Organisations are set to transform into ‘skills marketplaces’ in 2024, as more employers prioritise employees’ skills over experience, research by Cornerstone has found.
Its Remaking work for a new world: 2024 HR predictions e-book states that employers are increasingly seeing skills as a “currency”, and hiring based on the skills required across organisations will become a primary feature of workforce planning.
The report – which is based on research among industry experts, Cornerstone thought leaders and its employer clients – identifies the trends that are influencing the future of work and what organisations can do to evolve with them.
These trends are structured around the seven dimensions Cornerstone presented in its Talent Health Index research last year: culture and technology, skills strategy, learning and development, content strategy, performance management, talent mobility, and talent reporting, data and analytics.
The report predicts that “what skills do I have?” and “what skills do I want to create the organisational outcomes I need?” will be among the key questions HR professionals will be asking this year.
Cornerstone recommends that organisations will need to create skills “ontologies”, a framework showing the properties of different skills or specialisms and how they relate to each other. For example, this could be used to show how sales skills relate to marketing, administration or project management.
Mike Bollinger, global vice-president of strategic initiatives at Cornerstone said: “By prioritising training, upskilling and reskilling initiatives in 2024 and beyond, the collective self-improvement of employees becomes a shared benefit for the entire organisation.
“I see competency-based succession planning becoming the precursor to strategic workforce planning. Going forward, it’s imperative for HR leaders to embrace skills themselves as a common language to democratise development and execute effective workforce planning.”
Artificial intelligence will be used to a greater extent in learning and development this year, the report says. For instance, it will be used to create customised learning paths that direct employees to bite-sized learning, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of training programmes.
Cornerstone found only 38% of organisations are currently using AI to its full potential in their talent programmes, with companies with more than 10,000 employees the least likely to use the technology.
Cornerstone has published its top HR predictions for 2024, including:
- AI will power more personalised learning
- Companies will prioritise skills over experience
- Companies will transform into skills marketplaces
- Content will be more directly linked to business objectives
- Ongoing conversations will replace annual reviews
- Talent sharing will increase
- Real-time analytics will improve outcomes.
