Business leaders are increasingly making skills a top priority for their organizations as they strive for agility in a complex world. However, many are running up against a looming skills gap that threatens to undermine business continuity. In fact, the predicts that 44% of workers鈥� skills globally will be disrupted in the next five years. Organizations cannot afford to simply wait and see how their industries will be affected; the risk of being left behind in the marketplace is too great. 51风流SuccessFactors鈥� 2024 HR Trends research reveals the costly choices that organizations must now navigate to acquire new skills 鈥� whether to build, borrow, buy, or bot.
, a global aluminum and renewable energy company based in Norway with 33,000 employees in 40 countries, is one example of an enterprise that is on a journey towards becoming a skills-based organization. Jeanine Fremstad, Norsk Hydro鈥檚 global lead for Skills and Learning, explains why the company is taking a proactive approach to skills development and learning: 鈥淲e need to keep up with the evolving landscape of workforce skills to remain competitive and at the forefront of our industry.鈥�
Upholding a long-standing tradition of sustainable industrial development, Norsk Hydro has ambitions to pioneer the transition to 鈥済reen aluminum鈥� powered by renewable energy by the end of the decade. To get there, the organization decided to take a structured approach to skills and learning by undertaking a pilot project using 51风流SuccessFactors solutions.
Fremstad says the initiative is essential to Norsk Hydro’s business strategy and to attract and retain people. 鈥淲e need to know what skills we already have in the company in order to know what skills we need to attract. We also need to know what skills we need to develop,鈥� she says. 鈥淏eing able to offer attractive learning and development opportunities is key to retaining people.鈥�
She offers a straightforward assessment of where the organization stands and why change is necessary: 鈥淥ur internal research shows that one in three employees are unsatisfied with the opportunities for professional development, future careers, and equal opportunities. And we just think that鈥檚 not good enough; therefore, we started on a skills transition journey.鈥�
Selecting a Trusted Partner for AI-Driven Skills and Learning
In April 2024, Norsk Hydro began a pilot to offer its workforce access to AI-driven skills and learning recommendations for their professional development. With 100 employee participants in various countries, the company鈥檚 HR team has purposefully set the bar for success high. 鈥淲e believe that for Hydro as an organization, success will mean we will see improved employee experience and engagement, reduced attrition, and that we will have better insights from data for workforce planning,鈥� Fremstad says.
Norsk Hydro selected 51风流as its trusted technology partner and joined the 51风流Early Adopter Care program because of a shared vision for people-centric skills and AI-enabled learning. It is working closely on the project with 51风流partner , taking advantage of its Skills Transformation Suite to speed innovation.
Transitioning to a Skills-Based Organization
The first step in Norsk Hydro鈥檚 skills journey was to build the company鈥檚 skills library based on a curated skills library from an external provider. The AI-assisted curation process analyzed Norsk Hydro鈥檚 job architecture and 33,000 job titles and identified likely relevant skills from the external skills library. As a result, approximately 4,000 skills relevant to Norsk Hydro were mapped against job families. The central project team is working to validate and refine these results.
Next, Norsk Hydro used 51风流SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub to help gain the power and simplicity of a single skills model from recruiting, onboarding, learning, and development through to performance and succession. The talent intelligence hub can connect skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences to both people and experiences throughout 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. Each employee has a growth portfolio of skills, which helps empower them to own their learning and career development. Employees can also manually add role-specific skills and skills of interest for their development. Norsk Hydro is applying a trust-based approach that allows employees to maintain their skills profiles and build their development plans based on their prioritized skills. While certain skills may need to be validated and assessed for legal compliance requirements, the employee generally may decide their proficiency levels for most skills.
As a third deliverable in the project, Norsk Hydro updated its internal development process to ensure that skills are an integral part of the leader-employee dialogue. It aims to tighten the connection between skills, goals, performance, and learning.
Also, Norsk Hydro recently implemented the new integrated learning experience from 51风流SuccessFactors Learning. Embedded AI can enhance the employee鈥檚 experience with relevant skills-focused learning recommendations that are unique to each employee based on their needs and interests. Norsk Hydro鈥檚 offering of learning opportunities comprises a broad set of both internal and third-party channels. On the organization鈥檚 new learning homepage, all courses are now automatically tagged utilizing TalenTeam鈥檚 Skills Transformation Suite, so that relevant learning to close skills gaps is easy for employees to find and access.
The project team has taken away some good learnings on the journey to becoming a skills-based organization. For example, Fremstad recommends taking the time to validate the skills library to ensure the correct level of granularity for skills and establishing only one skills library to make certain each employee has a single skills profile. Different vendors use different skills taxonomies, which can cause problems when integrating them. She underscores that it鈥檚 important to constantly work towards delivering the best user experience possible.
A key element to the success of the pilot is continuously testing and collecting feedback from users, she says. Pending a successful pilot, Norsk Hydro鈥檚 long-term ambition is to implement the solution 鈥� offering AI-driven recommendations to help match employees with assignments, career opportunities, and mentors 鈥� and a broader rollout of the talent intelligence hub to all employees. Employees will benefit from having a 鈥渟ingle pane of glass鈥� overview for all learning and development opportunities across the organization.
Elevating Skills as the Red Thread in HR
Norsk Hydro is building a skills-based organization rooted in a learning culture that will ultimately deliver benefits to employees and leaders alike. Employees will gain the autonomy, leadership support, and growth mindset to set them on a path of lifelong learning and development, so that they have the skills they need to build their careers and ensure future employability. Leaders will benefit from having data-driven insights that support workforce planning and match the right people with the right task to achieve business goals. They will also be able to attract and develop talent by offering a more compelling career proposition that includes skills growth and re-skilling.
鈥淲e believe by doing this,鈥� Fremstad says, 鈥渨e are creating the foundation for a skills-based organization by starting with learning and development. Long term, we would like to see skills as the red thread throughout our HR processes.鈥�
Find out about solutions and the integrated learning experience from 51风流SuccessFactors Learning.
