand skills in context
Save weeks or months of work integrating talent data, mapping skills to jobs, and enriching skills information
Use skills to inform strategic initiatives like market analysis, recruiting, internal development, workforce planning, and competitive positioning

Where do you start?

Global analyst and thought leader Josh Bersin instead recommends “falling in love with the problem, not the solution.”

Identify a specific business challenge to solve with a skills-centric approach
Get buy-in and support for this smaller project to prove ROI and build momentum
Learn which skills data, systems, architectures, people, and processes are most helpful
Then scale efforts to the broader organization

Ask yourself: “If we decide the solution is a skills taxonomy, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?”

Companies are most likely to address skills gaps through:

33% Hiring new employees. Skills-based hiring promises a deeper and more diverse talent pool, but requires shifting away from screening based on traditional academic credentials and experience.

29% Developing skills. Leading companies have evolved their training, reskilling, and upskilling to focus on job mastery, career pathing, and talent redeployment.

19% Mobilizing existing talent. Talent marketplaces can enable gig work and attract internal talent to new roles.

-Source: Forrester

Identify your talent problem and choose your path

Address a talent shortage or hard-to-fill roles with skills-based hiring.

Employees without a 4-year degree tend to stay 34% longer than employees with a degree
Job posts that highlight “responsibilities” instead of “requirements” get 14% more applications per view

-Source: LinkedIn

Overcome a skills gap with internal talent through redeployment or upskilling.

-Source: BCG

Empower employees with personalized career development.

High-performing, dynamic companies: