Embracing Skills-Based Workforce Planning

Labour Market Context

With unemployment at 4.5% and applications per job ad at record highs, organisations have access to broader talent pools than they've had in years. Yet many are still using the same credential-based screening that artificially narrows these pools, requiring specific degrees, years of experience, or industry backgrounds that may not actually predict success. Meanwhile, AI literacy has become the fastest-growing skill in Australia, with 2.8% of LinkedIn members adding AI-related capabilities to their profiles, but traditional job descriptions don't capture this emerging competency or how to evaluate it.

The current moment creates both opportunity and imperative for skills-based workforce planning. The opportunity comes from accessing hidden talent that credential-based approaches miss – mid-career professionals from contracting sectors, career transitioners with transferable skills, underemployed workers with capabilities exceeding their current roles, and non-traditional candidates without conventional credentials but strong abilities. The imperative comes from rapid skill evolution driven by technology, changing business models, and emerging capabilities that traditional credential-based approaches simply cannot capture or evaluate effectively.

For broader labour market context, see Australian Labour Market Update: Navigating Uncertainty in Late 2025. For retention strategies that complement skills-based approaches, see Maintaining Engagement and Retention.

Why Skills-Based Approaches Matter Now

The Limitations of Credential-Based Talent Management

For decades, organisations have used credentials as proxies for capability, degrees as proxies for knowledge, years of experience as proxies for expertise, industry background as proxies for relevant understanding. These proxies simplified decisions but created systematic problems that are becoming increasingly untenable.

Credentials exclude qualified candidates who developed skills through non-traditional paths. The self-taught software developer without a computer science degree, the customer service leader who rose through the ranks without a business degree, the project manager who learned through doing rather than formal education, all may be screened out by credential requirements despite possessing the actual skills needed for success.

Years of experience requirements often don't correlate with capability. Someone with 10 years of mediocre experience isn't necessarily more capable than someone with 3 years of excellent experience and strong learning agility. Yet "10 years required" eliminates the latter from consideration. Experience requirements also disadvantage career returners, career changers, and younger workers who may have intensive relevant experience compressed into shorter timeframes.

Industry background requirements limit talent mobility and fresh thinking. Requiring candidates come from the same industry assumes that industry-specific knowledge matters more than transferable skills and fresh perspectives. This keeps talent trapped in industries and prevents the cross-pollination of ideas and approaches that drive innovation.

Credential-based approaches don't capture emerging skills. How do you screen for AI literacy, digital fluency, or other rapidly emerging capabilities using traditional credentials? These skills are developing faster than degree programs or professional certifications can incorporate them. Organisations relying on credentials miss candidates developing these capabilities through practice and self-directed learning.

Credentials reinforce existing inequities. Access to quality education, professional development, and career opportunities isn't equally distributed across society. Credential requirements can perpetuate inequities by excluding talented individuals who lacked access to traditional pathways through no fault of their own.

The Promise of Skills-Based Approaches

Skills-based talent management focuses on what people can actually do rather than the credentials they've accumulated. This shift unlocks significant advantages:

Access to broader talent pools including non-traditional candidates who can do the work but don't have conventional backgrounds. In the current environment where applications per job are at record highs, skills-based screening helps identify hidden gems among the volume rather than using credentials as crude filters.

More accurate assessment of actual capability rather than proxies that may or may not correlate with performance. When you evaluate someone's actual ability to analyze data, communicate effectively, or solve problems rather than assuming their degree indicates these capabilities, you make better hiring decisions.

Increased internal mobility as employees can move based on demonstrated skills and potential rather than requiring specific credentials for each new role. This dramatically expands internal career paths and enables talent development in ways that credential-based approaches constrain.

More equitable access to opportunities for candidates from diverse backgrounds who may not have had access to traditional credential pathways but have developed capabilities through alternative routes.

Better adaptation to rapidly changing skill requirements as you can identify and develop emerging capabilities faster than waiting for formal credentials to exist and people to acquire them.

Improved retention and engagement as employees see clear pathways to develop skills and move into new roles based on capability rather than feeling stuck because they lack specific credentials.

For how skills-based approaches support engagement, see Maintaining Engagement and Retention.

Building a Skills Taxonomy

The foundation of skills-based talent management is a clear, comprehensive understanding of what skills actually matter for success in your roles. This requires moving beyond vague job descriptions to specific, granular skills taxonomies.

Starting with Critical Role Families

Rather than attempting to tackle your entire organisation at once, start with critical role families where skills-based approaches will have the most impact. These might be roles that are hard to fill using traditional approaches, roles where rapid skill evolution is occurring, roles where you've made poor hiring decisions using credential-based screening, or roles where internal mobility would provide significant benefit.

For each critical role family, convene subject matter experts, high performers in these roles, managers who lead them, and people who interact closely with them. Don't just rely on HR or a single manager to define skills. Multiple perspectives ensure comprehensive and accurate skill identification.

Identifying Component Skills

Break down each role into component skills at multiple levels:

Technical skills are the specific, domain-specific capabilities required. For a software developer, this might include specific programming languages, frameworks, development methodologies, testing approaches, and deployment tools. For a financial analyst, this might include financial modeling, data analysis, specific software tools, regulatory knowledge, and forecasting techniques.

Functional skills are the broader capabilities that apply across roles and domains. These might include written communication, presentation skills, project management, stakeholder management, analytical thinking, and problem-solving. These skills transfer across different technical contexts.

Behavioral competencies are the personal attributes and work approaches that drive success. These might include learning agility, collaboration, resilience, attention to detail, customer focus, and innovation orientation. These are often the hardest to assess but among the most predictive of success.

Leadership capabilities for roles with management or influence responsibilities include developing others, setting direction, making decisions, building relationships, and driving change.

Distinguishing Essential from Developable Skills

Not every skill needs to exist on day one. Distinguish between:

Essential skills that someone must possess when hired because they're required immediately, they're very difficult to develop quickly, or they're fundamental to the role. These become your hiring criteria.

Developable skills that can be learned on the job or through structured development with reasonable investment. These become development plans rather than hiring requirements. Being explicit about which skills are truly essential versus nice-to-have or developable prevents over-specification that unnecessarily narrows talent pools.

Defining Proficiency Levels

For each skill, define what different proficiency levels look like:

Foundation level – basic understanding and ability to perform with significant support and guidance. Someone at foundation level knows concepts and can execute defined tasks but needs help with complexity or ambiguity.

Proficient level – solid capability to perform independently for standard situations. Someone at proficient level can handle most typical scenarios without support and knows when to seek help for unusual situations.

Advanced level – deep expertise to handle complex situations, guide others, and innovate approaches. Someone at advanced level is the go-to person for difficult challenges and develops approaches that others follow.

Expert level – recognised authority who shapes best practices, solves unprecedented problems, and develops others. Experts are rare and typically found only in the most senior or specialised positions.

Not every skill requires expert level. Being explicit about required proficiency prevents over-specification, requiring expert-level capabilities when proficient would suffice.

Creating Common Language

One of the most valuable outcomes of skills taxonomy development is creating common language across your organisation. When everyone uses the same terms to describe skills and capabilities, communication improves dramatically. Job descriptions become clearer. Development conversations become more specific. Internal mobility decisions become more transparent.

Establish definitions for each skill that clarify what you mean. "Communication skills" means different things to different people, written communication, presentation skills, active listening, persuasion, storytelling, cross-cultural communication, technical communication. Being specific eliminates ambiguity and enables better assessment.

Leveraging Existing Frameworks

You don't need to build skills taxonomies entirely from scratch. Numerous frameworks exist that can accelerate your work:

O*NET provides comprehensive skill taxonomies for thousands of occupations with standardised terminology and definitions.

Industry-specific frameworks from professional associations, industry groups, and standards bodies provide relevant taxonomies for specific fields.

Technology vendors of skills assessment, learning management, and talent marketplace platforms often include skills libraries you can leverage and customise.

Consulting firms and research organisations have developed skills frameworks based on extensive research.

Starting with existing frameworks and customising for your organisation is far more efficient than building from scratch. The customisation ensures relevance to your specific context while leveraging the structure and research others have already completed.

Skills-Based Hiring

With broader talent pools available in the current market and comprehensive skills taxonomies developed, you can implement skills-based hiring that accesses hidden talent while improving hiring quality.

Rewriting Job Descriptions

Traditional job descriptions emphasize credentials and experience: "Bachelor's degree required, 7+ years of relevant experience, industry background preferred." These requirements eliminate candidates before you assess what they can actually do.

