It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way we live, work, and think about the future. Because of this, you likely have a plan to identify and measure the skills you have in your organization, and you probably have teams focused on upskilling in areas where they have gaps.

A quick web search shows that people are thinking about the skills they’ll need in the future. Clicking into search results reveals predictions of what some of these skills might be: business enablers, human, physical and manual, cognitive, and technological.

Yet how do you choose a path for your company’s upskilling strategy when leaders from within your organization ask you how a workplace will know what skills are needed for the future and how those skills can be built.

There are two approaches to answering those questions:

• Data-driven approaches use models to identify a starting point then analyze data to adjust initiatives as needed.

• People-driven approaches crowdsource the skills needed through conversations with those doing the work. Crowdsourcing the data tells the story of what they’re doing.

Data-Driven

This approach starts with your company’s business plan disaggregated into the top skills needed to support it, which results in an organization-wide taxonomy for future skills.

As an example, JP Morgan Chase is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to forecast a future in which skills and roles intersect, with a focus on technology roles. The result of this effort will be increased mobility as well as opportunities for upskilling and reskilling. Specific areas of focus for the initiative are the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related fields on the shift in job skills and the workforce. Past investments by JP Morgan Chase in its New Skills at Work initiative have resulted in strengthened partnerships with educational institutions and improved access to job and career opportunities, which allow for better labor market analytics and industry and employer collaboration.

A note of caution about a top-down, data-driven approach: the competency model can be a trap. While each learning program mentioned above was driven centrally from organizational leadership, each contained an agile, data-driven approach that let leadership review processes and adjust programs as needed.

People-Driven

This approach leverages the data and actions of your employees, resulting in a dynamic folksonomy of sorts that can be used for social learning as well as organizational curation. According to recent Degreed research, 90 percent of workers are confident that they know what skills they need to perform better in their current roles, and 82 percent are confident that they know what skills they need to advance their careers.

AT&T launched an internal talent upskilling initiative in 2016, fully crowdsourced from its people. Managers documented profiles for themselves and their teams, with a view toward the future. As part of the initiative, every manager was assigned a new role and was expected to upskill for it. The initiative had radical results, consolidating roles from 250 down to 80 while increasing flexibility and internal mobility. Individuals were given the opportunity to move within the organization, even as it faced eventual downsizing. This choose-your-own-adventure approach led to many employees staying and growing within the company instead of leaving to develop elsewhere.

Choosing Your Strategy

Deciding on your approach is the first step to building an upskilling strategy at your organization. And no matter what approach you choose, agility is truly your key to success.

As you choose an approach, ask yourself:

• What role does my executive team play in driving a skills-based vision for the future?

• What partnerships do I have to help me drive an organization-wide skills strategy?\]

• Do I have the technology, processes, and culture that support a people-driven strategy?

• Do I have the tools and team to aggregate, analyze, and make decisions on the various data points that could come out of an evolving strategy?

Asking yourself these questions will help you identify the best strategy for your organization as you begin to think about the skills of the future.