HR Data Labs took the studio mobile and went live at HR Tech 2021 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV, talking to thought leaders in People Analytics and HR Technology. Join us as we go on this enlightening journey gathering cutting-edge insights from our guests!
Mark Hanson is a Product Owner for Emsi Burning Glass Talent Analytics team, and he leads the development of skills products, guides initiatives and partnerships related to Emsi Burning Glass Open Skills, and both conducts and presents skills research. He was previously the Director of Talent Analytics at UnitedHealth Group, where he led the People Analytics teams focused on reporting for talent intelligence, talent acquisition, human capital, HR systems, diversity and inclusion (DEIB), learning and development, real estate strategy, and site selection.
In this episode, Mark discusses job and skill taxonomies, and how the equation changes for organizations when good job and skill taxonomies are integrated into their systems and processes.
[0:00 – 3:49] Introduction
- Welcome, Mark Hanson!
[3:50 – 9:48] Past Skills and Job Taxonomies
- How technology has influenced the skill required to do a job
[9:49 – 28:41] Present Skills and Job Taxonomies
- Understanding the skills needed inside an organization
- The importance of mapping career paths within an organization
[28:42 – 35:49] Future Skills and Job Taxonomies
- Using AI to analyze old data
- Tailoring learning to your employees
[35:50 – 39:32] Final Thoughts & Closing
- Episode summary
- Mark shares his closing thoughts
Connect with Mark:
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Resources:
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“The future is integration. How do we get all of the systems, because not one large system can do this end-to-end employee experience with all of the insights and data the you need.”
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“The point is: how do we properly identify the skills need to do a role?”
Announcer:
Here’s an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what’s happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, core their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR data labs Podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, but count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here’s your host, David Turetsky.
David Turetsky:
Hello and welcome to the HR data labs podcast. I’m your host David Turetsky. Like always we try and find most fascinating and fun people talk to you about HR technology, HR data and analytics. Today I have with me as always Dwight brown from Turetsky consulting and now salary.com. Hey Dwight,
Dwight Brown:
David How you doing?
David Turetsky:
Very good. How are you? Good. And we have my friend Mark Hanson from Emsi Burning Glass.
Mark Hanson:
Emsi Burning Glass. We’re two companies put together so yeah, we’re merged now.
David Turetsky:
Coming together as one big family That’s right. So it’s like Turetsky Consulting and salary? I know it’s perfect perfect time for the mergers isn’t crazy
Dwight Brown:
Like merger twins
David Turetsky:
So Mark please tell people a little bit about your background
Mark Hanson:
Yeah absolutely happy to so yeah really interesting story I’ve been with Emsi about two years I help on the product side I do a lot with our skills work and how do we integrate into other HR tech platforms? How do we help companies understand skills and identify skills within their you know HR systems and within their people and help analyze all of that I was actually an Emsi customer for five years with UnitedHealth Group so I was on their people analytics team for five years. And so got to use all this really cool external labor data that we have at Emsi Burning Glass and apply it to internal data meshing, and try to pull the internal and external views together to get a holistic view of labor and talent within a huge organization like united and then I heard what Tom was working on with their you know, open sourcing their skills library and all the skills products that they wanted to build and it was too too intriguing jumped over to their side. It’s been a fun ride ever since to help navigate this really fun world of skills and how do we put really good labor data in front of new talent leaders to help them make better decisions and so been a fun ride and previously was in management consulting and leadership consulting roles. And so it’s, it’s been a really great spot to be especially with the huge growth of people analytics, and all the HR tech that’s just booming right now. It’s, it’s an it’s been a fun area to be in.
David Turetsky:
So Mark, we asked every podcast guest one thing that no one knows about them. Remember, this is being live streamed. They’re important in the live stream. So we can edit this out like we usually do. What is one thing that no one knows about you?
Mark Hanson:
Interesting? Well, one Fun fact, I have one kidney. And I was born with that, and I was a twin. And my mom lost one of the twins. And so they think that I had some sort of mesh, one kidney. So it’s been a fun ride, just to tell people probably some sort of HIPAA violation medical fun facts by. That’s right. You volunteered. So yeah, so yeah, I got one kidney. And so it’s always been I should have never played football in high school and all that stuff. But no, that’s one one interesting contact.