Skills-based job descriptions flip this:

Start with the outcomes the role needs to achieve rather than credentials or experience. What problems will this person solve? What value will they create? What results do they need to deliver?

Describe the essential skills required to achieve those outcomes using your skills taxonomy. Be specific about technical skills, functional capabilities, and behavioral competencies needed. Indicate required proficiency levels rather than vague "strong skills in..."

Distinguish must-have skills from nice-to-have skills so candidates can self-assess accurately rather than assuming everything listed is required.

Minimise or eliminate credential and experience requirements unless genuinely necessary (licensed professions, regulated roles, positions with true credential requirements). If a Bachelor's degree doesn't actually predict success, don't require it. If 5 years of experience doesn't correlate with capability better than 2 years plus high learning agility, don't require it.

Describe development support available for skills that are developable rather than must-haves. This attracts candidates who have potential but don't yet possess every skill.

Implementing Skills Assessments

The core of skills-based hiring is assessing what candidates can actually do rather than inferring capability from credentials.

Work samples ask candidates to complete tasks similar to actual work. For writers, provide a brief and ask them to write. For analysts, provide data and ask them to analyze and present findings. For developers, provide a coding challenge. Work samples provide direct evidence of capability that resumes and interviews cannot.

Simulations and exercises place candidates in realistic scenarios to observe how they respond. Role-playing customer interactions for service roles, case studies for analytical positions, group exercises for collaborative roles, all reveal capabilities in action.

Skills tests assess specific technical capabilities through validated assessments. Typing tests, software proficiency assessments, language fluency tests, technical knowledge exams, these measure discrete skills objectively.

Structured behavioral interviews use carefully designed questions that require candidates to describe specific situations where they demonstrated target skills. The STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) elicits detailed responses that reveal actual behavior rather than hypothetical answers about what they would do.

Cognitive ability assessments measure learning agility, problem-solving, and reasoning capabilities that predict performance across roles. These are particularly valuable for early-career hiring where candidates lack extensive work experience.

References focused on skills rather than general questions gather specific evidence about candidate capabilities. Rather than "would you rehire this person?" ask "describe how this person demonstrated analytical thinking when facing ambiguous problems" or "how did this person handle feedback and incorporate it into improved performance?"

Evaluating Non-Traditional Candidates

Skills-based hiring particularly enables evaluation of candidates who would be eliminated by credential-based screening:

Career transitioners from contracting industries – With NSW losing 22,100 jobs and certain sectors in decline, talented professionals are seeking new opportunities. Someone from financial services transitioning to fintech, a hospitality leader moving to customer experience roles, a retail manager pivoting to operations, all bring transferable skills that skills-based assessment can reveal.

Career returners who stepped away – Parents who took time for caregiving, people who pursued education or travel, individuals who dealt with health issues, may have gaps in employment but retained or even enhanced relevant skills. Skills assessment evaluates current capability rather than penalising employment gaps.

Self-taught learners – The software developer who learned through online courses and personal projects, the analyst who built skills through freelance work, the marketer who built expertise through side projects, all may lack traditional credentials but possess strong capabilities that skills assessment reveals.

Underemployed workers – With underemployment rising sharply, many workers are in roles below their capability level. Skills assessment can reveal hidden talent currently underutilised. Someone working part-time in an entry-level role may have skills that qualify them for much more responsible positions.

Geographic expansion candidates – Remote work enables accessing talent in regions you wouldn't traditionally recruit from. Skills-based hiring evaluates capability regardless of location, opening talent pools in Victoria with 4.7% unemployment or areas with strong talent but lower costs.

For geographic workforce strategies, see Optimising Workforce Composition and Flexibility.

Balancing Skills Assessment with Efficiency

The concern many organisations raise about skills-based hiring is time and cost. Work samples, simulations, and comprehensive assessments take more effort than screening resumes for credentials and conducting basic interviews.

The key is targeting skills assessment appropriately:

Early screening can still use some credential or experience filters if they genuinely predict success. But make them broader than traditional requirements. "Relevant experience through any path" rather than specific degrees. "Demonstrated capability" rather than years of experience.

Multiple stages with increasingly intensive assessment. Initial phone screens assess basic fit and interest. First-round interviews explore background and motivation. Skills assessments come next for candidates who clear initial hurdles. Final interviews dive deep with top candidates.

