Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2022  study articulates the shift towards a skills-based organisation. The report outlines how companies who are successfully doing this are addressing skills shortages through a two-pronged approach. First, they are Bending the Demand Curve through deconstructing jobs into tasks, automating parts of jobs, redesigning jobs and redesigning work models to make it easier to find people to do the tasks needed. This is coupled with Bending the Supply Curve through accessing non-traditional talent pools, reskilling/upskilling and redeploying existing talent, rebalancing the employee value proposition to attract new talent, and considering co-opetition and talent sharing.

The effort required for companies to transition to a skills-based organisation should not be underestimated. A recent report by Deloitte , references ‘The Big Shift’ from a one-to-one relationship between employees and jobs to a many-to-many relationship between work and skills, with workers seen as unique individuals with a portfolio of skills who may be on or off-balance-sheet. [1]

One person who has been a pioneer in shaping this discussion is Ravin Jesuthasan, global leader of Mercer’s Transformation Services business, and author of four books including the landmark Work Without Jobs, co-authored with John Boudreau, which was published earlier this year. Ravin and John were my guests also earlier this year on an episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast (listen: Does the Future of Work Mean Work Without Jobs? )

As such, I was delighted to catch up recently with Ravin to see how the ideas we discussed in the podcast episode have evolved since the publication of Work Without Jobs and also dig into some research Ravin, and his team at Mercer have conducted on the rise of the talent marketplace.

Ravin, the reaction to Work Without Jobs has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve spoken with several senior HR and people analytics leaders who have clearly been influenced by the ideas that you and John laid out in the book. It would be fascinating to discuss how the ideas in the book have evolved since Work Without Jobs was published and since my discussion with John and you on the Digital HR Leaders podcast in March 2022.

Thanks, David. It has indeed been most gratifying to see the response to the book, from making multiple best-seller lists to having numerous CEOs and CHROs reach out for advice on their transformations. Through those conversations, we have learned a number of things:

• The three models of work we described resonate well and appear to capture the emerging direction of travel (see Figure 1).

• Unsurprisingly, many have turned to tech platforms like talent marketplaces to power their journeys in moving from jobs to skills and capabilities as their currency for work. And while the algorithms underpinning these platforms have provided them with powerful tools for generating insight into skills demand and supply and the capabilities to match skills to work, there are significant capability and cultural gaps that need to be addressed.

• One of the foremost gaps we are observing is the need for an organisational capability to redesign work at scale. Many organisations are reporting that managers lack the capability to transcend the legacy of jobs and the tools to redesign work to optimise the use of automation and design work in a way that enables talent to engage with it in a variety of ways (internal gigs, centralisation, external gigs/contractors, etc.). I think this in turn, creates a massive opportunity for HR in building this new organisational capability.

• The other gaps include the implications for many core processes like talent acquisition, budgeting, performance management and governance over work and resources, to name a few.

I am really intrigued by this issue of work design. Can you share more?

On work design, my colleagues at Mercer and I have been working with a number of organisations to build and deploy this capability. The big issue for most organisations it to teach managers how to analyse and deconstruct jobs, redeploy the component tasks to automation and humans engaging with work through a variety of means and then to reconstruct work in different ways. The following visual describes how organisations can think about this process.

We have also helped a number of HR functions stand up centres of expertise (COEs) that work with leaders and managers to provide the tools and teach them how to design work. We see this as a growing part of HR’s evolving role as a strategic function, one that is focused less on service delivery (as we increasingly turn to automation for this) and increasingly on teaching managers how to lead in the new world of work.

I know you’ve recently conducted research at Mercer on organisations who have implemented a talent marketplace. Please can you outline more on the research and the key findings?

Absolutely. As part of a project to introduce a talent marketplace for a large Asian technology company, we surveyed and interviewed organisations who have had marketplaces in place for some time. The findings were pretty interesting:

• The ones that were most successful had both a clear sense of their immediate and future use cases and also recognised that they were on a multi-year journey to a more agile/flexible future

• They recognised early on that implementing a talent marketplace is less about technology and more about changing a legacy of work in jobs . They undertook the hard work of changing leader, manager and HR capability to redesign and reinvent work

• Lastly, they did an outstanding job of sustaining the momentum over multiple years. Through effective change management they have kept the marketplaces fresh, introduced new use cases and continued to sustain the change in leader and manager behaviour.