David Turetsky:
You look healthy.
Mark Hanson:
Oh, yeah, we’re all good.
David Turetsky:
So today, the topic that we’re going to talk about is all about skills and taxonomies. And how the equation really changes for organizations, when they have taxonomies good taxonomies that are at their disposal. So my first question for you is, what we’re trying to do here at the conference is talk about past, present and future. So let’s talk about the past when it comes to tax audit, who’s going to talk? We’re talking specifically about skills? Yeah. What was the past? What used to happen? Where did this all come from?
Mark Hanson:
Well, it’s really interesting, you know, IT skills is not a new thing. It’s a skills has been around forever. I mean, the reason why we have curriculum and learning is, you know, to teach skills, I think it’s the power of skills and where those skills are connected is really what’s been changing and the importance of skills has just grown exponentially as that as a key driver of trying to understand your business. And years ago, I mean, businesses were pretty simple. You have you know, finance department and HR department and you know, your sales team and you have these basic roles. Everyone kind of knew definitionally What is a role within a company? Well now with the explosion of technology, you know, in the last 50 years, and all of the unique variations of it And just rapid pace of change, your roles are completely different now, right? And so technology has disrupted all of this, you know, you can’t just be an accountant anymore in tick and tie with that with T accounts and a piece of paper, you have to learn the entire accounting system how that connects into the ERP, how it connects to, you know, all of your tax systems and you know, salary systems, it’s it’s fully integrated. So it’s totally changed the, the work in the roles have completely changed as technologies change. And so skills has evolved to be much more critical, more so than it used to be.
David Turetsky:
What’s really funny about it is sometimes attacks actually comes back to you like you’re bringing up the role. Sometimes it goes back to the job title. Yes. And we look at the job table. And typically, most clients have a very simple job. Yeah, the job table typically has a job code. And the job title has FLSA, it has other things from a compliance perspective. But beyond that, companies tend to not dive into a lot of the other specifics, job description on the job table, almost never filled in. And then you get to where all these other things live, like the skills taxonomy. And for most HCM apps, there is no concept of the skill taxonomy inside the job table. So in the past, where did this stuff live? Yeah,
Mark Hanson:
I think it lives passively. I’m learning content, but it wasn’t categorized as skills, it was categorized as you should learn about this thing. And sometimes it was skill specific, like, you should learn about SQL or you should learn some. And so SQL is a skill, but then there’s about 80, other variations of sub skills underneath that. Now it’s like, well, no, you need to know my SQL, because that’s, you know, more portable than old traditional SQL, or you need to know Python, or, you know, what are these coding languages? And so it’s getting much more hyper specific of where technology’s guiding people. So no longer can we get away with like topic learning, you have to get really hyper specific of what subtopics do, you need to learn and underneath that, what specific skills are important around those topics. And as the people are looking at their roles, and they see all these job titles, you can’t translate what a job title is anymore. If you see their job title of Project Manager, yeah, you have no clue. Are they in finance? Are they in operations? Are they in tech? You need more specifics. And so if you do have a job description, which some companies do, most don’t, it’s usually very vague of what that is. It’s, it gives you some clarity. But you need more than that. And so where the trend is going is companies building skill profiles to help bring some of that vagueness of a job title, especially in those areas, business analysts, project manager, Product Manager, all those things. How do we bring some specificity and some granularity to understand that in the context, and it brings in a lot, and so obviously, companies always have job, family job function, usually on that job table, which Well, we’re always Oh, not always, but most of the times, it brings some clarity there. And if you know, the business unit they’re in or the division there any of that always helps to, but it’s still as you’re looking across your company. I remember we had a project at UnitedHealth Group, and one of the chief operating officers is like, we have 12,000 business analysts like what what do they do? They’re in all parts of the company. Yes. And get covered across the whole company. And he’s like, how are we you know, and it’s because the the job tables, they didn’t keep up, they said, well, it’s close enough to business analysts just give them that job code, right. And so you can either swing both ways on the pendulum, you can either say, okay, we everyone needs a unique job, well, then that gets out of whack really quickly, because now you have hyper specific job titles. And really, you have lots of people doing similar roles that probably should have the same job title, or you go the opposite of some of these big companies, and you have 12,000 people with the same job title, and then that creates problems as well for lack of insights,
David Turetsky:
Or you have 12,000 titles. Nobody maintains them. You have 1000 employees with 12,000 job titles. Yep. And then someone, either you merge or get acquired. And then there’s now 100,000. More. Yeah, and what, what I think what we’ve been in the kind we’re talking about the past here, in the past, a lot of the systems focused on the tools, original purpose. Yep, payroll, HR benefits comp, if it had comp. Yep. And those things were all artifacts. They weren’t facts, they were artifacts, and artifacts, by their very nature just come along for the ride. And one of the worst parts about history around the skills and around these taxonomies you’re talking about is that they became so bloated and horrible that no one wanted to touch them. And the pattern so we’re talking about the past the past is that because we had to maintain history, they would get bigger and bigger and bigger and it would fall on its own weight, but we still pulled it along. The question now becomes in Current? I’m not talking about the future. I’m not talking about tomorrow I’m talking about today. Have you seen companies today that are looking at their skill taxonomies their job taxonomies the things that bring these things together? And how are they working on them to make them a more modern structure today?