Assessment effort matched to role criticality. Critical hard-to-fill roles warrant significant assessment investment. High-volume, relatively straightforward roles need efficient assessment approaches.

Technology-enabled assessment uses platforms that administer, score, and interpret assessments efficiently. This dramatically reduces time investment while maintaining rigor.

Pilot programs start with one or two role families to develop approach, build capability, and demonstrate results before organisation-wide rollout.

The investment in skills assessment typically pays for itself through better hiring decisions that reduce costly bad hires, faster time-to-productivity from better-matched candidates, and reduced turnover when people are truly suited for their roles.

Skills-Based Internal Mobility

The same skills-based principles that improve external hiring transform internal mobility and career development.

Mapping Internal Skills Inventories

Most organisations have limited visibility into skills that exist in their workforce beyond current role requirements. People develop capabilities through education, previous jobs, projects, volunteer work, and personal interests that may not be captured anywhere. This hidden talent represents enormous untapped value.

Skills inventories systematically capture what capabilities exist across your workforce:

Self-assessments where employees indicate their skills and proficiency levels. While self-assessment has known limitations (people over- or under-estimate their capabilities), it provides valuable baseline data about what people believe they can do.

Manager validation adds perspective on demonstrated skills in work context. Managers can confirm or adjust self-assessments based on observed performance.

Assessment results from hiring or development assessments provide objective data about capabilities.

Project and assignment history reveals skills developed through actual work experience. Someone who successfully led a cross-functional project has demonstrated project management and stakeholder management skills regardless of their job title.

Credentials and certifications still provide signal about investment in capability development even if they're not absolute requirements.

Skills interests and development goals indicate where people want to develop, helping identify internal candidates for stretch opportunities.

Creating Internal Talent Marketplaces

With skills inventories established, internal talent marketplaces make opportunities visible and accessible based on skills rather than just job titles or organisational relationships.

Visible opportunities beyond just posted job openings, include project needs, task forces, temporary assignments, job shadowing, mentoring opportunities, and short-term gigs. This creates pathways for people to develop skills and explore areas without requiring permanent role changes.

Skills-based matching suggests opportunities to employees based on their skills profile rather than requiring them to search through postings they may not realise they're qualified for. Algorithms can identify strong fits that humans might miss.

Transparency about skill requirements and development for different opportunities helps people understand what's needed and what gaps they might need to close. This enables informed decisions about whether to pursue opportunities and what development to prioritise.

Manager support rather than barriers for internal movement. Train managers to see employee development and internal movement as success rather than loss. Reward managers for developing people who advance internally. Make it easy and encouraged to support internal movement rather than creating obstacles.

Clear processes and timelines so employees know how internal movement works, how decisions are made, and what to expect. Ambiguous or mysterious processes discourage exploration.

Skills-Based Career Pathways

Traditional career paths follow hierarchical progressions within functions: junior analyst → analyst → senior analyst → manager → director. This model is increasingly obsolete as careers become more fluid, technical expertise becomes as valued as management, and diverse experiences create more value than linear progressions.

Skills-based career pathways show multiple routes to advancement based on skill development:

Technical progression pathways for individual contributors who want to deepen expertise without managing people. These pathways show how skills progress from foundation to proficient to advanced to expert levels and how compensation and recognition advance accordingly.

Leadership progression pathways for people who want to develop people management capabilities. These show skills needed at different leadership levels and experiences that develop those skills.

Cross-functional pathways that leverage transferable skills to move across functions. These show how someone might move from operations to project management to strategy based on developing relevant skills at each stage.

Alternate pathways that recognise there are multiple routes to similar destinations. Rather than single prescribed paths, show options that accommodate different starting points and development preferences.

Development Planning Tied to Skills

Skills-based approaches transform development from vague "professional development" to targeted capability building.

Skills gap identification compares current skills profile to requirements for target roles or skill development goals. These specific gaps become development priorities rather than generic "take more training."

Personalised development plans based on individual gaps, learning preferences, and career goals. Someone with weak presentation skills but strong writing might develop presentation capabilities through Toastmasters, coaching, and low-stakes practice opportunities before high-visibility presentations. Someone with strong technical skills but limited business acumen might develop through business case projects, cross-functional collaboration, and business coursework.

