Skills are becoming the currency of dynamic and flexible organisations, sitting at the heart of effective approaches to learning, workforce planning and talent acquisition.
The return on investment (ROI) of investing in a skills-based model is clear. It boosts productivity, employee job satisfaction and retention levels. Investing in skills is becoming essential, not a nice-to-have, as digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based ways of working increasingly come to the fore. According to the World Economic Forum, 22% of existing roles in the workforce are set to be displaced or disrupted by 2030[1] – and a reskilling approach is by far the most cost-effective way to tackle this, costing significantly less to reskill an employee compared to displacing them and hiring someone else.
Common challenges
The challenge many organisations face is how to implement a skills-based approach on an enterprise-wide basis. In particular, workforce planning and shaping through a skills lens is complicated by several questions:
- What will AI mean in detail for the organisation’s skills needs across different departments and functions?
- Is the data available to make informed, granular decisions rather than operating on ‘gut feel’?
- Given inevitable cost constraints, how can return on investment be maximised?
Taking action
KPMG research has shown that Chief Human Resources Officer’s (CHROs) and Learning Directors are alive to the challenge and are keen to act – 60% of CHROs are planning to change their operating model and a similar proportion are altering their employee value proposition (EVP) in response to people challenges. Nearly a third of large enterprises are planning to deploy a talent marketplace to drive talent agility and utilisation.[2]
In this context, we stand at a critical point in the skills and talent journey. The actions that HR and learning leaders take as we enter the AI age will have implications for years to come.
A skills-based model
In our experience working with numerous clients across financial services (and other industries), the organisations who place skills at the heart of every key aspect of talent management, development, recruitment and retention are best placed for success:
This approach gives organisations an improved ability to keep pace with change, unlock pools of hidden talent from within and take a systematic approach to skills supply and demand. For employees, it enhances internal mobility and career ownership, increases personalised learning and development options, and builds higher engagement.
Three focus areas
We would call out three aspects that have especially high potential to help organisations drive an effective skills-led approach. Firstly, talent marketplaces. These are being increasingly widely adopted, and for good reason. As employees enter more data about themselves into marketplaces and engagement increases, talent marketplaces create compelling benefits for organisations and employees alike. The business can match skills to projects and tasks, plan more dynamically and identify key skills gaps; individuals can see open positions that may be of interest to them, take recommended learning courses and modules, put themselves forwards for ‘gigs’ (side projects that will build new skills), find mentors and build their career path. Deployed successfully, a talent marketplace becomes a hub for the organisation’s talent and skills-related data, joining up disparate sources and creating that much-longed for holistic view. As an example, see here for details of a thriving marketplace that KPMG helped Aegon to create.
A second key aspect is learning in the flow of work. Many individuals simply don’t have the time to research what learning resources are available – so a key strategy is to bring learning to them. This may partly be achieved through a talent marketplace, but other methods include building digital assistants into platforms such as Teams that, based on an individual’s activity, can proactively make the individual aware of relevant skills and learning materials available. In this way, they can build their skills organically in the course of their work.
Thirdly, apprenticeship schemes are an effective mechanism that map very well to financial services businesses. Graduate intake remains a staple of the recruitment model, but running an apprenticeship programme alongside this means that, through a series of structured skills-based rotations, organisations can build a pipeline of talent equipped and ready with the skills specifically relevant to business needs.
Given the pace of change in today’s world, skills requirements will continue to rapidly shift and evolve. This makes it more important than ever to establish a model now that sets the foundations for an agile, skills-led approach.
[1] World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025
[2] KPMG Pathfinders HR Research 2022