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, absolutely. So it skills in the last, I’d say two years has just blown up. It’s been the new focus of every that’s a good thing. It’s a good point solutions are good thing, because company saying we need to grasp our arms around this very big topic. Everyone’s talking about, we need to develop new skills, we need to look at internal mobility and internal hiring and you know, how do we build our marketplace? How do we know which skills to develop? What are the skills coming down, you know, they’re emerging that are coming down the pipeline. And so people are going at skills in many different ways, whether it’s learning, whether it’s talent acquisition, whether it’s some of their core HR systems, trying to organize those taxonomies. And as you go, and try to tackle the skills problem, there’s so many wonderful point solutions out there from a talent marketplace, talent management systems, employee engagement systems, you know, all these talent acquisiti n systems, they’re using AI o, you know, screen and match, ou know, employee, you know,
David Turetsky:
they’re shopping for talent acquisition, sorry.
Mark Hanson:
No, it’s a good thing that these solutions are going after key pain points within companies. What we’re finding is, they’re all using different skill libraries. They’re all using different skill taxonomy. So now you want centralized insights, either on your employees or your job, taxonomy, your job architecture internally, and there’s not a good way to mesh those together. And so we’re getting tons of phone calls saying, Hey, you guys have a skill solution? How do we piece this together? Because, you know, rightly so the teams that were involved in learning involved in, you know, internal recruiting, they’re finding the best point solutions, they’re, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. But as you bring this siloes, yeah, they’re all siloed. They’re not integrated. And so Josh, person talked about this morning in his keynote speech, well, you know, the future is integration, how do we get all these systems? Because not one large system can do this end to end employee experience with all of the insights and data that you need, you still have a need for some of these point solutions. But how do they integrate seamlessly so that you can direct those insights in a collective and comprehensive manner? That’s really the the big pain point of what we’re seeing. So companies are pushing towards the right area, but they’re not there yet. And there’s a lot of noise in the market for how do we organize this? And how do we go forward?
David Turetsky:
You called it I think Josh called it talent, intelligence. Yes. Which is, to me, what our thinking is, talent, intelligence is the intersection of all the pieces and taxonomies coming together in a crosswalk way to be able to tell a story around people in the organization. And I think, you know, Josh has a you guys talk about it a little bit. But to me tell him intelligence and the way in which all this data comes together, could be the secret sauce for the industry. Yeah. If we adopt an open stance, like Emsi has already, which is allows the cross talk, so that the silos can come together and be able to stop the single databases that get managed separately, they don’t share aren’t democratic about it. Sorry, to all those organizations that aren’t open yet, but but we’re advocating for, you know, for coming together and allowing our clients to be more open. We were just talking with Jason Averbook about the ability for an organization to work more together by thinking about the employee experience about and what we think goes is that these are insights not just for the organization, but for the employee as well.
