Skills-First Resource Library

Start with the business problem

The most successful skills implementations begin not with the taxonomy itself, but with a clear business challenge that skills can help solve. This problem-first approach ensures the initiative delivers tangible value and helps secure the necessary resources and support.

When building support for adopting our shared taxonomy, identify urgent or visible challenges where skills data would make an immediate difference:

Talent shortages: "We can't find the data scientists we need at the price we can pay, and don’t know where in the organization to look to pull up existing talent."
Retention issues: "Our best technical talent keeps leaving because they don't see growth paths."
Redeployment needs: "We're shifting business models and need to redeploy 30% of our workforce to new capabilities."
Workforce planning / capability gaps: "We can't accurately forecast our future talent needs or gaps, and aren’t confident we’re hiring for the right capabilities."

For each challenge, you can position implementing shared skill taxonomies as the accelerator that enables faster, more effective solutions:

For talent shortages, pre-validated skill definitions allow you to quickly develop more precise job descriptions, assessment methods, and sourcing strategies based on industry standards – driving alignment across TA, L&D, and the business.

For retention challenges, transparent definitions of the skills workers need in each role can create immediate visibility into growth opportunities across organizational boundaries. If a worker wants to advance, what that will require is clearly stated based on what skills they would need not just in their own firm, but at many of America’s largest employers.

For redeployment initiatives, these skill taxonomies create a clear base from which to define the steady state of work in each role, and identify what changes are needed – whether they are shifts in the skills of workers to bring on new capabilities (such as salespeople moving into a territory management model), or shifts to new roles.

For workforce planning, assess the prevailing market trends for each role. Which skills are growing in demand, and which are falling off? Which skills garner a premium in the market, and which skills show up narrowly in individual roles vs which are transversal across the workforce?

Case Study: How a Major Retailer Rolled Out Skills to Address Critical Daily Talent Needs

One major retailer began its skills journey by focusing on a practical, high-impact challenge: ensuring the right capabilities were present on the store floor during every shift. Store leaders needed confidence that, no matter the time of day, at least one associate with key skills—like wire cutting or tinting paint—would be available to assist customers and complete critical tasks. By mapping these essential skills and tracking which employees had them, this company was able to optimize shift scheduling and improve service reliability. This clear operational win helped build early buy-in for broader skills-based approaches across the organization.

Frame skills as a business capability, not an HR initiative

Executives care about getting leadership buy-in. Show how improved skill visibility drives tangible outcomes:

Reduced time-to-market through faster talent acquisition and deployment
Increased innovation capacity through better skill development and allocation
Lower talent costs through improved internal mobility and targeted external hiring
Enhanced business agility through more flexible workforce planning and deployment

When meeting with executives, use specific examples where insight into workers’ skills throughout hiring, training, performance management, and staffing could help.

Enlist business sponsors to help define what good looks like

Identify leaders who are feeling talent pain most acutely—they make natural champions for skills-based approaches. Involve them in defining success metrics that matter to the business—not taxonomy coverage, but outcomes like reduced vacancies or faster internal mobility Give them early visibility into our taxonomy to build understanding and ownership of the approach

Involve key stakeholders from the start

Identify all the functions that will interact with skills data and ensure representatives are involved early:

Talent Acquisition: Looking for skills to assess and source
Learning & Development: Developing skills through targeted programs
Talent Management: Deploying skills to opportunities and planning for future needs
Compensation: Potentially valuing skills in rewards frameworks
HR Technology: Enabling skills across systems and processes

Decide where to start

When rolling out new features or integrations, starting early is essential.

Successful implementations typically start narrow but meaningful—focusing on high-impact areas where our shared taxonomy can deliver visible value quickly. Early feedback and learnings that focus on a specific area of the business with a clearly defined problem and a faster time to “solution” can build momentum for larger-scale implementations. High-impact business wins over sheer headcount can help avoid limitations in early adoption and communication.

Start with high headcount roles or functions experiencing significant talent challenges:

What roles make up the greatest share of your workforce?
Where is crafting pathways for workers to advance a priority?
Where is the organization feeling talent pain most acutely?
Which roles have the greatest impact on strategic priorities?
Where do you have supportive leaders who can champion the approach?

Set specific, measurable goals for your initial implementation. By starting focused and delivering tangible results, you build credibility and momentum for broader adoption of our shared taxonomy. Each successful application creates advocates who can help expand the approach to new areas.

Skills-First Hiring and Degrees

Skills-First Hiring is generally thought of to describe dropping education requirements from hiring practices where they aren’t necessary; prioritizing a candidate's actual capabilities rather than relying on proxy indicators like degrees. However, too often folks ignore the key term in this movement – skill! As part of any skills-first hiring effort, organizations should undertake an analytical exercise to determine where degrees are truly necessary—whether because academic programs are the primary pathway to developing certain specialized skills (as with many healthcare professions), or because of legitimate regulatory and licensing requirements that mandate specific credentials. By questioning degree requirements and instead focusing on the underlying skills – what do candidates need to be able to do to succeed in this role, regardless of how they acquired that skill? – organizations can tap into broader talent pools, create more equitable hiring practices, and develop more precise talent development pathways.

Rolling out changes with managers and employees

Success with skills-based practices requires focused change management targeting both managers and employees. Drive acceptance and adoption by engaging them from the start:

Speak to self-interest: Show managers from key business lines how a shared understanding of skills will streamline hiring and development; show employees how skills visibility creates clear paths to new career opportunities and recognition.
Create visible champions: Identify and support early adopters relevant to the priority roles who can show practical successes and help make the business case from outside of the HR organization – keep the business lines engaged at each step along the way.
Avoid competing priorities: Coordinate this work with ongoing talent initiatives to avoid change fatigue and ensure focused attention on skills implementation.
Measure and celebrate progress: Track adoption metrics (profiles completed, skills-based hires made) and publicly recognize teams showing measurable improvements in talent outcomes.

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