HR leaders understand that developing employees’ skills is necessary to prepare a company for the future. What few understand yet is how to operationalize the development of those skills.

Begin by reimagining learning and looking for the many places skills are acquired. “Organizations historically have been tracking skills based on the job someone’s doing for the organization, but people develop skills in a variety of ways, through projects, activities, and learning opportunities,” said Jason Cerrato, the senior director of product marketing at Eightfold, an AI-powered talent intelligence platform. “By giving better visibility to the skills that are required and the skills that people have, skills-based organization can be more nimble, adaptable, and responsive, especially as business needs change and fluctuate very quickly.”

During From Day One’s recent virtual conference on reskilling, upskilling, and building a culture of continuous learning, Cerrato and his colleague, Eightfold’s director of customer experience Carly Ackerman, gave a brief, astute presentation, titled “Understand Skills, Unlock Talent,” on how HR leaders can operationalize skill development and propel their companies into a successful future.

Cerrato and Ackerman talked about four external forces pressing organizations to reexamine their talent strategies–organizational complexity, the expanded role of the leader, organization as a safety net, and the war to fill skill gaps–and how these can be turned into opportunities for entrenching skill development in company operations.

Organizational Complexity

Organizations increasingly comprise full-time employees, as well as contractors, freelancers, part-timers, and temp workers. A variety of employee types requires a variety of skill-building methods.

According to a report from the MIT Sloan Management Review, titled “Orchestrating Workforce Ecosystems,” 93% of managers view some external workers as part of their company’s workforce, but just 30% say their organization is sufficiently prepared to manage a workforce that relies on external contributors.

“We’re seeing much wider use of contingent workers and broader adoption of hybrid workforce practices,” said Ackerman. “We’re even seeing some fully remote workforce designs. What we’re not seeing are organizations preparing their managers to support and nurture workers in this totally new environment.”

Nimble companies aren’t waiting for a unicorn candidate to fill a role, noted Cerrato, but are deconstructing specific jobs into their component skills, and hiring a combination of people to meet those needs. When a single person doesn’t own and control all the skills required for a role, it creates the need for more people to learn those skills, spreading the knowledge around.

“It allows organizations to respond to needs more quickly. It also allows for the development of teams more broadly, as well as greater exposure for who’s already on the team and could potentially be upskilled or reskilled and redeployed into other areas,” Cerrato said.

The Expanded Role of the Leader

Many companies are under-planning for succession. Eightfold ran a survey of 260 HR leaders and 1,000 employees and found that although respondents believe that identifying high-performing talent for promotion is a priority, 64% said succession planning is focused on only the top jobs, and 44% said they’re succession planning only once per year. This is short-sighted and can cause a company to fall behind.

“If you aren’t going deep enough into the organization with your succession planning, or with your skills and analysis, you’re likely missing the emerging skills that you should be tracking,” Cerrato said. “If you’re only engaging in planning once a year, and jobs are changing so fast that in less than five years they will look very different, you only have two or three cycles to identify, plan, and get it right before the profile may change completely.”

The Organization as a Safety Net

“Workers want to feel that they can trust their leaders and organizations with their well-being, and that means both in the workplace as well as out of the workplace,” said Ackerman, describing the dramatic shift in the employee-employer relationship that has taken place over the last two years.

Employees now expect their employers to prepare them to adapt to and excel in the quickly changing job market. Skill development increases “transparency and understanding of how people can grow their careers, what’s expected of them, how they’re measured, and maybe even how managers and leaders view and evaluate talent,” Cerrato said. “Help people create aspirations, but manage expectations.”

When employees know what skills they need and the proficiency they need to achieve for promotion, it helps them plan for the future and “reduces the feeling that they are spinning their wheels when they think they’re doing everything they should, and they’re not getting these opportunities. That creates frustration.”

Putting the Skills to Good Use

Once a company helps employees map and gain the skills they need, those employees should see their hard work applied, or they may bounce. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, employees who feel their skills are not being put to good use are ten times more likely to be looking for a new job than are those who feel their skills are being put to good use.

To reinforce learning and give employees the chance to flex their newly developed muscles, Ackerman and Cerrato recommended “democratizing skills” so that employees have a say in their development, by way of tools like skill marketplaces. “Give workers the keys to their own careers,” said Ackerman

And finally, cultivate enthusiasm for skill-building across the organization, not just among HR, so that company culture rewards upskilling. “It’s imperative that organizations embed skills throughout the entire talent lifecycle all the way from hire to retire,” said Ackerman. “Skills can and will become the fabric of an organization, tying the work, the culture, the value, everything, together.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight, Eightfold.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.