At 51风流SuccessFactors, our have conducted five years of research to understand how skills can be effectively incorporated into HR strategies. After speaking with 278 HR leaders and surveying 9,432 global employees and managers, we鈥檝e identified to integrate skills into your people practices to become a skills-focused organization. Let鈥檚 explore these approaches and the technologies that can support them.

1. Skills-Implied Approach

In a skills-implied approach, organizations use traditional criteria like candidates鈥� or employees鈥� previous job titles, educational background, and past experience to make decisions instead of using skills data. Here, work is centered around job roles, and decisions about hiring and pay are based on job titles and levels. Learning and development is tailored to current roles, and promotions follow standard paths tied to credentials and tenure. Workforce planning tends to focus on short-term headcount needs, with minimal use of skills data for deeper analysis.

This approach is best for roles requiring specific certifications or highly specialized skills that are either externally regulated or require extensive training, such as lawyers, certified public accountants, and pilots.

In terms of tools and technology, job architectures can help clarify roles and align jobs based on the type of work performed. For example, the job profile builder in 51风流SuccessFactors solutions helps manage job elements such as descriptions, experiences, qualifications, skills, competencies, behaviors, education, and certifications. It can offer a flexible, intuitive way to identify and share job description components across an organization.

2. Skills-Included Approach

In a skills-included approach, work is organized around job roles with an emphasis on a few key technical skills. Hiring focuses mostly on traditional criteria like education but includes some skills assessment as well. Pay is generally based on job title and level, though skills might impact bonuses. Learning and development targets skills that are crucial for current or future roles. While skills are considered in workforce planning and reported in broad terms, they鈥檙e not connected with other data sources for deeper insights.

This works best for roles where required skills remain mostly consistent, but the prioritization and application of those skills evolve over time, as in, for example, sales and people management.

Recruiters can use AI-enabled recruiting tools to consider an applicant鈥檚 technical and professional skills during the hiring process. For example, the solution鈥檚 AI-assisted applicant screening can provide a skills compatibility score, allowing recruiters to view how well an applicant鈥檚 skills match job requirements. Candidate profiles include details on exact skills matches, additional relevant skills, potential skills, and missing skills to help recruiters quickly and effectively screen the best applicants.

Learning management systems can support targeted skill development for current roles. , for example, can offer AI-driven learning recommendations and a dynamic search feature that filters by criteria such as duration, mobile availability, and specific skills. This helps promote continuous learning and can guide employees in developing skills for advanced proficiency levels. Additionally, offer over 1,250 expertly curated learning paths aligned with high-demand skills and competencies. These include areas like AI and generative AI, cybersecurity, data management, leadership, first-time management, and performance and culture. Learners can refine their skills through various methods, including reading, watching, listening, and active practice.

3. Skills-Led Approach

In a skills-led approach, jobs are defined by a mix of technical and professional skills. Hiring looks at a range of skills, along with traditional criteria. Pay is linked to both the skills employees bring to the table and their performance. Learning and development is customized based on skills data and personal interests, helping to create personalized plans and internal mobility opportunities. Workforce planning becomes strategic, focusing on closing gaps between current and needed skills, and skills analytics are used to dive deep into skill levels and how they connect with other data.

This is best for roles where critical skills are specific or uncommon but proficiency can be inferred from adjacent skills, such as in marketing and operations.

Thinking about tools and technology, skills platforms can be useful to support this approach by tracking and analyzing skills across the workforce. The 51风流SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub, for example, uses an AI-driven framework to integrate skills data from multiple sources, enabling organizations to make data-driven talent decisions. In addition, learning platforms provide development opportunities tailored to individual skills and career goals. For example, offers AI-driven recommendations and peer suggestions for personalized learning. Skills tagging and the search for skills help to foster a habit of curiosity and a culture of continuous learning. Additionally, talent marketplaces like can offer experiential learning opportunities through AI-driven suggestions for mentors, short-term assignments, dynamic teams, and job openings.

