20+ CHROs talk about the skills-based organisation in Amsterdam

Earlier this month twenty CHROs from some of the world’s largest companies (including KLM, ING, Firmenich, Aon Group, Booking.com, GrandVision, Coca-Cola, KPMG, and TMF Group) met in Amsterdam for the third edition of SKILLS /by TechWolf.

TechWolf was delighted to welcome Ina Gantcheva, Human Capital Partner at Deloitte as moderator. Our panellists included Camiel Selker, CHRO at Optiver, Mieke Van de Capelle, CHRO at Firmenich, Luigi Maria Fierro, Head of People at Clarity AI and Andreas De Neve, CEO at TechWolf.

Through bringing together the viewpoints of more than 20 leading voices in the HR space, this is what we learned:

Takeaway 1: Employees want the best experience

We’re used to a seamless experience when we scroll our smartphones, shop online and message our friends. Why isn’t it the same at work? As Mieke Van de Capelle, CHRO at Firmenich stated, “A personalised, seamless employee experience is no longer a nice-to-have, today’s employees expect it. Organisations that fail to meet this will suffer from lower productivity, frustration, and attrition.”

Attendees agreed that employee experience is becoming a priority for their leadership teams. The secret? Using skill insights will create a personalised experience that enables employees to do their work with greater information, efficiency, and satisfaction. In other words, they’ll get to use HR technology that’s actually valuable to them.

Takeaway 2: Drive business value through skill-data

“Skills are the DNA of any organisation.” Luigi Maria Fierro, Head of People at Clarity AI explained, “It gives a common language across the organisation, so everyone can be focused on where best to deploy talent for business value.”

Because skills touch every part of an organisation, the decision to work with skill-data should not be in one department (like L&D or talent acquisition). The vision needs to be shared across the business. It’s no longer just an HR thing.

Takeaway 3: Get your foundation right

With organisations managing work in a more agile (project and task-driven) way, skills are rapidly becoming the baseline to manage work. But how can you set this baseline in the first place? Attendees agreed on one major catalyst: using technology to do most of the heavy lifting. Skill-intelligence solutions work to build and maintain the flexible framework needed to manage work demands through skills. Giving you more time to focus on the insights and actions needed.

Takeaway 4: Get clever with your learning and development

Employers are facing a stark situation, to the tune of $8.5 trillion in potentially lost revenue if they fail to upskill enough people to plug skill gaps. The good news is that skills insights and personalised learning are a perfect match. As Andreas De Neve, CEO at TechWolf explained, “Skills-based working allows organisations to have a direct impact on personalised training, and moving people into the right positions internally and externally.” Mieke Van de Capelle pointed out how this fresh approach will additionally improve the employer brand.

Takeaway 5: Creating productive and fulfilling jobs for all

With skill-data informing every part of your talent and learning, employees get more autonomy to shape their roles based on their goals and interests. That ties into Corporate Social Responsibility. In fact, Goal 8 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals states that organisations need to “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. Understanding skill-data is an important piece of achieving this.

Takeaway 6: Building trust

A skill-based approach needs full transparency. It needs everyone to understand why it is being implemented and how it will affect employees. As Andreas De Neve explained, “Giving employees full ownership of their data is step one. Step two is ensuring everyone understands how technology is being used to infer and analyse their skills. Everything needs to be completely transparent and explanatory to build trust in the skills-based organisation.”

Many aspects of an organisation’s success rely on having the right skills in place, at the right time. That’s why the skills-based organisation is such a powerful concept. “HR is rapidly evolving into a more proactive, strategic function. With expectations and demands rising sharply, the HR function needs to be armed with the right data to make impactful decisions. Skill-data is proving to be a critical part of the puzzle.” Andreas De Neve summed up.