Creating the skills-powered organization
Kapilashrami identifies four key lessons for CHROs from Standard Chartered’s transition to a skills-powered model:
- Use AI to tailor the employee experience
AI manages the skills-matching process on Standard Chartered’s Talent Marketplace and shapes how employees view their individual skillsets. “AI is able to take HR technology and hyper-personalize it, focusing on the experience,” explains Kapilashrami.
“GenAI augments employees’ performance feedback, making it more actionable and linking it to our learning library,” she continues. “It all feels very personal, which makes it far more palatable, far more interesting, and far more fun.” The outcome: 38,000 colleagues – 40% of the workforce – engaged in the bank’s future skills learning in 2024.
- Ensure leadership commitment
CHROs need to ensure leaders buy into the skills-powered model. “Let’s be honest, businesses are not obsessing about this pivot from a job-based to a skills-based architecture, but it is a big cultural change,” notes Kapilashrami. “It requires a huge amount of skill and confidence from the leadership team, led by the HR organization.” CHROs should start by building the business case to get the attention of the rest of the C-suite. Once they have that, they can set about demonstrating the bottom-line benefits.
- Use feedback to redefine the line manager role
The shift to a skills-based organization challenges the traditional parameters of the line manager role. Standard Chartered scrapped its alphanumeric performance rating system in favor of a model based on ongoing performance feedback. “Everyone in the company undergoes an annual 360-degree performance assessment from partners, stakeholders, and clients,” says Kapilashrami. “The line manager collects feedback from these diverse sources in a very structured way, with a focus on development.”
- Start with proof of concept
Kapilashrami advises CHROs to “start narrow” – ensuring that the first steps have a defined direction, so they can demonstrate successes and absorb lessons before going deeper. “When we first took the strategic workforce plan to the board, we said our next step was to run five proof of concepts (PoCs),” she recalls.
Selecting five sunset jobs, she identified matching and adjacent skills before engaging employees to discuss the company’s changing requirements and their career options. Of the five test cases, three worked and two didn’t, says Kapilashrami. “But it proved that it doesn’t have to be ‘one in and one out,’” she emphasizes. “It was evidence that we could support people to develop into adjacent roles.”
As technology continues to transform business, a task-based work model will become both a natural and an essential next step. CHROs have an opportunity to spearhead that work in their organizations. Standard Chartered is proving what’s possible.