4. Skills-Based Approach

In a skills-based approach, jobs do not exist 鈥� instead, work is organized entirely around the skills required to complete it. Hiring is all about evaluating skills instead of sticking to traditional criteria. Pay is tied to the skills employees currently have, with bonuses for skills that will be valuable in the future. Learning and development focuses on preparing for future skill needs, and internal mobility is driven by moving employees where their skills are most needed. Workforce planning is strategic, looking ahead to forecast what skills will be needed, and skills analytics keep track of trends and how skills connect with other business data.

This works for roles that rely more heavily on technical skills, roles that use certain tools or processes that are common across organizations or industries, and roles where skills can be gained outside of an educational setting, like HR, IT, and finance.

Integrated talent management platforms take care of all aspects of skills development and deployment in this approach. With , organizations can use an AI-driven, unified skills model that covers everything from recruiting to learning, performance, and succession planning. The 51风流SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub helps organizations get a clear view of their workforce by linking individual skills, strengths, and preferences with the right people and experiences across the platform. This can make managing skills throughout the employee lifecycle much easier and more effective.

As organizations work to weave skills into their HR strategies, understanding these four approaches can help them create a skills-based plan that fits their unique needs and goals. Whether you鈥檙e starting with a skills-implied approach for specialized roles or aiming for a skills-based framework for more dynamic functions, the key is to align the strategy with your organization’s specific context and objectives.

By exploring these approaches and using the right tools and technologies, organizations can build people practices that boost efficiency, transparency, and overall success. Finding the right mix and approach for your specific needs is key to unlocking the full potential of skills-based management.

to dive deeper into our skills research. Want to see how focusing on skills can unlock an organization鈥檚 potential? about Erie Insurance鈥檚 journey to becoming a skills-based organization.

By shifting towards a skills-based approach to talent acquisition and development, companies can build a workforce that is not only capable of meeting current demands, but also equipped to navigate future challenges effectively. Here are three strategies for building a dynamic organization with a skills-based approach to talent.

1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Skills

The first step in implementing a skills-based approach is to identify the key skills that are crucial for the organization’s success. This involves analyzing the current and future needs of the business and understanding the skills that are in high demand in the market. By prioritizing these critical skills, organizations can focus their hiring efforts on candidates who possess or have the potential to develop these competencies.

With the 51风流SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub, organizations can have the power and simplicity of a single skills model from recruiting, onboarding, learning, and development, all the way through to performance and succession.聽It helps to better understand, build, and leverage the skills of workforces. It can connect individual skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences to both people and experiences throughout聽51风流SuccessFactors solutions.

By creating a comprehensive overview of the skills available within the organization, managers can identify gaps and areas for improvement. This information can inform talent development initiatives, such as training programs or job rotations, to help employees acquire the necessary skills to excel in their roles. For example, within the talent intelligence hub there is a team growth portfolio view, which allows managers to quickly assess skill gaps and search for prioritized skills within their teams.

2. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning

Building a dynamic organization requires a culture that supports continuous learning and skill development. Organizations can encourage employees to enhance their skills through internal training programs, mentorship opportunities, and access to external resources. By creating a learning environment where employees are motivated to upskill and reskill, organizations can ensure that their workforce remains adaptable and competitive in a rapidly changing market.

AI-enabled learning platforms can deliver personalized and adaptive training programs based on individual skill gaps and career aspirations. with embedded AI can give organizations a wide range of capabilities that help enhance a learner鈥檚 experience with relevant recommendations that are unique to each learner and based on their needs and interests. In addition, has AI-driven recommendations to help match employees with assignments, career opportunities, mentors, and more. This solution considers not only qualifications but also skills, experiences, and preferences, so that organizations can ensure better talent alignment and engagement.

3. Embrace Flexibility and Adaptability

In a skills-based approach to talent management, organizations need to be flexible and adaptable in their recruitment and development practices. This means being open to hiring candidates with transferable skills and potential for growth, rather than focusing solely on specific job titles or qualifications. This can be made possible with technology that supports skills-based hiring.