Mark Hanson:
Oh absolutely. In that scene, Josh touched on his keynote this morning to around you know, the importance of employee if you’re if you’re creating the right environment, and culture and solutions for employees, you’re going to win with with your HR tech. And we are totally on the open standards bandwagon just because we know that it’s good for not only HR, but just business in general and job seekers and education in general. Now, many people know this, because we spend a lot of time you know, speaking with our corporate and enterprise customers, but you know, Emsi has traditionally been in, in higher education. And we have 1000s of customers all the way from tiny community colleges up to large universities. And we work with local, state, federal governments all over the world, and not with Burning Glass merging with us. I mean, they were working in those same pockets as well. And the reason why an open skill standard is so important is it is a common language that can break down. It’s the building blocks of learning, it’s the building blocks of jobs, and it’s helping your local economies understand where where do we come at? So as we look at how does this all fit into, you know, HR tech systems and how do we break break down some of these silos, a lot of these big you know, HCM hrs systems are very internally focused. It’s Do you have just the data that is captured by your employees, and you don’t have External view well as the labor market is shrinking, and yes, you can go after recruiting people internally, in creating an internal mobility strategy, but you’re going to run out of recruiting your own people soon, you have to go outside at some point. And so as we see is this holistic view of where skills can play and you need to understand the skills inside your work not only for your people and the skills that they have, but also the skills that are needed to actually do your job. So there’s a job architecture standpoint, and then you need to know the skills of the marketplace. And what are your competitors doing? Where’s your industry going?
David Turetsky:
How you benchmark?
Mark Hanson:
How are you benchmarking that? And then when you do need to go external? When do you build? When do you borrow? When do you buy? And that’s the classic one and skills helps break down that in a very nice way.
David Turetsky:
One of the fascinating things about this, though, is that without having a career framework, without giving employees and understanding about they’re here now to get there, what do I need to do? You have that with a skills taxonomy, you have that with understanding what. So you companies that we’ve talked to have a career framework in place. I mean, there are some pockets, I mean, there are some that naturally have that whether it’s an accounting with level one, two, and three, programming with customer support with sales, leadership, or sales and their their structures. But in all a lot of the other organizations, especially manufacturing where, you know, it’s mostly blue collar, how do we get beyond my level where I am now? How do I get to somewhere else if I want to? Or how do we even know what I’m supposed to be focusing on? Yes, manufacturing SOP, standard operating procedures. But how do people know? What am I supposed to be doing? What skills Am I supposed to have? How do I close the gaps if they exist? And if I want to go here or there, what’s necessary for me to get there? And are there learning tracks for me to get there? To me, that’s a career friend. How do we help organizations create that framework with all the skills that we need to help us?
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, and we always talk about this. As we talk to our customers, there’s there’s two ways that you can approach skills you can go after understanding the skills of your employees, which is very good, and it’s good data to have. It’s also very hard data to get but it’s always a moving target. And you never get 100% of your employees to participate in skill surveys or skill inventories. And when you do get it, it’s a very messy data set, you get their entire career history. So if you’re looking at more white collar, you could have people that have four or five different career tracks, blue collar, maybe not so much, you might have more of a track but even then people bounced different jobs and you just get a whole you know, big data set that is kind of messy
David Turetsky:
towards a lot of potpourri.
