What is a shared skill taxonomy?

A shared skills taxonomy is a structured, consistent framework for describing work in terms of skills—shared across roles, departments, and organizations. Unlike traditional job descriptions that bundle diverse requirements into opaque titles, a skills taxonomy focuses on the core abilities you need from workers in a given job – lending better insight into what can be observed, assessed, and trained. 

The Skills-First Working Group convened 11 of America’s largest employers to rigorously vet shared skill profiles for some of the most critical roles in the US economy. The result was a set of skill profiles for each role that include: 

• Top Skills: Identifies critical capabilities for specific roles based on actual hiring market data and employer input, providing companies with precise terminology for job advertisements and candidate assessments.
• Prevailing Market Trends: Analyzes skill demand patterns across industries using publicly available data to highlight which capabilities are growing or declining in importance for each role, and which skills tend to earn a premium in the market. 
• Shared Skill Definitions: Provides context-specific skill definitions to drive internal alignment on what each skill means, and demonstrates how the same capability manifests differently across various roles.
• Proficiency Standards: Establishes consistent skill mastery levels (basic, intermediate, advanced) with clear behavioral indicators that translate across organizations and industries to clearly define role requirements and assess capability. 

Unlike proprietary internal skill models, our shared taxonomy uses common language that can be understood across organizational boundaries. This standardization enables benchmarking, supports talent mobility, and connects internal practices to the broader talent ecosystem.

Why is this important?

The business world is experiencing a fundamental shift in how work gets done and how talent is managed:

• Accelerating skill shifts: Over the five-year period from 2017-22, more than a third of the top skills for the average job changed entirely (source). With the advent of GenAI in the workplace, these shifts are bound to happen even faster. 
• Talent shortages: More than half of HR leaders see skills shortages as a top threat to their business (source) – clearly signaling that it’s not about headcount but the capability of that headcount that are of top concern for business needs. 
• Rising mobility expectations: Employees increasingly expect clear growth paths that aren't limited to traditional career ladders.
• Workforce transformation: Organizations need to rapidly redeploy talent as business priorities shift.

Traditional approaches to addressing these challenges—where each organization builds its own skill language in isolation—create unnecessary complexity and dramatically slow implementation. Organizations that build proprietary taxonomies typically invest heavily in staff time to develop these resources before obtaining practical value, and the resulting frameworks at times lack internal consistency, external validation, or market alignment.

The extensive validation process among these major employers ensures that these shared skill taxonomies reflect actual work requirements across diverse contexts, use language that resonates with managers and employees, and capture both common patterns and industry-specific nuances. 

What this playbook covers

This implementation guide will walk you through:

• How to use our taxonomies to drive adoption across the talent lifecycle
• Practical implementation steps across different stages of organizational skill maturity
• Technology integration strategies for embedding shared skills taxonomies in your HR ecosystem
• Real examples from organizations that have successfully made the shift to skills-based talent management using our shared foundation
• How to build stakeholder support for adopting our shared skills taxonomies

Throughout, we'll emphasize practical approaches that drive tangible value—because a skills taxonomy is only valuable when it enables better talent decisions.

Skills Taxonomy Implementation Guide

Strategic Roadmap for HR Transformation

1. Making the Business Case

• Identify urgent business problems like talent shortages, retention issues, or workforce redeployment needs
• Position skills taxonomy as strategic business capability that drives measurable outcomes
• Engage business sponsors who experience talent pain and involve stakeholders from TA, L&D, and talent management
• Execute focused change management by demonstrating clear value to managers and creating visible career paths

2. Implementation by Maturity Stage

Stage 1: Buzzword
Launch targeted pilots using pre-validated skill libraries

Stage 2: Disjointed
Standardize definitions across functions and create governance

Stage 3: Data Without Decisions
Transform skill data into strategic workforce decisions

Stage 4: Strategic Management
Deploy talent dynamically based on capabilities

3. Technology Integration

• Conduct comprehensive assessment of current HR technology stack for skills integration opportunities
• Systematically embed shared taxonomy into HRIS, ATS, LMS, and talent management platforms
• Resolve data integration challenges by mapping legacy terminology to standardized skill definitions
• Implement pragmatic solutions within existing technology constraints rather than requiring new systems

4. Building Skills-First System

• Transform talent management using skills taxonomy as foundational infrastructure for all hiring decisions
• Shift from credential-based hiring to skills-based evaluation prioritizing demonstrated capabilities
• Build connections to broader talent ecosystem by establishing skills as universal language between stakeholders
• Focus on making better talent decisions rather than perfect taxonomy implementation

5. Your Next Steps

Immediate Actions

• Download and review shared taxonomies to understand skill definitions and framework
• Select high-impact pilot role facing significant talent challenges
• Collaborate with line managers to validate skill requirements and refine definitions

Success Principles

• Concentrate efforts on solving one critical talent problem rather than comprehensive transformation
• Prioritize practical application over theoretical elegance
• Measure progress through improved talent outcomes, not taxonomy coverage

Implementation Checklist

1.  Download our shared taxonomies:

• Access our pre-built skill taxonomies that provide a strong foundation to start from
• Review skill definitions and categories to understand the structure
• Identify areas that may need customization for your context

2.  Pick a pilot role or function:

• Select a high-impact role with clear talent challenges in your company
• Identify the skills from our taxonomy that drive success in these roles
• Implement these skill profiles to drive talent decisions

3.  Start validating with your managers:

• Engage line leaders in confirming skill requirements from our taxonomy
• Test our standard definitions and levels against real work requirements
• Refine based on feedback to ensure relevance and accuracy

4.  Don’t boil the ocean:

• Focus on one big talent problem where our taxonomy can unlock a better solution
• Create a minimal viable implementation that addresses core needs
• Expand incrementally based on demonstrated value and lessons learned

Keep This in Mind

Remember that the goal isn’t having a perfect taxonomy; it’s making better talent decisions. Keep that outcome in focus as you implement our shared framework, and prioritize practical application over theoretical elegance.

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