Reskilling and Upskilling Employees

"90% of S&P 100 companies are recruiting for the same 37 roles."             —Gartner

According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2018, over the next five years, 78 million jobs will be lost and 133 million jobs will be created as we move from a “job” market to a “skills” market with the evolution of artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain verification, the gig economy, video AI and facial recognition, and virtual reality.

"74% of high potential employees indicated they would join an organization for better career development opportunities." – IBM

I had the opportunity to meet with Sunita Navile, Global Offering Go-to-Market Strategy Leader for Watson Talent and Kenexa during the Skillsoft Perspectives 2019 user conference.

IBM Watson Talent and Skillsoft have aligned to deliver AI-powered learning and career development that is agile, employee-centric, engaging and transformative.

The companies are working to address the three challenges to internal mobility: 1) the need for critical skills; 2) personalized, continuous learning; and, 3) visibility into opportunities. They are working to learn what skills and people organizations need as the jobs market has become the skills market in today's talent-centric economy.

The solution uses an AI-driven virtual career coach to document employees’ career profiles, learn where the employee would like to grow and evolve, recommend roles and job opportunities, provide learning recommendations as well as personalized learning courses, and see other opportunities within the company based on the employees’ skills and experience.

AI is used to curate skills and job roles based on industry benchmarks, job board data, and industrial/organizational psychologists’ expertise. Automatic skills tagging of learning content enables AI to automatically find and tag skills in thousands of different learning modules, while personalized learning and career paths are driven by AI-recommended learning and job recommendations personalized for each employee. Learning is job-specific and skills-based and employees have visibility into new job opportunities.

This alliance empowers companies to align employee development to organizational needs and engage and retain key employees while supporting a culture of agile talent development and internal mobility. By providing every employee with a personal career coach, companies are able to address skills gaps, provide more upward mobility to employees, and earn employees' trust that their employer is interested in their professional development, growth, and success.

Employers get reskilled and upskilled employees while employees get growth and advancement opportunities with their current employer.