Mark Hanson:
Yes, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s a hodgepodge. And so we’ve been advocates of saying, that’s all well and good, you, you will need that at some point. But really, what companies need to start is going after the skills in their, in their roles in their job architecture, what are the skills that you’ve actually asked for, and it’s in there, it’s in the job posting that they posted it, it’s in the job descriptions, if they have them, it’s in some of those job frameworks that they may have, you know, paid a consulting firm to come in and do all their levels and comp, and you know, comprehensions, and bring it all the knowledge, skills and ability language in there. And so some of them do, but mostly, it’s just the big companies that can afford that. So we say it’s pretty easy, in certain ways to be able to at least capture some of that skills data, as you look at how do we tap into the skills being talked about in the labor market? How do we use job title normalization and big data to pull through some of these insights. And the reason we say that’s a great starting point is that’s the baseline of what you need. And if you can build a skill profile for every single job and your job architecture, that gives a preview to all the employees to have a simple look to say, Hey, I’m uh, you know, you know, you know, manufacturing, you know, I’m on the line in red, you know, I’m doing something, well, I want to get somewhere How do I become a line manager? How do I in if you have a skill preview of what skills are needed for those adjacent roles that they might be in? Now they actually say, Oh, these are the skills I need to pick up maybe some soft skills, like leadership skills, maybe it’s, you know, different technical skills for a different part of the line that they can move up in their career. So having that starting standpoint of a job of, you know, profile and having that skill profile be attached to that it gives exposure to that,
David Turetsky:
And that’s where problems where an Employee Self Service, could they find that unless they go to job postings? And the answer is once they’ve gotten the job postings, and they go, let’s see what’s inside. What’s the next logical step? Hmm. Nothing fits me. Let me go outside and work. Exactly. And so what I’m advocating, I’m not taking Listen, this is not leadership here is that there needs to be an Employee Self Service solution, which says, here’s what’s in the company. Here’s how the company is made up. It’s a career framework application that I don’t even know if I’ve ever really seen, which basically says, here’s what mobility could look like to your point. Here’s what my job is today. And we talked Actually, we talked to someone yesterday. David said, and you know, I know actually I think it was this morning, we talked about it, where there were analytics that were given it, say, and here are all the jobs, you’re qualified for me. But it was looking at all the other people who’ve been promoted from that job. And I said, but that’s based on a probable history that may have given opportunities to only one type of people. Sure, you know, getting into the D E the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. What I’m advocating for is the other way, using the skill frameworks, the job taxonomy is to create career frameworks where people can navigate the organization. So today, I’m a data governance consultant. Tomorrow, I’m going to be people on the loose until What skills do I need to learn? What technologies what techniques Do I need to learn to get there?
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, absolutely. At its basic level, I mean, some companies make it over complicated, I think a system would be wonderful. But even just exposing it through your hrs system, if you’re storing the skill profile for all of your job codes, make it exposed within your, you know, platforms that the employees are already using, and logging into to say, yeah, go explore some roles. And so you can certainly make it more robust with skill matching, and, you know, adjacencies of different roles and how everything relates, and then you’re looking at, you know, sequential historical pathways. It’s like, here’s one ideas I put, it’s happened for others, it might spur on some ideas, but to your point, it’s not ideal for everyone, because as we all know, you know, your career path, you know, winds and rain, so it’s not a linear path that you go on, some people are stuck in saying, Where can I go? And that sequential pathway data does help jog some things like, oh, did you know that? You know, I was started on the manufacturing line? And this person now is the CEO? Oh, okay. Well, that’s one, right, one way to vote, but what was their steps in between? Okay, that might jog some of my things, you know, where did they pick up skills within the company? And how can I replicate at least portions of that. And so those stories, those success stories are really important for storytelling in the org to say, yes, you can create a career here, help us at least give you the baseline data to unlock some of those, and then all of the DEIB, strategies can come into play to help be a preview jobs better help you create those success stories through, you know, even just connecting through mentorship, it’s like you want you want you want this role. Okay, let’s let’s grab some people that had developed those skills, or they’re in that role, like, let’s bring, you know, proper previous to this so that we can get you engaged. And then as you mature, your talent marketplace, as you mature, your talent management, succession planning, your leadership development programs, it all starts to connect, and we see skills as being that starting point, it’s not the end all be all, but it’s a great data point that most companies don’t have a grasp of, and it can unlock so many different wonderful initiatives and wonderful technologies to bring insights to those employees as well as to all of the senior leadership that’s running the company.
David Turetsky:
Right, right, to give them a preview of what’s available, what not just rising stars, but what talents available, who have what skills and who have maybe some interest in other things. Yeah,
Dwight Brown:
One of the one of the things that this makes me think about I was previously in a large organization, and we had 1000s of job descriptions, and we went through, we went through the process of really filtering that down. And when it came to the, to the talent side of things and the skill side of things, you you kind of had two philosophies either get everything in the kitchen sink in there, or you make it bare minimum. And one of the cultural aspects, and I’ve seen this in other organizations is that sometimes organizations don’t want to document those skills, because there can be that feeling that, okay, if I’m going to require this skill of this person, it’s going to put them into a different paygrade. And so, you know, I would imagine a lot of what you do and things is helping organizations understand, how do you do this documentation? And how do you give people those career paths without impacting the pay side of things? Because that’s where we saw we really had a push and pull between what do we what do we put down? What do we ask? And then, you know, we couldn’t even get to the point where we can put it into a system, because we were stuck in in that no man’s land of philosophy more than more than anything.
