AI and the HR Shift To Organizing Work Rather Than Managing Jobs

This article is intended to create a kind of re-engagement with HR and to bring to the attention of decision-makers, including senior management and CEOs of organizations, regardless of size,  the emerging trend that HR is evolving to focus more on "organizing work" rather than simply "managing jobs.” This implies a shift toward understanding the skills and capabilities that employees possess and how they can be better utilized within an organization.

Creating a common language and framework for skills is a key component of this change. This would involve the creation of a skills taxonomy that clearly categorizes and defines the skills and competencies needed in the organization. This would facilitate better communication and understanding between employees and managers about what skills are needed and how they can be developed. However, this is a big challenge (only a small proportion of HR executives say they have implemented a skills taxonomy effectively) and, the question everyone is asking is what is needed to enable this cross-cutting transformation that addresses the entire enterprise and not just HR. 

It turns out that we require the intelligence of data and the enablement of technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), which is facilitating this transformation. AI algorithms can be used to assess and infer employee skills, and then match those skills to the needs of the organization, the positions, and for each individual. This can help identify skills gaps, suggest training and development opportunities, and help the organization better plan its future workforce development. In addition, AI can be used to better understand the work that employees are actually doing, rather than simply relying on job descriptions.

We can also think about introducing the skills passport, which is an important part of the evolution and future of skills management. But what is a skills passport? These would be records of an individual's skills and competencies, and they could be used to match employees with job and learning opportunities and to help employees understand and plan their own skills development.

Overall, this is an exciting and rapidly developing area. However, it is also challenging and will require a significant change in how organizations and HR departments operate. Organizations that can successfully navigate this change will likely be better positioned for the future of work.

Skills intelligence is considered critical business intelligence due to the scarcity of available talent and the challenges involved in finding and hiring workers with the right skills for each position, project, innovation process or to transform the company.  

Skills Intelligence is the concept of how AI has transformed the way organizations can match people with their ideal jobs. Previously, this process was a manual exercise that could take months to complete and costly; there are still skills and competency analysis projects that exceed $500,000, as it requires reviewing the skills, experience, and preferences of employees and then looking for potential opportunities within the organization that match those characteristics, only to become obsolete after a few months.

However, thanks to innovations in AI, this process has been transformed, making it  more efficient and faster. AI can continuously analyze large amounts of employee data and available jobs within the organization and use algorithms to identify potential matches in a matter of seconds. This has enabled organizations to match people with jobs that best match their skills and preferences faster and more efficiently than ever before.

In addition, AI has also made it possible to identify new job opportunities that may not have been previously apparent, which can enable organizations to better leverage the talent available in their company and improve overall efficiency and productivity.

On the horizon is the use of "SkillGraph," a term that refers to a visual representation of the skills of workers in an organization, which can be used by leaders and managers to better understand the skills of their employees and help employees develop their careers. 

This visual representation can be created through data analytics technologies that collect information about employees' skills and experience.

The idea behind SkillGraph is that today's workers want greater visibility into career opportunities and want to know what skills and experience are required to advance their careers. By introducing the use of SkillGraph to the organization's employees, leaders and managers can identify the skills and experience they need to develop to advance to the next phase of their careers, but more importantly, the use of AI opens the horizon to know in real time all the skills that a sector demands and identify more than 250 million jobs and new positions to establish the minimum business capabilities to successfully advance. 

To the end, it is people's ability and vision for transformation and innovation in business that will set the pace for the success or failure of the smart workforce. 

One recommendation would be to use skills rather than jobs to establish who does what work, to build a skills center that integrates SkillGraph and new capabilities for hyper-personalized self-development, and to guarantee people that their development and retraining guarantee them a good working future. 

Reference: With Analysis and Insights from the Deloitte and Deloitte Insights, Global Technology Leadership Study 2023 Series of Four Findings | https://deloitte.com/insights