This Week in Talent (5th October)

Hello from the beautiful Mornington Peninsula. Over the long weekend I stayed local and spent a lot of time outdoors enjoying the beautiful spring weather before watching two incredible grand finals, closing out the men’s AFL and NRL seasons. Congrats to the Pies and the Panthers.

Now back at work, and leading the consulting arm of TQSolutions, I have been considering the talent industry’s future and believe it’s at a pivotal moment in time. Currently, my thoughts are dominated by the potential move from a world of ‘jobs’ to a world of ‘skills’ and what this means for businesses and the talent functions within them. This shift will be transformational and is likely to forever change the role of a ‘recruiter’, for the better in my opinion.

In a skills world, the nature of work itself changes, and teams become more project based and ‘agile’ in their ways of working. The need to understand workforce through a skills lens becomes paramount, as does workforce planning, re-skilling and up-skilling to bridge skills gaps. The rather ‘transactional’ nature of traditional TA is replaced by strategic skills advisory services, primarily focused internally, with an eye on the external skills market.

However, for this to happen we need to see some serious maturing of leader’s mindsets. There must be a recognition that the leader (and organisation) does not ‘own’ the talent/skills. Their role is to engage the talent/skills in meaningful work and support people’s chosen career development (and personal growth) ambitions.

It is not the role of the Talent function to lead this transformation, it will be led by enlightened c-suite members. However, once in motion, the Talent function must mobilise and re-focus its services and activities to better support the business. This will require new capability, enhanced processes and experiences, improved data, new technology and tooling as well as greater convergence of the traditionally siloed TA, TM and TD functions.

I would love to connect and hear from any of you already on this journey especially if you can share any lessons you have learned along the way. Please feel free to connect and message me via LinkedIn.

If this is a topic of interest, then join us for the ATC webinar on the 17^th October titled: TA’s role in transforming to a skills based organisation featuring Claudine Shacklock, Head of Employer Branding at Grab and Matt Collins, VP A-Pac at Beamery.

Is a Skills Passport a ticket to job mobility?

The Albanese Government is considering the introduction of a skills passport for workers recognising qualifications outside of the university and vocational education sectors.

Hyer

I stumbled across this company and resource last week and was amazed how much quality content was available to review. Some interesting companies featured include Canva (employer branding); Johnson & Johnson (re-skilling); Headspace (workforce mental health); Pixar (inclusive workplace); Lululemon (hybrid workforce) and many more!

In the age of ubiquitous AI, what does it mean to be human?

With the explosion of AI’s influence on our world in the past year, there is increasing focus on ‘what it means to be human’ which AI can never replace. Stanford have released the results of recent research which profiles 10 shared attributes and 10 that are distinct to humans.

Where would you invest $1m?

TQSolutions poll – where would you invest $1m if you could only select one of the following: Technology/tool enhancement, Employer branding / EVP strategy, TA/Leader mindset change, Headcount and human capability.

Podcast: How Tech and AI are changing how companies hire employees

Dart Lindsley and Matt Alder – two fantastic people discussing the future of Talent Acquisition in an era of AI and technology transformation. If you are going to ATC2023 in Sydney you will get to see Dart Lindsley who is key-noting on Day 1 of the conference.

Reskilling in the age of AI

A great HBR article on reskilling and new approaches for managers and employees. Re-skilling will become a core part of the talent function’s role and remit so start getting ahead of the curve with your understanding of the issues.  HBR allows one free article to view per month so hopefully you will be able to view this, reach out if you have any issues.