With , skills can be aligned to job requisitions and skills-based candidate evaluations. This can allow hiring managers to view rankings of candidates and determine the best candidate based on their skill proficiency. In addition, recruiters can leverage generative AI capabilities to help enhance job descriptions, including the proper skills and competences, which helps recruiters hire the best talent for a role. By embracing a more flexible approach to talent acquisition, organizations can build a diverse workforce with a wide range of skills and perspectives, driving innovation and creativity.

A skills-based approach to talent management can help organizations build a dynamic and resilient workforce that is equipped to thrive in today’s fast-paced business environment. By prioritizing critical skills, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and embracing flexibility in recruitment and development practices, organizations can create a competitive advantage through their most valuable asset 鈥� their people.

To learn more about how to build a dynamic organization with a skills-based approach to talent, register for this聽 on Thursday, April 25, at 1:00p.m. EST.

Christina Russo is a global director of Product Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.

To understand the future of employee potential, the for 51风流SuccessFactors hosted interviews with 57 HR leaders from 51风流customer organizations and conducted a survey of 1,401 individual contributors from around the globe. The research focused on defining, assessing, and utilizing potential.

Expanding the Definition of Employee Potential

Before an organization can assess employee potential, they need to define it. Across the HR leaders we interviewed, definitions of employee potential fell into three different categories: individual attributes, ability to take on a certain role in the future, and current performance. Most HR leaders struggled to find a definition of employee potential that their organizations would accept, understand, or apply universally and consistently. According to the surveyed HR leaders, an expanded definition of potential would give them a more comprehensive understanding of their workforce鈥檚 potential; enable managers to better understand, discuss, and realize their team members鈥� potential; and ensure that employee potential practices are more inclusive of all employees.

Improving the Assessment of Employee Potential

The research uncovered many challenges in the process of assessing employee potential, including what is measured, how it is measured, and who is involved. The top challenge in assessing potential was rater subjectivity, or raters using their gut feelings, opinions, or biases to inform their assessments rather than the organization鈥檚 definition or criteria. Survey data from employees suggest that HR leaders should be concerned about this bias: about one-third of employees (30%) feel their organizations鈥� potential practices are unfair.

One way that organizations can minimize bias in assessment of potential is by leveraging an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered skills foundation like the talent intelligence hub. The talent intelligence hub powers and can enable organizations to better understand, build, and leverage the skills of their workforces. By understanding individuals鈥� skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences, organizations can make data-driven talent decisions and minimize biased decision-making.

AI can also assist in creating personalized development opportunities for employees based on their potential. By knowing an employee鈥檚 strengths, skills, and aspirations, AI can recommend targeted training and development opportunities that align with their potential growth areas. , powered by the talent intelligence hub, can surface AI-powered recommendations, such learning courses, project assignments, mentors, and internal roles, that can help nurture and retain high-potential talent.

Another challenge that was uncovered in the research is that assessments are missing valuable perspectives on employee potential. Our research suggests that managers do not know as much as they want about their direct reports鈥� potential. This indicates that the manager鈥檚 perspective must be supplemented with other sources.

According to the HR leaders that we interviewed, peers鈥� opinions of an employee鈥檚 potential are rarely included 鈥� only two of the 44 organizations we worked with included peers in a 360-degree assessment of employee potential. According to employees, peers are a valuable data source and are as aware of their potential as their managers are. Having a solution like can optimize this process significantly by using 360-degree reviews to help capture a more balanced and complete view of employee evaluations, including peer reviews. Using the 360-degree review forms, skills can be accessed and rated to highlight areas of achievement and opportunities for growth. The selected skills, together with their ratings, are then updated in the employee鈥檚 growth portfolio.

