Skills-based talent practices
Mercer's skills-based talent practices helps leading companies to reinvent their talent and reward programs around skills.
The 2024/2025 Skills Snapshot Survey report
Benchmarking skills-powered success
In the era of skills-powered organizations, a company’s success hinges on the speed at which it develops and deploys skills to work. By shifting to a skills-powered approach, businesses can drive innovation and productivity while cultivating a culture of continuous learning, adaptability and agility.
As part of the skills-powered journey, employers are progressing with leveraging skills in their talent and rewards strategies. This improves employee retention, enhances workforce agility and allows greater flexibility in responding to evolving market demands.
The 2024/2025 Skills Snapshot Survey report delves into the strategic importance of building a skills-powered organization, including how this paradigm shift unlocks unprecedented potential to position businesses for sustainable growth.
Rising maturity in incorporating skills into talent practices
Across the board, we’ve seen greater integration of skills into talent management practices and improved effectiveness compared to last year. Learning, workforce planning and rewards show the most significant growth in practice maturity.
Bar chart comparing responses for high or very high levels of maturity in various organizational areas for the years 2023 and 2024. The chart displays six categories: Learning, Performance Management, Career Development, Talent Acquisition, Workforce Planning, Rewards, and Projects and Gigs. Each category shows two bars: one for 2023 (in green) and one for 2024 (in blue). The percentages for 2024 are as follows: Learning 30%, Performance Management 28%, Career Development 28%, Talent Acquisition 27%, Workforce Planning 21%, Rewards 19%, and Projects and Gigs 19%. The percentages for 2023 are: Learning 23%, Performance Management 22%, Career Development 20%, Talent Acquisition 24%, Workforce Planning 14%, Rewards 13%, and Projects and Gigs 15%. Overall, the chart indicates an increase in maturity levels across most categories from 2023 to 2024.
Although many organizations are making incremental progress compared to previous years, many others aren’t sure how to get started on their skills journey. We’ve outlined the four essential steps below:
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Define the vision
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Engage stakeholders
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Build the roadmap
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Activate an initial pilot
Ready to get started?
Begin your skills-powered journey to thrive in today’s dynamic business landscape.
About the author(s)
Brian Fisher
Work and Skills Solution Leader
Melba Gant
Skills-Edge Product Manager
Katie Jenkins
Work and Skills Product Director
Heather M. Ryan
Compensation & Rewards Product Category Leader
Peter Stevenson
Go-to Market Leader, Skills-Edge
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