Unleashing the power of skills to drive business performance
Skills: the new workforce currency
Skills come first
Megatrends are significantly impacting the world of work, reshaping both companies and jobs. Pressure on organisations to cut costs and increase productivity is amplified by the combination of huge technological advances and megatrends, such as social instability, an ageing population and climate change.
This new environment accelerates the need for digital transformation – particularly in the race to harness Generative AI (GenAI). And while disruptive technology can increase productivity, it is only as good as the leaders who identify its opportunities, the technologists who deliver it and the people who work with it every day. And that’s where some companies are coming up short. But when skills and adaptable people adopt the right culture, mindset and behaviours, the results are powerful.
How PwC supports your upskilling journey
Many organisations are finding that their existing upskilling efforts are not fit for purpose: programmes don’t deliver the return on investment (ROI) organisations want or the change they need. It’s a problem that should be solved urgently.
Upskilling has become so valuable to employees that they see it as a differentiator and is a key consideration when it comes to their decision to stay with their employer or leave for another job.
To address this, organisations need to recognise the responsibility they have to their people, embrace adaptability and invest in upskilling and reskilling. The solution to the challenges lies in skills – the new currency of the modern workforce.
Support your skills-first approach
The right HR and skills technology can help you automate processes, identify and predict skills gaps, curate personalised learning pathways for employees and produce valuable insights to support and shape your strategy. And there’s a growing range of partnerships, software and solutions you can employ.
How we can help
We support your skills-first approach by assessing your organisation’s current state against future ambitions, competitor’s strategies and market trends to identify workforce and skills gaps.
Typically, we start by helping you define your organisation’s vision for skills: what do you want to achieve and how can skills support your wider workforce strategy? We also check the health of your existing data to help make sure the outputs are clear and useful. We move on to develop your organisation’s skills taxonomy and help you identify the hot skills that are relevant for you. Then we produce a roadmap and recommendations to get you where you want to be, including a choice of technology partners.
Develop your skills-based organisation
Traditional workforce planning routines and processes are rapidly becoming obsolete. Innovative organisations are taking a skills-first approach instead. This helps them break free from rigid job descriptions and plan their workforce needs around the specific skills that help them create and support value for their customers and stakeholders.
Thinking and working in a skills-first way is becoming a key part of how organisations plan to meet the talent demands of the future. Skills-based organisations also benefit from cost efficiencies as they develop the most valuable skills and reduce duplicated effort across teams.
How we can help
Skills-first practices often call for significant cultural change. To help our clients transform into skills-based organisations, we create plans and programmes to help them shift mindsets and support their teams through change. We’ve been part of the skills-first conversation since it began and have contributed to extensive research and thought leadership in this area, including publications with the World Economic Forum.
Upskill for the GenAI revolution
GenAI offers exciting opportunities for organisations to automate, remove duplicated effort and capture cost savings. It’s also seriously accelerated the disruption of the skills supply chain. Organisations now need a detailed, considered response so they can plan proactively for the future.
Most organisations need to reassess their workforce operating model. This includes defining which skills are the most relevant – now and in the future – and analysing what gaps exist. This can lead to a new view on where the best candidates come from and how they’re assessed. For current employees, there will likely be changes to their career development pathways and the ways that they can upskill and reskill inside the organisation.
How we can help
These questions can open up wide reaching and significant conversations. To help you to embrace the advantages of GenAI, we match our experience in workforce transformation with our technological expertise. Starting with our skills diagnostic, we can help you to design a new skills supply chain and operating model that will prepare your organisation for the coming decades.
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