Development resources mapped to skills show how to build capabilities. For each skill, identify training programs, online courses, books and articles, projects and assignments that develop it, mentors who possess it, and ways to practice. This moves from "somehow develop these skills" to clear pathways for building capabilities.

Progress tracking shows skill development over time through reassessments, demonstration in work, and manager validation. This makes development concrete and measurable rather than abstract.

For development approaches that build critical future capabilities, see Investing in Critical Capabilities for the Future.

Implementing Skills-Based Approaches

Starting with Pilots

Organisation-wide transformation to skills-based approaches is overwhelming and risky. Starting with targeted pilots builds capability, demonstrates value, and provides learning before broader rollout.

Select 1-2 role families for initial implementation, ideally roles that are challenging to fill using traditional approaches or where internal mobility would provide significant value. Success in hard cases builds credibility.

Establish clear success criteria for the pilots before beginning. What outcomes would indicate success? Better candidate quality? Reduced time-to-fill? Increased internal mobility? Improved retention? Having clear criteria enables meaningful evaluation.

Provide resources and support needed for success. Skills-based approaches require investment in assessment tools, training for hiring managers and recruiters, time to develop taxonomies and processes. Pilots that are under-resourced often fail not because the approach doesn't work but because insufficient support was provided.

Monitor and evaluate rigorously comparing pilot results to traditional approaches. Are candidates hired through skills-based processes performing better? Are internal moves based on skills more successful? Is retention improving?

Capture lessons learned through retrospectives with participants. What worked well? What challenges emerged? What would they do differently? These insights inform scaling approaches.

Celebrate and communicate successes to build support for broader adoption. Share stories of candidates who were hired through skills-based approaches and are excelling, or internal moves that created value for both employees and organisation.

Building Organisational Capability

Skills-based talent management requires new capabilities across the organization, not just in HR.

Train recruiters and hiring managers in skills-based approaches. They need to understand skills taxonomies, conduct effective skills assessments, evaluate candidates based on demonstrated capabilities rather than credentials, minimise bias that credentials can mask, and make fair comparisons across candidates with diverse backgrounds.

Develop HR business partners who can consult with leaders on skills strategies, support skills-based workforce planning, guide development planning using skills frameworks, and facilitate internal mobility based on skills.

Build analytical capability to leverage skills data for insights about gaps, development needs, internal mobility opportunities, and emerging skills trends. Skills data is only valuable if you can analyze and act on it.

Create technology infrastructure that captures, manages, and makes accessible skills data. This might include skills assessment platforms, learning management systems with skills-based pathways, talent marketplace platforms, HRIS configurations that track skills, and analytical tools that generate insights from skills data.

Addressing Common Challenges

"Skills assessments take too much time"

Target assessment rigor to role criticality. Use technology to administer and score efficiently. Assess most critical skills deeply while accepting lighter assessment of secondary skills. The time invested in assessment is usually far less than the cost of bad hires or missed great candidates.

"Managers don't want to lose good people to internal moves"

Change incentives and culture to reward development and internal mobility rather than hoarding. Make talent development explicit in manager performance expectations and compensation. Celebrate managers who develop people who move internally. Make it easy to backfill positions when people move internally so managers aren't left short-handed.

"We don't have budget for assessment tools"

Start with simpler approaches that require less technology – work samples, structured interviews, practical exercises. Many effective assessments can be developed internally at modest cost. Demonstrate value through pilots which then justify technology investment for scaling.

"Skills are too hard to measure compared to credentials"

Skills are actually more measurable than credentials – you directly assess capability rather than inferring it from proxies. Yes, it requires more work, but it produces better information. Not everything needs to be perfectly measured; material improvement over credential-based approaches is sufficient.

"Employees won't accurately self-assess skills"

Self-assessment is just one input, validated by manager perspective, assessment results, and demonstrated performance. Over time, people become better at accurate self-assessment, particularly in cultures that value honest self-awareness.

Practical Implementation Roadmap

Immediate Actions (Next 30 Days)

Identify Pilot Role Families

Select 1-2 critical role families for skills-based pilot implementation. Choose roles where traditional approaches struggle, hard to fill, high turnover, poor hiring outcomes, or strong internal mobility potential. Secure leadership support and commitment for pilots.

Assemble Skills Taxonomy Team

Bring together subject matter experts for pilot role families including high performers in these roles, managers who lead them, internal HR business partners, and external expertise if needed. Schedule working sessions to develop initial skills taxonomies.

