Mastering Skills-Based Transformation: The Power Of A Dynamic Job Architecture
Every company faces an uphill battle when it comes to skills: to fill skills gaps, and to match the skills it has inside to ever-changing business demands. 87% of companies worldwide say they are experiencing skill gaps now, or expect to within the next five years.
In large part due to technological innovation, the WEF The Future of Jobs Report 2023 predicts that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years.
Skills-based transformation is essential for companies looking to survive and thrive in this changing talent landscape. We know that the vast majority of business leaders think talent approaches need to evolve to reflect a focus on skills rather than traditional job roles.
Organizations who adopt skills-first practices are 107% more likely to place talent effectively, 52% more likely to innovate, and 57% more likely to anticipate change and respond effectively and efficiently, according to Deloitte. It’s a no brainer.
And a critical component of skills-based transformation is a well designed Job Architecture – a new approach that goes beyond the traditional methods.
Job Architectures: A new approach 🚀
Building and maintaining an accurate, agile Job Architecture is critical for businesses as they take the first steps towards skills-based transformation. Traditionally, managing role and skill data across large organizations has been time-consuming and costly.
Whether tackled in house or with agency support, the Job Architecture is usually fragmented, and becomes outdated almost immediately.
What you need today is a Dynamic Job Architecture; one that brings job family and role information together from other sources on an ongoing basis, such that it stays up to date, reflects the skills needed in any given role at any point in time, and pulls in more than just internal insights to make the data richer – and help your team make better decisions.
With AI, it’s possible to (quickly) create a single source of truth for jobs and skills, and bring in external labor market data, in order to keep information relevant, up to date, contextual to your organization and industry, and – crucially – easily applied and used by your teams.
Applying a Dynamic Job Architecture 🔋
A Dynamic Job Architecture gives talent leaders a view of the skills they need today, and those they need for future roles. What that means is the whole business can:
✨ Supercharge Talent Acquisition efforts
Ascertain your current bench strength and skills gaps, in order to better prioritize hires and make skills-based hiring decisions. Boost the quality of hire and reduce time to hire, and create more efficient TA operations. Plus: make better use of the skills you already have in your organization, and make it easier to place people in suitable roles following expansion, M&A activity or restructuring.
✨ Realize seamless Talent Mobility
When you properly understand what skills are needed from one job to the next, you can build a more flexible workforce. Restructure jobs around changing internal business priorities or external pressures (such as technological innovations) or workforce restructuring – and then redeploy talent to critical projects, as they arise, through skills-focused internal mobility programs.
✨ Upskill effectively (and realize better ROI on L&D)
With a Dynamic Job Architecture in place, you can see the skills you’ll need as roles evolve in the future, and what skills you should be building now to get ahead of the competition. With this information, you can tailor reskilling initiatives and prioritize your Learning & Development investments. Align your talent strategies with the business goals, to create a continuously developing workforce where performance is managed based on skills.
✨ Create more agile Workforce Plans
Plan for the future, with complete knowledge of the skills you need. Get better at forecasting talent requirements to deliver on business objectives, and make smarter decisions when it comes to reduction strategies, and managing your talent overheads. Dynamic job architectures help you unlock workforce insights, which means you can adopt real-time Workforce Planning and stay ahead of the curve.
Without the AI-assisted foundation of a Dynamic Job Architecture in place, it’s almost impossible to understand and maintain the skills-centric view of your people, your jobs, and how these are evolving – a view that is critical to make better talent decisions and retain your best people.
Being able to quickly build a new Job Architecture that stays up to date automatically, based on both how your business and the labor market is evolving, means companies can get better insights on their workforce, hire for skills and potential, and improve mobility and upskilling to stay agile and competitive in an ever-changing business environment.