David Turetsky:
I think the answer is that you have to do what’s right for the company, right? Not the and I’ve dealt with managers who have tried to not take any of you did anything wrong, I’d love you all very much. But you know, there have been some times when it’s been, you know, think about it from a company perspective, right? And I would say, and what I do this for everybody, but taking the employee thought process and taking the employee perspective and saying, this is really what you need, and if it needs that then that needs to be in the higher grade. Right? not worried about cost, right? Because if the company’s worried about cost of onesie, twosie employees, there’s a bigger problem there,
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, and I think that’s where you know, comp and benefits needs to evolve is down to the skill level, I mean, there’s certain skills that are naturally more valuable than others. And if you can make, the more you can expose that knowledge to employees, and the more that you can see how that’s valuable to your roles, that’s where you no longer do we need to pay people based on this, you know, arbitrary job title that was picked 10 years ago and put into our system, and in a pay scale was picked, you’re not doing just a job anymore. I mean, there’s so much more that you know, employees are bringing to the table, right? Bring in their past experiences, they’re bringing, you know, their knowledge, skills, and abilities and strengths, theater putting into this role, and you’re everybody creates differentiated value in certain ways. And then naturally, more skills become more important for the company. You know, we love talking about Python developers, because that’s just like, a skill that’s been blowing up. It’s like, we’re Where did Python come from? Like, what does this even mean? Well, now Python’s used in so many different applications, even beyond just data scientists, and it’s, you know, becoming this core, you know, language that people need to know. Well, you should know, if you have employees that have dabbled in Python, I guarantee that most of your data analysts and data science folks are either fully in it or are dabbling, if you’re not using it. Well, when you have turnover, and you see that you lost, you know, 20% of your data analysts last year, you have no idea that maybe 10 of your best Python experts are out there. Now the you know, leadership saying, Oh, we got to have better Python developer, because that’s the new thing that we need to, you know, it’s more powerful than all the other historical systems, well, you don’t know how to track that. So now that the better knowledge you have of your skills, now we can get down to that granular level to say you want paid might have to be different because someone has, you know, this key skill that we have, and it’s a, you know, emerging skill, and it’s a critical skill for the future this company is going. So it helps identify where do we move people into some of those, those for promotion? I’d say companies don’t need to get too hung up on how many skills to have on a profile, or, you know, is it going to impact comp or not? The point is, how do we properly identify the skills needed to do a role, right. And that could be five skills for certain roles. It could be 60 skills for your really highly technical roles. And as long as it’s describing what the work is, those skills are directly or partially, indirectly, already in the job posting that you posted for that, right. And so it’s in there, but nobody’s categorized it and classified it down into a cohesive skill profile for that role, right? So let’s focus on getting the knowledge in there first, and then we can streamline it to say, yeah, we might need to dial this back a little bit, because it’s maybe not a realistic preview. The more important part is, how do we keep it updating it based on market trends based on company changes, strategic changes, so that it can be a living, breathing, you know, artifact, but it’s really just an important metadata factor on your job architecture I write that we need to keep it maintained, because nobody’s really going to read our paragraph job descriptions. And that’s just not fair to you no way to compare your job paragraphs, there’s no way to analyze that. But with a skills layer, especially if you have a comprehensive, you know, common language that’s associated around that. You can measure gaps, you can measure overlaps
David Turetsky:
Absolutely right, the one thing I was going to mention that he just brought it on, it’s measurability. To me, there’s two other big pieces transparency, yep, an opportunity. If you don’t publish, like your appointment, or if you don’t publish, what it is that’s required for jobs, and you’re transparent about it, then you’re gonna get the wrong people. But you also to your point, you’re missing those diamonds in the rough, that could be in your organization that have the skills, you already have them, acquisition costs are low. Now you need to train your managers to open it up and allow for people to transfer and to take laterals and to, you know, take career development opportunities.