Research Assessment Approaches

Investigate skills assessment options relevant to your pilot role families including work samples, simulations, and tests. Research technology platforms if considering tools. Benchmark with other organisations that have implemented skills-based approaches in similar roles.

Short-Term Actions (Next 90 Days)

Develop Skills Taxonomies

Complete comprehensive skills taxonomies for pilot role families including technical skills, functional skills, behavioral competencies, and proficiency levels. Distinguish essential from developable skills. Create clear definitions and examples. Validate with stakeholders.

Design Assessment Processes

Develop specific skills assessment approaches for pilot roles. Create work samples, simulations, or exercises that assess critical skills. Develop structured interview guides focused on skills. Identify or select technology tools if using. Train assessors on consistent evaluation.

Conduct Initial Skills Inventory

For internal mobility pilots, conduct skills inventory among existing employees. Launch self-assessment using your skills taxonomy. Gather manager validation of self-assessments. Load data into systems that can support internal mobility.

Rewrite Job Descriptions

Create skills-based job descriptions for pilot roles emphasizing outcomes and required skills, minimising credentials and experience requirements, clearly distinguishing essential from nice-to-have skills, and describing development support available.

Launch Pilots

Begin hiring using skills-based approaches for pilot roles. Or launch internal mobility pilots using skills-based matching. Provide close support to participants. Monitor progress carefully against success criteria.

Medium-Term Actions (Next 6-12 Months)

Evaluate Pilot Results

Systematically evaluate pilot outcomes against success criteria. Compare to traditional approaches where possible. Gather feedback from participants, recruiters, hiring managers, candidates, employees who moved internally. Identify what worked well and what needs refinement.

Refine and Expand

Based on pilot learning, refine skills taxonomies, assessment approaches, and processes. Expand to additional role families with high potential impact. Develop organisation-wide skills taxonomy framework even if not fully implemented everywhere. Scale gradually based on capability and results.

Build Technology Infrastructure

If pilots validate value, invest in technology platforms that enable skills-based approaches at scale. Implement skills assessment platforms, talent marketplace for internal mobility, learning management systems with skills-based pathways, and HRIS enhancements for skills tracking.

Develop Organisational Capability

Train recruiters, hiring managers, and HR business partners systematically in skills-based approaches. Create communities of practice to share learning. Develop internal expertise to support ongoing implementation. Build analytical capability to leverage skills data.

Create Skills-Based Career Pathways

Map career pathways based on skills progression for major job families. Show multiple routes to advancement. Communicate pathways to employees. Integrate into career development conversations and processes.

Measuring Success: Key Metrics

Hiring Quality Metrics

• New hire performance ratings compared to credential-based hires
• Time-to-productivity for skills-based hires vs. traditional
• Hiring manager satisfaction with candidate quality
• Retention rates of skills-based hires vs. traditional

Access and Equity Metrics

• Diversity of candidate pools (skills-based vs. credential-based)
• Percentage of hires without traditional credentials who succeed
• Internal mobility rates, particularly across functions
• Employee perception of fair access to opportunities

Efficiency Metrics

• Time-to-fill for skills-based vs. traditional approaches
• Cost-per-hire with quality adjustments
• Assessment efficiency (time required vs. value provided)
• Internal mobility reducing external hiring costs

Organisational Capability Metrics

• Percentage of critical roles with comprehensive skills taxonomies
• Employee skills inventory coverage and quality
• Manager and recruiter capability in skills-based approaches
• Technology platform utilisation and effectiveness

Conclusion: Skills as the Currency of Talent

The shift from credential-based to skills-based talent management represents fundamental transformation in how organisations think about capability, hiring, development, and careers. In the current environment where broader talent pools are available but capability requirements are rapidly evolving, skills-based approaches provide competitive advantage through better hiring decisions, access to hidden talent, increased internal mobility, and more agile workforce development.

However, skills-based approaches work best when coupled with strategic investment in the capabilities that will matter most for future success. Our next and final article, Investing in Critical Capabilities for the Future, explores how to identify which capabilities warrant investment, how to build them effectively, and how to ensure your workforce is prepared for the technological and market shifts that will define the next decade.

The organisations that combine skills-based talent management with strategic capability investment will be positioned to thrive regardless of how labour markets or business conditions evolve.