Transform your workforce through skills-based talent practices
In an uncertain economy with forecasted long-term labor shortages, maximizing the value of your workforce and attracting new talent to your organization is critical. As the world of work continues to change rapidly, more than ever, the ability to transform with it is crucial to success. That’s why embracing skills-based practices has become a top priority for companies — because reskilling is essential to transforming organizations for the future of work. Measuring skills and capabilities objectively bolsters talent acquisition, development, succession and your broader talent strategy. Unlock exponential results today through a focus on skills.
Whether you’re looking to build a strong skills foundation, redesign the way you work or rethink how you attract, retain and develop talent, we can help. Implementing skills-based practices at scale requires collaboration across teams — you’ll need expertise that spans workforce transformation, data and tech products, and digital enablement. That’s where Mercer comes in.
Measuring skills in the age of agile work
A skills-powered approach to talent management is essential for organizations aiming to thrive in the rapidly evolving work landscape. But mapping skills to work is only half the equation. To drive human-centric productivity, mapping skills to people is just as critical.
Best Advance in Practical AI
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Workforce and transformation advisoryStrategic visioning, program design, change activation
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Data and tech productsSkills data, market values and trends, enabling functionality
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Digital enablementHR tech stack planning, deployment and optimization services
Challenges
- We struggle to identify current bench strength and skills gaps to inform skills-based hiring.
- We’re working to restructure jobs around automation.
- Learning and development investments aligned with skills-based talent management are difficult for us to prioritize.
- We want to offer flexible careers across the organization.
The 2023/2024 Skills Snapshot Survey report
How do leading companies reinvent for skills-based talent management?
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Strategic workforce planning
Apply internal and external supply-and-demand skills research data for enhanced insights and redefined talent/skills pools. -
Reskilling
Accelerate reskilling with targeted and personalized skills-based learning pathways and enhanced assessment capability, eliminating laborious current-state analysis. -
Skills assessment
Measure skills and capabilities objectively for talent acquisitions, development, succession or a broader people strategy based on your skills framework. -
Pay for skills
Invest in future skills, and reinvent pay programs with AI-enabled pay decisions based on skill demand, supply and criticality. -
Job and career architecture
To achieve optimal internal equity and external competitiveness, it’s essential to establish a robust career architecture framework with consistent job analysis and job evaluation methodology. -
Performance management
Agile environments require rapid, multisourced performance feedback and assessment to enable targeting of skill proficiency and development activities.
A data-driven approach to pay-for-skills is crucial to your organization’s ability to attract and retain critical talent.
Is your organization ready for skills-based talent management?
Skills-based talent practices continuum
Looking at the workforce through a skills lens leads to increased flexibility
When we compare companies further forward on the journey we do see some differences in mindset and culture
- there is more fluidity in the organisations
- there are examples of moving mid-career and not stepping back
- there is an urgency to bring diverse skills together to solve a problem
However, most organizations are not in a position to fully embrace such a model or to enable it across the full employee population.
The reason being is that many employers’ structures and processes fall on the left side of the screen.
- The traditional employer typically has narrow job definitions, and the work one is asked to perform is not likely to go beyond the duties and responsibilities outlined in the JD. The employee in this environment view their career as a ladder, anticipating moving up in the same team.
- Evolving and leading companies have fostered a more flexible environment where skills are a consideration in work assignments, and when employees think about their career, they understand that both vertical and horizontal movement is valuable – and they are empowered to take the wheel on their own career journey.
- Future focused environments have adopted agile principles in how they organize teams and flow to the work based on their specific skills.
The above is often facilitated by a Talent Marketplace platform
A transformation from jobs to skills though needs an understanding of skills.
And for some of the most sophisticated a way to value skills based on market availability, strategic relevance and price. But attaining this change is hard because we live in a world defined by jobs and experience. Unpicking this in a mature organization can be tough – but the rewards are significant.
- 1 Skills Library
- 2 Skills Map
- 3 Skills Pricer
- 4 Work design
Incorporate skills into your talent strategy quickly and easily with Mercer Skills Library
Map skills directly to your jobs leveraging Mercer Skills Library curated content
Reward the critical skills that are driving impact in your organization
Reinventing jobs for the future of work