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David Turetsky:
To me, this gets to our next point, which is the future of taxonomies and skills. And part of it I want to see the conversation with is that AI has been talked about a million times already the HR Technology Conference 2021 One of the things that I would love to see I do is stop looking for the new thing. And look at the old stuff. Let’s look, let’s use AI and training on these opportunities to find those diamonds. To me, the future is starting with a layer of understanding. Go find the data issues we talked about before go trainee to find the data issues, but then also find those diamonds. Find those people that we that we don’t know about that exist. To me. That’s just one thing. Mark, what’s the future of skills and taxonomy? I mean, you can obviously
Mark Hanson:
Well, yeah, the future is immediate. A lot of it involves AI and a lot of it just falls involves interconnectivity. How do we integrate all of these different systems to bring the fullest insights into our talent. And it needs to be looking at the entire employee lifecycle of when they come into our org, how do they move throughout our org? When they leave our org? How do we understand everything about them so that we can just get better? And how do we use that for our workforce planning? And as our economy shifts? As our company shifts with strategy? How do we morph and plan for that development of our employees the attraction of, you know, outside talent into our org? How do we look at early career planning and skills is such a strong component of that, in right now, skills are a hard thing to grasp. And because they’re their words, and so you know, unless you have context around those words, you really don’t know how they relate where they’re useful. You have very functional skills, like you can see a skill that says software engineering, is that useful? Well, for certain learning contexts, yeah, it’s very useful. Is it useful to a software engineer? Absolutely not, you need to break that down much more detail. So I think the future is really not only the integration of where all these systems are going to be put together, and how the AI can tie this all together to make the best, you know, suggestions for employees, the best learning for employees, the best strategic movements that you need to make. But it’s also looking at the taxonomy itself to say, what are all the related terms and the common ways that things are talked about whether it’s in a functional sense, or it’s in a very detailed sense? And what are the inferences that need to be made, so that all of our suggestions get can get more powerful? And so if you think about the build by borrow sort of strategy, it’s saying, okay, which employees do you need to engage now to, you know, get them ready for their next, you know, promotion or their next, you know, opportunity within the company? And where do we meet them at in that workflow of their daily life of working for our company, right? Where do we suggest learning? Where do we suggest talent mobility move? And then where do we what is the optimal way for that person to learn that isn’t sitting in a classroom? Is that the mentorship? Is that on the job learning? Is that micro learning? What are those into? I think that’s the future is getting really dialed in and precise of meeting the employee, what are their interests? What is their learning style? What is their preference? What is their normal work life, and the more hyperfocus that that gets, and you meet that employee where that need is most felt and most attractive for them to engage with it. Josh Bersin, again, talked about this this morning is like, you can’t just buy a solution and push it on employees, if they’re not using it, you’ve just wasted your money on a point solution in one spot. So the future is where can we meet these employees in that lifecycle of their journey? What were When did they like to learn? How do they like to learn, and then what’s going to be attractive to them, and the more we can, you know, integrate engagement surveys and pulse surveys, and your actual your, your behaviors and your personal preferences, if we can wind that into a cohesive, you know, integrated systems that can meet the employees, then the skills is, it’s just it’s going to blow up in terms of where employees learn, where do they go for work? Where do they search for, you know, certain jobs, and it’ll be tailored to them more specifically, and they won’t have to fight hard to go find it,
David Turetsky:
You know, it strikes me when you’re talking about this is learning shouldn’t start when the employee raised their hand, to me, and I’ve been around the world and both of you have to, because maybe the same age, I’m probably older. But you should start when you’re a candidate, or even when you learn about a company shouldn’t start with, here’s what you need to know about the company. And then as you get closer to the company that learning changes to be, here’s what you need to know about being an employee. And I’m not just talking about the culture and learning about culture, or watching a video about the CEO talking about how cool it is to work there. And he or she says, you know, here’s why our value proposition blah, blah, I’m not talking about that I’m having learning about the products, having learning about your group having learning about the the industry so that even if you’re a veteran of it, what’s our take on it? Who are we? What are we doing, and here’s what you need to know, to do your job so effectively, that on day one, same day five, you didn’t get a computer right away, maybe you’re using your iPhone to onboard, but that onboarding process then becomes a learning process. So you’re not spending the next few months trying to figure out where the bathroom is? Yeah. Oh, actually, I think back, when we had offices, we usually were told, here’s where the bathroom is. And that was probably the most important information you’ve got when you when you I mean, we were just on boarded. And we had a really good onboarding experience. But I mean, there are things that we don’t know like how to record our time. And I think that’s one of those things where if a company’s foundation is process and data, teach people come on board right away, right? So we are talking about the future here. We’re talking about ways to make the employee experience better. And to your point. All of these systems suck if we’re not thinking about the employee experience,
