Working Groups
Leaders of some of America’s largest employers have been working together with experts to catalogue best practices and develop resources for companies focused on core components of skills-based talent strategies — innovation, talent acquisition, internal mobility and measurement.
Companies are implementing new recruitment and assessment strategies to better recognize and evaluate skills of all job seekers, identifying upward career paths for employees who acquire new skills along their career journey, and developing training programs to help employees gain different skills needed to advance. Explore how companies are engaging in this work:
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Innovative Skills-Based Talent Practices
A Collection of Fresh Ideas, New Practices and Lessons Learned
Explore the working groups:
MPI Innovation Working Group
The Multiple Pathways Initiative Innovation Working Group focused on identifying and supporting the implementation of new, promising talent-based practices as well as assessing their impact.
Amidst massive economic and labor market shifts, establishing innovative talent practices across sourcing, talent development, and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives has changed from a ‘nice to have’ to a critical need when seeking and retaining talent. To support and enhance practices in these areas, Business Roundtable and its Multiple Pathways Initiative established an Innovation Working Group to inspire the identification and adoption of transformational programs, practices and technologies to develop a more equitable and inclusive workforce.
The Working Group created a compendium with efforts related to:
- Reskilling
- Selection
- Sourcing
One of the biggest lessons from this work is that innovating talent practices requires change management. While innovative technologies and tools can help, it’s really the human element that underpins sustained change for more inclusive talent practices. Shifting mindsets and behaviors can seem daunting, but it’s a critical element to sustain initiatives that can otherwise be shortlived or entirely unsuccessful.
MPI Talent Acquisition Working Group
The Multiple Pathways Initiative Talent Acquisition Working Group focused on identifying best practices and supporting companies in implementing skills-based hiring practices.
Four models of action emerged:
1. Loosening Requirements
Cast a wide net, increase your talent pool consideration:
- Start by rethinking your job descriptions
- Focus on the results you’d like to see, rather than the type of qualifications that you think could deliver them
- Highlight the desired skills — the candidate’s ability to perform certain tasks — gets to the same results without creating an unnecessary barrier to entry, like a requirement for a four-year degree
2. Assessing Skills and Structuring Interviews
Stay focused on skills — and the assessments that can measure them:
- Hard skill evaluations like coding tests
- Innovative soft skill assessments
- Case studies
- Asking structured interview questions based on skills and competencies can level the playing field for each candidate
3. Hiring from Additional Talent Pools
Expand your talent pools to include untapped talent who have valuable skills, gained by nonlinear educational backgrounds or career paths:
- This may mean someone who is just kickstarting their corporate career—whether straight from a technical training program or the Military—or someone who has professional experience but took a break from the workforce due to life circumstances
4. Establishing a Skills Marketplace
Activate an internal talent marketplace:
- Create a culture that fosters talent and career mobility while encouraging employees to seek new experiences outside of their team or department
- Engage managers as champions
- Encourage “boomerang employees” and embrace unconventional career pathways that deviate from traditional hierarchical career progressions
- Consider artificial intelligence for skills matching paired with human calibration and assessment
MPI Internal Mobility Working Group
The Multiple Pathways Initiative Internal Mobility Working Group focused on identifying best practices and supporting companies in the implementation of skills-based promotion practices.
Many organizations think they are implementing skills-based practices but haven’t built the shared language, culture, structures and technology systems needed to support it. Amid the current war for talent and the rapidly shifting future of work, skills-based mobility practices can make companies more competitive and nimble.
Skills-based internal mobility refers to the strategic development and use of skills to advance employees within an organization both laterally and vertically. The Business Roundtable Multiple Pathways Initiative , comprised of VP and C-suite HR leaders, came together to articulate the value of taking a skills-based approach to talent management. Some benefits of skills-based mobility include:
Companies
- Increased retention and reduced hiring, onboarding and training costs.
- Increased innovation and business agility due to retention of company knowledge.
- Increased employee engagement and satisfaction.
- Greater alignment between corporate strategy and talent management.
Employees
- Increased opportunities for advancement, especially for those who face barriers to formal credentials.
- The ability to see and access clearer career paths.
- Validation of skills acquired through informal methods, including lived experiences.
- Company Success Stories
MPI Measurement Working Group
The Multiple Pathways Initiative Measurement Working Group focused on developing methods for measuring company progress towards adopting skills-based practices. Companies need a way to understand how their skills-based practices lead to greater diversity, equity and inclusion across their companies, especially for candidates and employees without four-year degrees, who have historically lacked access to economic opportunity and mobility. The Measurement Working Group developed a comprehensive framework that:
- Guides companies in measuring their rate of adoption of skills-based practices, and the impact of those practices on their employees, their business and society broadly
- Includes specific metrics to capture impact on non-degree-holders to help companies understand and address outcomes differences between degree-holders and non-degree-holders
- Has been co-developed, tested and approved by corporate leaders with significant experience in HR and DEI
Resource: Measuring the Impact of Skills-Based Talent Practices
