A skills-based approach to talent with Workday: PwC

Danielle White

Managing Director, Workday, PwC US

How to start your skills-first journey

Skills-based approaches can help organizations meet their talent needs more quickly, accurately and cost efficiently — by using the people you already have. Driven by machine learning, Workday Skills Cloud is a great solution to accelerate your skills journey and tailor it to your organization.

You just need to overcome the first hurdle: apprehension.

Talk to HR professionals and, chances are, they’re talking about moving to skills-based talent approaches. This is no longer just about HR transformation or plugging the skills gap. It’s about global business transformation — making data-driven decisions to improve organization-wide agility, performance, culture and even trust. But this can be a challenge when teams don't have the right talent or support to help drive this transformation.

At PwC, we’ve been on this journey for years. We recently collaborated with the World Economic Forum on Putting Skills First: A Framework for Action — looking at industry leading practice and future potential. While in Davos for The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, we also joined our longtime partner Workday for a conversation on using AI in a responsible way in the workplace.

The term ‘skills-first’ is increasingly used to describe a new approach to talent management that emphasizes a person’s skills and competencies — rather than degrees, job histories or job titles.

Putting Skills First: A Framework for Action, May 2023. World Economic Forum report in collaboration with PwC

AI can be the skills-first gamechanger

You shouldn’t start your skills-first journey without first talking about AI. It can change the picture — powering skills and role-matching in increasingly accurate and effective ways.

Part of PwC’s $1B investment in AI includes using ourselves as ‘client zero’ — really pioneering the adoption and extension of AI tools. So, when we talk about making your journey less daunting, it’s from our own personal progress.

Our experience includes leveraging GenAI, Workday (including Workday Skills Cloud and Workday Extend) and other ecosystem collaborators. In essence, PwC has been innovating a brand new, AI-driven skills framework — which also helps deliver the key benefits of the Putting Skills First report.

How can AI and Workday shift the paradigm?

GenAI is revolutionizing every job, from the factory floor to the C-suite. It’s even creating new jobs right before our eyes (who had heard of prompt engineering two years ago?) But from a skills perspective, AI isn’t just changing how we imagine roles — it’s revolutionizing how we find and improve the skills that enable this transformation.

So, to drive these AI-powered activities in your applications, you need a job architecture that both aligns to — and is enabled by — your skills data.

Actions for embracing a skills-first culture, policies and mindset

1. Identify current and future skills needs and gaps and map skills to work tasks

2. Articulate skills needs in job descriptions and leverage and recognize innovative skills assessment methods

Actions for adopting a common skills language

3. Co-develop and co-deliver skills-based training programs with industry, learning providers and government

4. Boost lifelong learning and access to skills-based learning opportunities

5. Create skills-based pathways for development and redeployment

^{_{Putting Skills First: A Framework for Action, May 2023. World Economic Forum report in collaboration with PwC}}

It’s time to see your skills holistically

The future is moving away from thinking about jobs as rigid boxes towards thinking about them as a collection of flexible roles and the skills required to succeed in those roles. Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), for example, enables organizations to access data that can help them better understand existing skills within the workforce, help your organization identify and address skills gaps and enable workforce agility as business goals evolve. Workday, with its AI extensions and intuitive tools such as Workday Skills Cloud, can make it easier to see your organization’s skills more holistically, enabling you to understand and access them in a more agile way.

How? Well, the data Workday Skills Cloud generates, combined with your job architecture, can help users understand the component parts of job roles and pinpoint the skills required. Now answers to questions like who has the skills we need, where are they in the organization and where do we need to develop them — no longer feel elusive. Even the value of the role can be assessed.

Shape your skills to your strategy

More excitingly, GenAI doesn’t just see your roles and skills holistically — it can go a step further to understand your journey end-to-end. GenAI can look at your HR and talent management through the lens of your organizational strategy — informing you what skills you may need for the present and future.

For example, Workday Extend and GenAI could be used in tandem to consume strategy documents and help identify skills needed to achieve your goals, the tool can then dynamically generate job descriptions based on your business needs. This makes it possible to take resumés and generate interview questions, review interview transcripts and even provide a sentiment analysis based on your strategy.