Using Employee Potential More Effectively

In general, our research suggested that HR leaders currently use potential data to make informed talent decisions in succession planning, career pathing, and performance management. However, HR leaders struggle to use employee potential data consistently across different HR practices. The talent intelligence hub can drive an organization鈥檚 entire learning and talent strategy and help use potential data more effectively. Organizations benefit from having a single skills model that covers recruiting, onboarding, learning and development, performance, and succession. With a holistic view of the workforce based on skills data from multiple locations, they can make data-driven and can more easily identify and utilize potential.

HR technology can enable organizations to assess potential to make more informed and objective decision-making when it comes to talent management and development. Organizations that can understand and ignite the potential of their workforce will not only realize their business objectives, but also create a positive experience for all employees.

For additional insights on employee potential, read the full report, 鈥�.鈥�

Christina Russo is global director of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.

To help understand this evolution of the people manager role, the for 51风流SuccessFactors hosted interviews with 31 HR leaders from 51风流customer organizations and conducted a survey of 731 people managers and 716 individual contributors from around the globe. Based on the research findings, below are six ways organizations can improve current people managers鈥� performance and experience with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions.

Utilize Co-Leadership Models

Organizations look to people managers to execute important initiatives and people practices, leading to an overload of responsibilities. Implementing co-leadership structures, even for a short period of time, can reduce a people manager鈥檚 role overload and provide individual contributors with a valuable experiential learning opportunity.

One way to provide an experiential opportunity is through , advanced capabilities available as part of 51风流SuccessFactors solutions that can help create and manage cross-functional teams that exist beyond traditional hierarchies. reported that 66% of employees who had participated in a dynamic team felt a positive impact on their career, leading to higher engagement. Using dynamic teams can help organizations utilize co-leadership models for projects while also accessing individual contributor potential and incorporating those insights into future succession plans.

Update People Manager Job Descriptions

Many organizations have not updated their formal job descriptions for people managers to accurately reflect changes to their roles, leading to unclear performance expectations and ineffective systems for developing and selecting people managers. One way organizations can streamline this process is through generative artificial intelligence (AI)聽in the 51风流SuccessFactors Recruiting solution. Hiring managers and recruiters can fine-tune job descriptions with generative AI, which allows them to incorporate supplementary content, identify biased language, and help ensure alignment with business requirements. Instead of starting from scratch every time a new position is created or requirements are updated, recruiters and hiring managers can use AI to help draft job descriptions faster and stay in their normal flow of work. And more importantly, the final content is more meaningful, inclusive, and competitive 鈥� presenting a clear and accurate view of the role to attract a larger pool of qualified and interested candidates.

Rethink Career Architecture and Pathways to Advancement

Without other options for growing, gaining status, or increasing compensation, employees will seek people management roles even if they are not suitable for or interested in this type of role. Developing alternative pathways for advancement, such as specialist career paths, for high-performing individual contributors ensures that employees are entering people manager roles for the right reason 鈥� to manage people.

Sharing career architectures more broadly can also improve managers鈥� awareness of internal mobility opportunities, which they cited as a top challenge. Talent marketplaces, like the solution, can improve visibility into development and growth opportunities within the organization. It can provide AI-driven personalized recommendations for learning, mentors, internal roles, and dynamic teams. This allows employees to have experiential learning opportunities and can provide them alternate career paths.

Implement Succession Planning for All

Everyone agrees that people manager roles should become more exclusive, but that also means talent pools will become shallower. Implementing succession planning at all levels of the organization allows organizations to identify 鈥渉idden鈥� people manager talent. When developing succession plans, consider that a people manager does not always need to be replaced with an existing people manager 鈥� and that a people manager鈥檚 next role does not always need to be in management. The solution can make this process easier by helping employees expand their skills and advance their careers with visibility into continuous development dialogue, mentoring opportunities, and AI-powered career planning. It can also optimize succession planning, making it scalable to place the right people in the right roles and helping to secure the 鈥渉idden鈥� people manager talent.