What are the implications of these findings for chief people officers and companies seeking greater agility by transitioning to a skills and capabilities-based approach and accelerating, for example, their approach to talent marketplaces and internal mobility?

The companies that “get it” are the ones that recognise this is so much more than a technology play to fix a problem. These marketplaces represent a fundamental transformation in how people and organisations work. Their impact extends to virtually every aspect of the organisation, including the finance function (how you account for and deploy resources and budgets), IT (how we connect people (employees and non-employees) to work while tracking and reporting outside the traditional systems of record). The next generation of superstar chief people officers get this and are transforming their functions accordingly.

Please can you provide a couple of examples of companies that are doing this well, the outcomes they are enjoying as a result, and what others can learn from them?

There are three organisations that come to mind; Unilever, Standard Chartered and HP. Unilever has long led the way in the evolution of work towards being more flexible and agile. Standard Chartered has done some amazing work moving talent from sunset jobs to sunrise jobs. And HP has really started to embrace work design as a core capability, transforming multiple roles to increase their impact and productivity.

Looking forward, how do you expect to see work evolve?

I see organisations continuing to push to the right of the framework in Figure 1. I also see the advances coming from web 3.0 and the rise of distributed autonomous organisations (DAOs) further transforming work ecosystems and accelerating the flow of work to talent outside the organisation.

Please can you provide a summary of tips or guidance for companies looking to successfully shift from a focus on jobs to one on skills/tasks?

We are talking about some seismic changes to work and our legacy of work in jobs. We have 140 years of learned behaviour on the part of leaders and managers that we are attempting to change. As such, I believe it is essential that companies engage in thoughtful experimentation and prototyping while creating a mindset of perpetual reinvention. The old days of when we could transform once every 7 years are gone. I think the great futurist Alvin Toffler said it best when he said; the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can’t read and write. It will be those who can’t learn, unlearn and relearn.

THANK YOU

Thanks to Ravin for sharing his time and expertise with readers of the myHRfuture blog. If you want to find out more, you can connect with Ravin on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter @RavinJesuthasan and find out more about Work Without Jobs.

If you’d like to explore more of Ravin’s recent work, do take a look at some of the links below:

• Can’t Fill Jobs? Deconstruct Them (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022)

• Powering The Journey Of Perpetual Reinvention (Forbes, 2022)

• How will Web3 impact the future of work? (World Economic Forum, 2022)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ravin Jesuthasan

Ravin Jesuthasan is the global leader of Mercer’s Transformation Services business. He is a recognised global thought leader, futurist and bestselling author on the future of work and workforce transformation. Ravin has led numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum and is a regular participant and presenter at its annual meeting in Davos. He has also been recognised as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine, one of the top 8 future of work influencers by Tech News and one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive. Ravin is the author of 4 books and over 200 articles on the future of work.

David Green

David is a globally respected author, speaker, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. With lead responsibility for Insight222’s brand and market development, David helps chief people officers and people analytics leaders create value with people analytics. David is the co-author of Excellence in People Analytics, host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, and regularly speaks at industry events such as UNLEASH and People Analytics World. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David worked in the human resources field in multiple major global companies including most recently with IBM.

[1] Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau, Work Without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022)

BUILD A STRATEGIC ROADMAP FOR BUSINESS VALUE WITH INSIGHT222 CONSULTING

Insight222® Consulting use their deep People Analytics expertise to provide HR Leaders with support they need to build and execute their strategic roadmap to drive business value. They work with some of the most mature People Analytics functions as well as those companies just starting their journey with people data, to develop a strategic roadmap for your people analytics function with a clear case for change based on business value. Expertise leads everything they do and whilst they create time, space and structure that’s expected from excellent consultants, they will always bring leading practice to the discussion. To discuss your consulting needs in more depth contact Insight222® today