Creating and sustaining digital transformation is critical to keeping pace in today’s workforce. But finding the right talent to help you get there can be difficult as CIOs and IT departments take on more responsibilities to move their organizations forward.
To ensure they’re ready for what’s next, it’s critical for CIOs and IT to partner with the CHRO and HR to use a skills-based lens to look at talent. With the right technology and operating model, IT shifts to best serve the organization through increased performance.
In addition to defining a sustainable landscape for this work, this report shares six ways CIOs can best partner with HR, including:
IT is at the epicenter of creating and sustaining digital transformation. As the chief information officer, you are responsible for everything from protecting your organization from cyber threats to keeping pace with relentless technological changes, including the rapid growth of AI. Budget, automation, ROI, compliance, customer expectations, governance, enablement — your responsibilities grow each year while the technical talent you need to do this work becomes harder to find. But not all hope is lost. With your background, you’re likely a big supporter of using data to reimagine your business. A PwC Pulse Survey showed that 47% of CIOs and CTOs are “prioritizing data platforms as a key part of business model reinvention initiatives.”
It should come as no surprise that you want to see a data-first approach to any new products or technologies — and HR tech is no exception. That’s why your first step should be partnering with your CHRO to test and implement new software in your HR tech stack.
This partnership makes sense when you consider that you rely on HR for recruiting and retaining valuable tech talent, while HR depends on your team for tech, processes, and services. It’s a strategic, mutually beneficial relationship that can take your organization from reactivity and talent scarcity, to proactive measures and ongoing success. But effectively partnering with your CHRO requires a fundamental shift in how you operate, one that uses a skills-based lens to look at talent within IT and the broader organization. With the right technology and operating model, you and your CHRO can deliver organizational transformation that leads to increased performance for years to come. Here’s how to get started.
If you’re struggling to find the right IT talent, you’re not alone. In PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, 45% of CEOs believe their companies will not be viable within 10 years if they stay on the current path.
The right talent — especially those skilled to work with new tech like AI — will help organizations make the transitions necessary. The challenge will be finding and retaining these employees.
“These talent shortages come at a particularly critical time for businesses,” states the World Economic Forum in its report with PwC, Putting skills first: A framework for action. “With many of them challenged with reinventing their business models in response to a range of external and internal drivers ranging from economic and geopolitical uncertainty to stakeholder and competitive pressures.”
These future roles are defined and dictated by rapid advancements in technology. Today, digital skills have a shorter half-life than ever before, with some technical skills down to 2.5 years. With the latest wave of AI, including the impact of GenAI tools like ChatGPT, approximately 300 million jobs could be affected. In addition, the WEF predicts that 23% of jobs will change within the next five years, with 44% of workers’ core skills being disrupted.
As a result, many organizations are adopting a new operating model that focuses on what people can do. “A skills-first approach focuses on whether a person has the right skills and competencies for a particular role, rather than having the right degree, job history or previous job titles,” the report continues. “It means that businesses get the skills they actually need for a particular job, but more than that, it democratizes access to good jobs for those people who have the competencies but not the right formal qualifications for a role.”
The biggest value of a skills-based organization lies in its flexibility. With a real-time understanding of skills, you are equipped to keep pace with rapid change — and even gain market share — by instantly understanding which skills are in-house and which skills are rising or falling in your workforce and your competitors’ workforces. Armed with those insights, your HR leaders and hiring managers can make datadriven plans to build, buy, or borrow talent — that is, upskill, hire, or contract out work.
But making this change requires not only a fundamental shift in the way your organization approaches work but also in the technology that empowers HR.
