What Does a Skills-Based Organisation Look Like?
A practical blueprint for shifting from job-centric to skills-first design
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
9:05 AM - 9:35 AM
Skills-based organisation is more than a slogan—it rewires how work, talent and reward are planned and delivered. In this fast-paced strategic outlook, we reveal the four-tier Skills-Maturity Ladder, walk through ‘day-in-the-life’ vignettes for employees, managers and HR, and visualise before-and-after operating models across compensation, workforce planning and learning. Delegates will complete a six-question live poll to score their current tier, compare results in real time, and vote on the quickest lever to move up a level. They leave with shareable artefacts, concrete quick wins and a clear storyline to brief executives and finance partners.
This session will explore
- Cold open contrasting hype with frontline confusion.
- Skills-Maturity Ladder revealed with traffic-light diagnostic.
- Day-in-the-life narratives for employee, manager and HR.
- Operating-model makeover covering pay, workforce planning and learning.
- Cultural and governance pillars securing adoption.
- Live poll maturity score and quick-win crowd vote.
- Road-map linking later work-streams to ladder tiers.
Learning objectives
- Distinguish the four maturity stages and locate your organisation on the ladder.
- Map concrete shifts in pay, workforce planning and learning at each stage.
- Select and justify at least one quick-win lever to progress one tier.
- Recognise the cultural and governance enablers of a sustainable skills-first model.
Why this is on the agenda:
Budget constraints, rapid reskilling needs and AI-fuelled task change are exposing the limits of job-centric structures. Investors and regulators now demand transparent capability reporting, while scarce skills command premium pay. Senior HR and finance leaders must articulate a credible, staged path to skills-based design or risk talent gaps, mis-priced work and strategic inertia.