In our Becoming-skills powered campaign, so far we’ve covered a lot of ground, from the foundations and key skill solutions through to building a value case and strategy for skills approaches. Today, we zoom into the impact on the individual with change experts Liz Bailey and Gemma Ryall, to understand both the motivators and hurdles for employees transitioning to a skills-first approach.
The modern workplace is undergoing a seismic shift. Organisations worldwide are transitioning from traditional role-based structures to skills-based frameworks. This transformation, driven by rapid technological advances and evolving workforce dynamics, centres on recognising and leveraging individual capabilities rather than predefined job descriptions.
Why does the shift from jobs to skills require great change management?
The transition to a skills-based organisation represents a significant culture change. This transformation challenges deeply embedded organisational norms and behaviours. Although there are many tangible benefits to skills-powered approaches, the transition has a considerable impact on individuals working within an organisation, putting much greater emphasis on their skills – rather than just getting the job done.
The shift from role-based to skills-based approaches pivots the culture from position-based power to knowledge-based influence. Traditional hierarchies, where authority stems from title or tenure, give way to environments where expertise and capabilities drive impact, influence and ways of working.
There’s a move away from rigid, hierarchical structures to more dynamic, interconnected ways of working where influence comes from expertise in skills rather than position.
What does this mean? The shift upends traditional ways of working, with the potential of sparking both positive and uncertain feelings from your team. For example, it can give more junior members of staff the opportunity to be celebrated for their strength in certain skills and given more exposure in their delivery of that work – despite having less overall experience than their senior colleagues. On the other end of the scale, some members of the team may feel unsure about the new spotlight on their capabilities and require additional support.
Your employees will undertake a cultural transformation:
From: | To: |
A one-to-one relationship between an individual and a job. | A more network-based relationship between work and skills. Individuals have a portfolio of skills that they own and evolve, celebrating the uniqueness of everyone and maximising the opportunity for individuals to be better mapped to work and outcomes. |
This fundamental pivot requires careful change management to avoid creating uncertainty and resistance, particularly among long-tenured leaders who have operated successfully in conventional structures.
Key considerations in transitioning to skills smoothly:
Critical to sustainable transformation to a skills-based organisation is building a culture of psychological safety, ensuring equitable access to skill development opportunities, specific mechanisms to monitor and address potential biases in how opportunities are distributed, and how skills are assessed.
Your change approach should emphasise early wins through pilot programmes where individuals, teams and leaders can experience the benefits of skills-based ways of working first-hand.
Leaders not only need to learn to share their talent and work in a different way, but they must also model vulnerability in skill development, openly sharing their learning journeys and normalising knowledge gaps.
For HR professionals leading this change, the focus should be on embedding new cultural ways of working that enables self-assessment and reinforces knowledge sharing, continuous learning (growth mindset), and collaborative growth. This might include regular skill-sharing forums, cross-functional projects, and celebration of learning achievements alongside traditional business outcomes.
As we know culture doesn’t change overnight and if an organisation knows that it intends to move towards as a skills-based organisation then considering how to shape and prepare for this cultural shift is an early action to build into plans.
Your organisational culture change checklist:
- Growth mindset – are we encouraging continuous learning, fail fast and experimentation?
- Leadership mindset – do we enable talent sharing and readiness to be vulnerable in sharing skill sets and skill gaps?
- Empowerment – are we offering individuals ownership their own learning, career, and future skills?
- Fluid ways of working – do we promote work distribution, skill mapping, networking and influencing?
- Assessment transparency and fairness – are our processes fit for purpose?
- Skill matching to deliverables – does our approach to ensure fairness and equitable opportunities for all employees?
What LACE can do?
We’re passionate about making change stick. We are happy to chat with you about your transition to becoming a skills-based organisation and alongside our change management services we can also provide behavioural assessments. These help to identify behaviours that might need to change and help to prioritise areas of focus, as three-step behavioural process.
If you’d like to find out more, simply fill out the form below and we will be in touch to chat through this with you.