Talent Ecosystems: The Future of Workforce Career Development?

Defining talent ecosystems

Organisations are moving to a new operating model for work and using skills as the main driver for hiring, development and internal mobility. This is called a skills-based organisation and is defined in the following way:

Deloitte:

“a new organisational form” that “places skills and human capabilities at the heart of talent strategies, creating a new operating model for work and the workforce".

Korn Ferry

"A skills-based organisation recognizes that people have a wide range of skills that can be utilised to be successful in various roles. They consider the individual as a whole person and how their capabilities fit with the work that needs to be done both today and tomorrow within their organization".

To build a skills-based organisation, you need to have the right tools in place. Here, what I call a talent ecosystem is important.

This is a cluster/combination of systems working together to deliver successfully on the talent strategy of the organisation.?

Here is how a talent and learning system can work together to form an ecosystem:

Within the talent ecosystem, there are two fundamental components.?

1. Talent experience layer
2. Learning content layer

Let’s dive into what each of these mean before illustrating a talent ecosystem in action.?

Talent experience layer:?

The talent system is the key driver in the ecosystem and the front end/door to skills for all users. This is where your employees go to find skills to develop, and where learning content recommendations need to be surfaced. Here, your workforce can also explore areas like mobility, gigs, mentorship etc. This is the "town square" for skills development in an organisation.

Learning content layer:?

In the talent ecosystem, the learning system/learning content layer needs to retrieve skills taxonomy data from the talent experience layer/talent system and use AI to infer the right skills data and tag it automatically to formal/informal content.?

Here, they want the learning platform to handle skills-based learning and have integrated content libraries to support specific skilling from end users. The learning system needs to also use AI to automate skills tagging, curation and the personalisation of learning in line with the skills of the individual. In essence, the learning system needs to drive a personalised skills-based learning experience (for end users).

Example of a talent ecosystem in action: ?

Referring to the user experience diagram above, there are two layers to the talent ecosystem: Talent experience layer and Learning content layer

To build the talent ecosystem, there needs to be a two-way data flow so that end users can access their relevant and recommended training through the talent experience layer.?

• The talent/skills system is the source of truth for user skill data.?
• The learning system is the source of truth for learning content and learning activity records
• The learning content should be surfaced in the talent experience layer and learners should move seamlessly to the learning platform to provide a unified?experience. The learner should not realise they are moving between layer 1 and 2. It should feel natural and allow them to stay within their “flow of work” throughout.?
• Learner activity should be reflected in the talent system user record (to track progress against skills development).?

How AI can help with the learning content layer:?

Using AI, you can automatically tag courses with skills, which are then surfaced to the right learners. This is critical to achieve the talent ecosystem and deliver learning content based on external skills-data from layer one.?

Below is an illustrative overview of how AI can help with skills tagging in the learning system:

Why Talent Ecosystems Matter

We live in a world where there is a competitive advantage in what I call talent intelligence. It’s all about using relevant data about your people to drive strategic workforce planning decisions.

Talent intelligence comes from 1) understanding your people, 2) understanding gaps within your workforce, 3) putting the right plan in place to close skills gaps.

Talent systems are great at understanding the first two, but need a learning system to actually close the gaps through the right learning experience. ??

This is where the talent experience and learning content layers merge to allow an employee to 1) find their gaps, 2) get the right content to close them and 3) see their progress and track skills gaps.?

Your talent ecosystem is the engine room of becoming a skills-based organisation. Get it right, and you set your organisation up for success in the future.?

Why are organisations building SBOs now?

World Economic Forum: 60% of workers will require training before 2027, and 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.

Manpower Group: In 2023, 77% of employers will experience challenges in finding the necessary talent, increased from 69% in 2021 and 54% in 2019.

Other reasons for building an SBO:

• Pressure for company agility, especially from C-Suite and Investors.
• Increased focus on Repurposing talent more effectively (upskilling, reskilling, cross-skilling)
• Bigger demand for career development from labour force. Loyalty down amongst employees who are seeking greater career progress.

Thanks for joining me down the skills rabbit hole this week. Excited to hear your thoughts in the comments.

-Harald