Today, technology is disrupting nearly every industry at a pace never seen before.

Half of today’s Fortune 500 is expected to turn over in the next ten years. (Innosight 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast)

This disruption has big consequences for jobs and skills.

The reality is that as many as 375 million people around the world may need to change roles and update their skills by 2030 in response to evolutions in technology and changes in business. (McKinsey Global Institute)  We used to talk about word processing and spreadsheet skills, now it’s cybersecurity, big data analytics, and coding. Tomorrow’s workforce needs to be equipped to navigate technologies like AI, blockchain, automation, and new innovations on the horizon.

Skills, and how fast employees and companies can learn, are quickly becoming the competitive advantage — and the biggest risk. This is why 80 percent of executives say they are worried about the availability of key skills when it comes to competing in the future. (PwC 21st Annual Global CEO Survey, 2018) And this is why talent development centered on skills and experiences needs to be a priority for us all.

“Our most important priority in HR is finding talent for the future, not just for now. We’re focused on the formidable challenge of attracting, developing, and retaining employees with skills we haven’t yet determined.”

— Gina Dellabarca, General Manager of Human Resources for Westpac New Zealand

How to reskill at scale

Skills are the new currency and there is simply no precedent for this volume of reskilling. In a tight labor market, in which every company is competing for the same talent, the employee is now in the driver’s seat, not the employer.

The good news? No one has the potential to understand the people and skills needed across the business as much as HR. This is the ideal moment for HR professionals to take charge to create a culture of talent development. To reduce skills shortages by increasing internal hiring and education. To build the workforce of the future from within.

Let’s look at three critical steps to achieving skills success through talent development:

• Understand the skills you have (and potential skill gaps): With business and technology transforming at the speed of light, an understanding of the skills you have and the skills you need has to be a priority now to keep up with the pace of change.

• Build a culture of internal mobility to reduce skills shortage: Career mobility is not only critical to sustaining a great employee experience, but 80 percent of HR professionals believe that a better internal talent mobility strategy would reduce recruitment costs and help them find candidates (and make those candidates productive) faster. (IBM Smarter Workforce Institute) The key is moving from the idea of internal talent mobility into action.

• Develop employee skills through personalized, consumer-grade experiences: Your company’s success depends entirely on having the right people with the right skills doing the right thing at the right time. This is the new HR imperative. But skills development takes ongoing upkeep and maintenance, and it’s important to empower your workers to take action and ownership over their own careers.

SkillDirector can provide you with standard competency models. When used in conjunction with the Self-Directed Learning Engine™, you will understand the skills you have, build a culture of internal mobility, and develop employee skills via competency-based personalized learning.