Mark Hanson:
right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and I loved some of the discussion that’s already happened to HR tech here around you know, just that content creation and it’s getting down to you know having managers jump on and give you you know training around what is the realistic preview of what this job is where really logistically Where are things what folders which you know you’re in the office where do I go for certain things and the more that we can break that content down it doesn’t need to be these technical skills that I need to learn to do to help me in my career it’s just basic knowledge in how do we get that knowledge dispersed because I know I remember when I got on boarded at UnitedHealth I mean huge 350,000 person company my manager sat with me for you know five days straight and kind of showed me where everything was well that’s not efficient that’s not scalable. That’s the right
David Turetsky:
and in the world of remote. Doesn’t happen No, it doesn’t. Yeah, exactly.
Dwight Brown:
At least we know where the bathroom is when the world of remote.
David Turetsky:
Right. So we talked about the past past, present and future of skills Mark. What else can we tell our audience before we close what what other things on your mind about the skill taxonomy and skill taxonomies and where they’re going?
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, I just love that it’s top of mind for companies I mean, I think it’s a discussion that needs to be had and the more people that are thinking about it, the more you know problems can be you know, risen to the top of how do we solve for these really cool problems and you know, there’s the way that HR tech is going everybody is grasping on and I know that through you know, different collaborations and different partnerships we’re going to be able to unlock a ton of value that’s going to completely benefit the employee but also drive better insights for for companies and how do we just get better at retaining employees and really lifting up the employee and actually you know, helping them thrive within companies so that conversation alone I think it’s just it’s a great spot to be in because now the employee that you know 20 years ago company’s assets are employee as well did you actually feel that no, you felt like a cog in a wheel now it’s like know the labor market so tight you the employee actually does have value it does have power and they do have a say in what’s happening and the more that we can use skills to help employees learn where they want to learn you know, get previews of what are the jobs that could be you know, going towards and how can they get excited about different components skills can unlock a lot of value as it attached you know, to other wonderful you know, HR tech processes so that’s what excites me is that the conversation is happening and as we evolve this the tech surrounding it’s only going to get better the solutions getting better and the employee is going to win big time through this and you know, help drive the what is the value of work and how can we work hard and be satisfied in those roles and and be engaged in our job that we’re, you know, helping these companies you know, solve big problems and I think everyone’s hopefully going to be happier through this i’m sure enjoy it
David Turetsky:
more relaxed, a lot of fear about where can I go into I have to look elsewhere. I don’t want to look elsewhere. I like this company. I like the people. I love the people I work with, you know, what is in it for me. And you know, too often it’s been an us versus them from the organization to the employee, and it’s got to be an awesome and we are them. They are us. Yeah, that sounded very much like a Battlestar Galactica kinda. Always a pleasure. Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah. This is wonderful. Dwight, thank you.
Dwight Brown:
Thanks for being here. Mark, we really appreciate it. Yeah.
Mark Hanson:
Well, I’m glad we finally see some faces.
David Turetsky:
Yeah. And we invite you to come back to the HR dialogues podcast another time? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we’ll have to be remote. Unless there were good reasons why we can be in the same zip code. But hopefully that’ll happen again soon.
Mark Hanson:
Yeah, and congrats on the merger with salary.com. This is really wonderful, exciting news that we heard this week.
David Turetsky:
And we’re very excited about that, too. And thank you very much for joining. And we really appreciate you listening to the trading labs podcast, whether you are on the live stream or on the recording afterwards. Thank you very much. And hopefully, you’ll listen to the other podcasts. And if you know somebody who might be interested in it, please send it their way. Thank you very much. Take care and please stay safe.
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