Accelerate Your Journey to Becoming Skills-Driven

The skilling imperative

• There’s no lack of conversation on the importance of becoming a skills-driven organization—and for good reason. Today’s business landscape is evolving rapidly and, as it does, the need to continually reskill talent is only becoming more urgent. Perhaps that’s why 95% of CXOs expect to increase investments in skilling over the next 12 months, according to our latest research.
• But what do we mean when we say that organizations need to be skills-driven? In short, a skills-driven organization operates as an integrated network of human + technology systems that, together, align talent to business strategy and help organizations acquire talent for specific roles more quickly, efficiently and economically. With better talent alignment and acquisition comes greater business agility and more opportunity for people to learn, earn and grow.
• This shift from traditional talent norms to a focus of potential over pedigree makes the most of talent pools, both internally and externally, and allows companies to invest in holistic employee experience. The result? Workers are net better off with future skills—a win for employees and organizations alike, especially as we enter this new age of AI. As Accenture’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Paul Daugherty noted, “We’re entering an era where human capabilities and our human potential is being enabled through technology more so than in the past.”

Technology’s pivotal role

• Make no mistake, the impact of the latest innovations is being felt today. A recent Accenture study revealed that 40% of working hours across industries are being impacted by generative AI. That’s not to say automation can simply take the wheel, however. The opposite is true, in fact. What we’re finding is that these technologies are augmenting people’s roles so that they can do their jobs more effectively while also enhancing their capabilities and productivity.
• For leaders, creating a culture of continuous learning is crucial if they want to foster future tech talent and operate at the helm of a new performance frontier. And yet, only 34% of workers are very confident that their skills will be of use and valued 3-5 years from now.
• It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s a disconnect between leaders’ ambitions when it comes to skilling versus how people feel about their ability to progress. Organizations are talking the talk, but are unsure how to walk the walk—and due to a lack of direction, they’re getting stuck on the first step.
• To bridge the gap, three things need to happen. First, the C-suite needs to be not only aware, but also sponsor and drive this shift to becoming a skills-driven organization. Second, talent development programs and solutions that enable skilling need to be put in place. And third, the technological and data infrastructure needs to be established so that companies can accurately measure their success. Only then will talent be able to catch up with leaders’ ambitions.
• Fortunately, organizations don’t need to wait for a massive transformational overhaul to see results. In fact, many can start building the infrastructure immediately and in a repeatable fashion, so that they’re ready to embark on skilling journeys in support of any transformational initiative.

A top-down approach

• Keeping in mind that decisions rarely happen in a vacuum, it’s only natural to wonder what immediate steps organizations can take to embark on their skilling journey. In my experience, I’ve found that companies most often succeed when the imperative to skill comes from leadership. Not only does it unite the C-suite, it also provides an opportunity for other leaders within HR and IT to lead the charge and become champions for skilling.
• Exceeding even our own expectations, we’ve been able to implement transformational change in as little as two months thanks to our Accelerated Skilling approach. For those looking to get started, here are three steps that can be taken, from senior leadership down to talent:

1.?????? Align members of the C-Suite

Ask yourself: What does it mean to be a skills-driven organization?

• When we speak with leaders about skilling, they’ll often ask us whether it’s in their organization’s DNA to become skills-driven. Let me assure you—every organization is equipped (and highly encouraged) to become a skills-driven organization. To pull it off, though, there needs to be alignment amongst the C-suite.
• Steps to take: Leaders need only a couple hour-long workshops to establish their vision and build a solid, tangible plan for skilling the organization.

2.?????? Develop the talent capabilities

Ask yourself: How do you build skills within the organization?

• Once the C-suite is aligned, the onus is on middle managers to lead the charge. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to develop learning opportunities that drive the future workforce and create the right skills for the business.
• Steps to take: At this stage, directors and VPs can become the heroes of their organizations by executing and measuring the success of skilling initiatives. From there, they’ll want to keep a pulse on skilling and make changes when necessary to ensure all talent is on the right learning path.

3.?????? Map the skills across the enterprise

Ask yourself: How do you ensure the right people always have the right skills?

• Finally, it’s important to recognize that skilling is an enterprise-wide effort that calls on talent to take ownership of their own learning experiences. Fortunately, Workday makes it easy for employees to track their progress and better understand what’s required in their roles, both today and tomorrow. ?
• Steps to take: Given the rapid pace of today’s business landscape, talent will need to be constantly refreshing and reskilling to ensure they’re thriving. Through innovative dashboards and customized learning courses, employees can put themselves in the driver’s seat of the skilling journey.

Skilling accelerated

• Workday is the system of choice within the F500. However, we’ve found that many of these organizations haven’t evolved their configurations to meet today’s business needs or to support future transformations, yet Workday provides the intelligent digital core and continuous innovation to enable this.
• Take Skills Cloud, for instance. This capability allows for a common ontology when it comes to skills, creating a standardized language across the enterprise. It’s a powerful tool, and yet, clients rarely leverage it fully. Why? Because becoming skills-driven is hard. Turning on a solution doesn't simply translate into transformation. It takes harmony across culture, programs and technology to become skills-driven, and we find clients struggle with all three, let alone getting just one right.
• Putting aside the cultural and change considerations, business leaders simply don’t have the processes, technology or data required to undergo this massive transformation. That’s why Accenture partnered with Workday to develop the Skills-Based Approach, a comprehensive solution that captures employee skills from various data sources and calculates their proficiency. What’s more, the skills engine puts data back into the hands of employees through a self-service app that empowers employees to manage their skills, creating a powerful human + machine solution.
• Here’s how it works: Accenture’s AI-driven system pulls data, both structured and unstructured, from various sources across the enterprise to extract skills, related skills and usage details. The data is then fed into the proficiency calculator, which rates an employee’s skill competency on a scale of one to five. When all these skills are combined, they create a holistic profile for each employee. Through the Extend App, employees can manage their skills, view their progress and update their profiles as they grow alongside the organization.
• The Skills-Based Approach is a powerful first step for any organization looking to become skills driven. And yet, it’s just the first step…?
• With Accenture’s Skills Accelerator, we’ve shown clients that they already have the tools needed to start skilling their people in a repeatable fashion. Working in conjunction with Accenture Academy, which maps talent development and learning across pivotal skills, we provide pre-configured skills pathways in a matter of weeks vs. months. That way, when organizations have any sort of transformational need, they can ensure talent is included in that consideration and close the skills gap. That means better outcomes and the ability to compress their transformation.
• By taking advantage of their Workday HCM, our clients can reimagine talent across the entire enterprise and empower them with future tech roles, skills and curated technology learning paths. In doing so, they can gain the inertia needed to move past the seeming complexity of a talent transformation and toward a new performance frontier.?
• Here’s what the typical path to reskilling looks like with the Skills Accelerator:

1. Establish your vision: Review your current talent capabilities and the roles/skills needed for your future tech organization.
2. Build a solid, tangible plan: Define your target re-skilling population, with a clear view of current vs. future skills needed for success.
3. Execute and measure: Distribute targeted role journeys, linked to learning courses and tech pathways. Use tailored analytics for insights on reskilling progress.
4. Keep a pulse. Make changes: Leverage real-time data through Workday reports/analytics to understand your progress and make change interventions as needed.
5. Reskill and refresh: Scale the Skills Accelerator to other parts of the organization where reskilling is needed for transformation and realize continued value.