The 2023/2024 Skills Snapshot Survey report 

The report highlights the benefits of skills-based talent and reward practices, including improved employee retention, enhanced workforce agility and greater flexibility for evolving market demands. It provides recommendations for implementing skills-based talent approaches, such as building a skills foundation, aligning key performance indicators and defining success metrics. We also share the challenges, including data silos, differing skill lists and classifications across different groups. The report concludes with a call to action for companies to move toward becoming a skills-powered organization and provides steps to get started.

The limited but growing use of skills in workforce planning; projects and gigs; and work design suggests companies start with use cases that are simpler and less disruptive. For instance, increasing projects and gigs requires changing how talent flows to work; work design changes what, whom and how work is performed; and workforce planning has far-reaching downstream impacts on talent assessment, development and flexible talent pools. Accordingly, skills-based practices related to employee attraction, development and retention are already the norm. 

Are you looking to take a skills-first approach to talent management, but not sure where to start? Mercer has you covered. Our experts have outlined five key steps to help you get started on your journey towards a more agile and flexible workforce.