The New Skills Paradigm: Workforce [and Workday] Trends in 2024

Editor’s Note: Today at Skillcentrix, we’re diving into key skills trends for 2024. In this article, Director of Advisory Services, Jeff Johnson, dives into his predictions for the coming year.

Each year we want to be aware of trends or themes that are anticipated to surface in the upcoming year. Like our resolutions, we want to prepare ourselves to be better at what we do and not be surprised by something.

For skills, there are some common themes that I’m either seeing, hearing, or predicting that we need to be aware of and prepare for as we look at 2024.

The Not-So-New Workplace Model 

The hybrid work model is here to stay. As we leave the pandemic in our rear-view mirror, the trend of a hybrid and remote workforce will continue to be omnipresent.

A recent Forbes survey of CHROs found that eight in ten Fortune 500 leaders have no plans to change their remote work plan in 2024. The question for leaders to truly address is: How can you work better with this varied workforce?

This post-pandemic workforce has created several problems that organizations will need to keep top-of-mind in 2024 and try to address as they progress through it.

• The hybrid model breaks down some natural vehicles (e.g., water cooler conversations) that create the company culture and community. This issue creates a lackluster employee population and impacts retention.
• Compounded with the scattered workforce comes increased stress on all employees with additional work added to their plates.
  Employee and leader stress levels increased during the pandemic and the trend is holding steady going into 2024. This is partially driven by additional work above and beyond their current responsibilities, restructuring, and as we enter the new year budget cuts.
• With employees feeling a disconnect from their organization, added or changing workloads, and external geopolitical pressures fueling stress levels, organizations need to try to create connections with their hybrid employee population. Organizations have tools in place that help create those connections whether the employee is in the office, remote, or working between the two environments.

With Workday they can create a skill-based profile and assess their skills. They can engage with their manager or peers to ask for endorsements or an assessment of a skill(s).

This helps create the connections reinforcing a collaborative culture, provides visibility into what they’re capable of doing with their manager, and demonstrates what they’re good at, creating alignment and employee satisfaction ultimately impacting retention and reducing stress.

AI and Talent Landscape

“I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.” (Hal 9000, Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, 1:51:21)

How do you embrace and create your mission using AI in 2024?

With AI no longer a buzzword that the media is spinning up, it’s time to start incorporating it as a key part of the solutions we’re using to build better customer experiences, understand our user base, or help expedite products or services to market.

Today, fast-food drive-ups are utilizing it for license plate recognition with their customers helping initially with order alignment and eventually looking at creating loyalty programs and food preferences. Based on the knowledge that the AI has specifically about the customer, you can leverage better user data to empower customers to get their order done exactly their way, every time.

Like the late 90’s and the Internet, we need to step back and realize this is another tool that is helping with some heavy lifting. We’re a data-driven society. We have a mass amount of information that is being collected with every input and click that we do in our day-to-day activities.

We all know that the volume of employee and organizational data that you collect and warehouse in Workday can support an AI framework that aids in creating the skills DNA within your business.

With the volume of your foundational data warehoused in jobs, worker history, and learning content AI can parse this large volume of data and help tag or recommend skills based on what it is interpreting.

Data analysis that would have taken years can now be accomplished within a fraction of the time. AI does the heavy lifting automating and providing the intelligence needed to make informed decisions.

Of course, with any technology transformation, there is a caveat: Your AI data analysis will only be as good as your underlying data. I use the analogy of a baby. If you provide your baby with good, clean food you get a happy, developing baby; doing the opposite will get you a fussy and messy baby.

Proactive Nimbleness – Jack was good at it. Can you be too?

Being nimble is essential in today’s business environment. The word pivot is part of our nomenclature in corporate America today for a reason: That capability has the power to create successful organizations. But how do we prepare our teams to get more nimble?

There are two fundamental factors that help enable a nimble organization.

1. Data drives flexibility: As I just shared above, creating a data and system infrastructure that allows for connectivity and visibility into your business allows you to pivot more quickly when things change. Being able to quickly see and respond to changing customer needs (or even predict them!) creates opportunities for personalization and engagement.

2. Create a workforce adaptive to change: Adaptive might be a keyword for 2024. By identifying key adaptive skills (e.g., problem-solving, agility, systems thinking) that are essential to your workforce, establishing them as part of your culture creates employees capable of flexing as the business changes.Proactively reskilling or upskilling your employees with the adaptive skills prepares you for the first point of changing market needs impacting the transformation for the organization and the employees.

This approach to building a fundamental set of skills shared across your business but owned by the business creates a competitive approach for your business and accelerates a transformation when the business needs to evolve.

Including your employees in this with transparency on why they need the skills outlines the win-win scenario when change comes to the business. Companies that put their employees at the center of a transformation are two-and-a-half times more likely to successfully deliver on their transformation objectives.

Skills remain that thread that enables so much within our talent pools. Being proactive, utilizing solutions like Workday and AI to enable skills across your organization, and equipping your employees with the skills they need to be engaged and proactive are going to help set you and your organization up for success in 2024.