Create a Community for People Managers

People managers consider staying engaged, feeling included, and managing their well-being to be top challenges. Creating a people manager community provides this crucial workforce segment with social support, which research has shown to be a positive driver of the people manger experience. This also offers the organization a clear channel to host two-way communication with people managers. One way to foster a community for people managers is to leverage the solution, which is a personalized digital workspace that helps support and encourage collaboration. People managers can create their own community and connect with each other, allowing for more engagement, sharing of best practices, and improvement in the overall employee experience.

Leverage Technology

Cloud HR technology can help support the strategies recommended here and solve many of managers鈥� most pressing challenges. With 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, organizations can put their people at the center of everything and create AI-powered experiences that can support current people managers while using talent intelligence to help uncover and develop the managers of tomorrow.

As the expectations of people managers from both employees and organizations undergo constant evolution, the role of people manager will increasingly become more 鈥減eople-centric鈥� 鈥� focusing on support, fostering development, and nurturing a positive culture. It鈥檚 important that organizations use the right HR technology to deliver engaging employee experiences, increase productivity, and drive better business outcomes.

For additional insights on the evolution of the people manager role, read the full report,聽“.”

Christina Russo is global director of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.

As the future of work continues to evolve, organizations are tasked with building a dynamic and competitive workforce to stay ahead. Adopting a skills-based approach to talent management helps to identify, develop, and retain top talent. By shifting the focus from job titles and degrees to a comprehensive understanding of employees’ skills, businesses can have a more accurate and efficient evaluation of talent across all levels. This is where the power of the talent intelligence hub comes into play. With the right skills deployed to the right tasks, you can anticipate workforce changes and drive business agility and growth.

The talent intelligence hub can enable organizations to better understand, build, and leverage the skills of their workforces. It can connect individual skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences to both people and experiences throughout 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. By having talent intelligence integrated in 51风流SuccessFactors HXM Suite, customers can have the power and simplicity of a single skills model from recruiting, onboarding, learning and development, all the way through to performance and succession. 

The talent intelligence hub makes it possible to build a skills-based organization by:

• Uniting skills and other data to create a holistic picture of your workforce: Understand the skills of your workforce with a portable, open framework that combines skills data from multiple sources to help support data-driven talent decisions.
• Making it easy for employees to build their individual skills portfolio: The growth portfolio provides skills recommendations that come directly from data within 51风流SuccessFactors solutions as well as third-party skills data sources. Employees can describe themselves by including their aspirations, motivations, styles, and preferences. In addition, managers can use the team growth portfolio to help spot skills gaps quickly and assign skills for team members.
• Finding the right candidates quickly: Get assistance with candidate screening through system-generated candidate evaluations based on the skills required for the job.
• Enabling relevant learning and development: Surface personalized recommendations for upskilling based on skill gaps and roles employees aspire to have in the future. Intelligent recommendations include assignments, mentors, and dynamic teams to fuel ongoing growth.
• Empowering employees to take charge of their career: Career development experiences are connected and driven by the growth portfolio, including career pathing and predictions based on skills intelligence.

Delta Air Lines, an early adopter of the talent intelligence hub, is building a dynamic, skills-based experience for continuous employee learning using the talent intelligence hub in . Individual employees have a growth portfolio, which is a profile that includes their current skills and competencies mapped to formal and informal learning opportunities within and outside the organization, including AI-powered recommendations.  

鈥淲e are incorporating disruptive technologies like our AI-driven skills ontology that automatically incorporates industry trends with embedded intelligence,鈥� said Tim Gregory, managing director, HR Innovation and Workforce Technology, Delta Air Lines. 鈥淲e can say which skills are most important to Delta Air Lines and the employee can easily combine those with their current capabilities, strengths and styles, and aspirations to create a personal career path. All of the content is based on Delta-specific skills and personalized to each employee鈥檚 career goals.鈥�

With the talent intelligence hub, organizations can gain a holistic view of their people, a necessary foundation for building a future-ready workforce.

To learn more about how AI-powered talent intelligence can help skills-based organizations, register for this聽, to be held on November 8, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. EST.

Christina Russo is global director of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.