Careers paths are no longer linear

It’s all about skills now. Within any vertical, the jobs are changing. Industries used to be very defined. Take the role of an accountant, for example. They first start as an accountant, then move up to an Accountant Two. Then, a Senior Accountant, a VP and then retirement. Today, jobs aren’t that linear and they’re merging all the time. Your skills are what defines your career. But today, these industries are converging. GM, for example, is a car manufacturer. But, with the introduction of the electric vehicle, it’s more of a technology company. As these industries converge, you have to reinvent your company. With that, you have to reinvent the skills of your people.

The skill sets for each position are changing and it’s hard for HR departments to keep up. If skills are changing all the time, and each of us has thousands of skills, it gets overwhelming very soon.

Reskilling and upskilling are the future of the workforce

Right now, employees are in the driver’s seat. They’re looking for skills development and opportunities to grow in their careers. If they don’t have this, they will leave.

A skill could be as simple as operating Excel. But, how you use it makes a big difference. Two people may know how to operate Excel, but one might be an accountant, and the other might be a researcher. The context matters in those skills, and those are capabilities.

Reskilling is a way of helping people develop and grow. With that comes loyalty and you’ll end up retaining more people.

Penelope Sur discusses the transformation that DICK’S Sporting Goods underwent in 2020. As retailers faced shutdowns, they had to redesign how stores operated. They worked on reskilling store managers to transform stores into mini distribution centers.

Instead of selling to customers, employees were putting orders together. Then, when stores reopened for curbside pickup, managers had to reorganize stores again. Upskilling and reskilling aren’t always about digital and technical skills. They can also relate to skilling people to do the job they have to do today.

Using AI to upskill talent

The idea behind Eightfold’s talent intelligence platform is to use AI to provide better talent guidance and diversity.

Kamal Ahluwalia asks,

• What are my employees capable of doing today?
• How do I provide a personalized upskilling path for each one of my employees?
• If I need to recruit talent, how do I avoid wasting money?
• How do I become more diverse and inclusive with my company?
• How can my talent strategy keep up with my business strategy?

The essence of the talent intelligence platform is how to do that at scale. Take this example of succession planning. If you’ve only been doing it for the top 10% of your employees, AI helps you deliver this for everyone.

Understand the market so you can turn specific roles into future-ready roles

Understand what your business needs and then use that to fine-tune the jobs. Our platform accurately predicts the next two roles over the next five years for an individual.
Make it easy for them actually to get there. Provide that path for everyone to grow as your company evolves.

Eightfold collects billions of data points of people. The platform can figure out the skills someone has not only for their current job, but what they’ve done before. HR managers can use this to figure out what skills someone may have that may be of interest for another job. This solves a common problem with large organizations. They don’t know what skills they have at large or what people want to do. Employees also don’t know what opportunities they have.

Eightfold is a gold mine for HR managers to identify what skills employees have. Specifically, what skills they can apply in a different area of the business. This allows companies to look at talent in a holistic way and be transparent.

Two key indicators of success are turnover and promotion rate. Less turnover means people are happy and staying in-house. A high promotion rate means that a company is upskilling in the right way and fueling its pipelines. However, there is no end to upskilling and reskilling. Once you begin to upskill employees, they will want to continue growing in their careers. This means that it is a never-ending process.