Orchestrating Skills-Based Transformation: Where Should It Sit In The Team?
The skills-based transformation is no longer a potential change for coming years. It’s here: and it’s urgent.
Eighty one per cent of global leaders say skills-based strategies drive growth. Over half of organizations have already begun making the shift, and another 23% say they plan to start within the next year. (Workday: The Global State Of Skills)
For CHROs, that means grappling with not only the “why” and “how,” but also a thorny internal question: Where does this sit in the team?
It’s a deceptively simple question, but one that has stalled many otherwise well-intentioned initiatives. Is it a Talent Acquisition project? A Learning & Development priority? A workforce planning challenge? Or something that sits above and across all these functions?
The truth is, a skills-based transformation isn’t a task to delegate: it’s an operating model shift. And like all enterprise-wide changes, it needs a clear owner, a defined path to value, and a structure that aligns people, process, and technology.
Step 1: Recognize this isn’t just a tech rollout 🔌
Before choosing where the transformation lives, CHROs must clarify what it actually is.
Skills-based transformation means reorienting the way your organization understands talent, and work: not by job title or department, but by skills and tasks. That impacts how you hire, how you plan, how you upskill and reskill, how you reward, and how you retain.
It also means building a dynamic, living dataset of jobs to be done (tasks) and workforce skills – current, emerging, and missing – and using that intelligence to drive more equitable and efficient decisions.
Software can help. But without executive alignment, cross-functional collaboration, and strong governance, it becomes shelfware.
“Relying on a technology strategy without a human capital strategy will not be the recipe to win.” – Jacqui Canney, Chief People Officer, ServiceNow.
Step 2: Anchor everything to the wider HR and business agenda ⚓
Because skills touch everything from recruiting to retention to succession, this transformation must sit under the CHRO’s strategic mandate. Not L&D. Not TA. Not HRIT.
Those teams play vital roles, but the CHRO is uniquely positioned to unify them. After all, a skills-based strategy is ultimately about workforce agility and long-term business resilience: two outcomes the CHRO is responsible for delivering.
“There is clearly a fresh impetus behind enabling agile organisations, based on the people skills and capabilities that power success in the future. And these themes look like the growth areas of the HR systems market over 2025, enabled with AI.” – Fosway Group
If it’s delegated to one function, the effort risks becoming siloed, short-term, or tech-led instead of outcomes-led.
Step 3: Stand up a cross-functional taskforce 👥
Skills-based transformation can’t sit in HR alone. It changes how work is planned, how teams are built, and how strategy is executed … so it needs to be co-owned across the business.
HR will lead the design and execution, but business unit leaders bring the task-level insight, Finance ties skills to planning and cost, and IT ensures the tech works. Without this shared ownership, your skills strategy risks becoming just another HR framework, not a driver of agility and growth.
Set up a cross-functional working group: not just with HR sub-teams, but with true business partners. This ensures the model is grounded in real work, aligned to strategy, and built to scale.
Ninety percent of business and HR executives say moving to a skills-based organization will require a transformation for all functions and leaders, not just HR. (Deloitte)
Step 4: Build a shared skills taxonomy – and a source of truth 🗂️
One of the most common pitfalls in skills transformation is misalignment on terminology. If L&D calls it “communication,” TA calls it “stakeholder engagement,” and workforce planning uses “cross-functional collaboration,” you’ll never build the visibility you need.
A shared, flexible taxonomy – agreed and maintained centrally – is foundational. It becomes your source of truth, feeding consistent skills data across your HR stack.
The skills intelligence layer (usually powered by AI) should ingest data from your job architecture, learning platforms, CVs, performance systems, and even external market benchmarks. This is what enables the CHRO and business leaders to answer critical questions:
- Where are our skill gaps today?
- What emerging skills do we need tomorrow?
- Which employees could grow into in-demand roles?
- Where are we under-utilizing talent?
Step 5: Focus on use cases that matter now 🔎
To gain traction, CHROs should avoid launching a “skills transformation” as a vague ambition. Instead, define 2–3 high-impact use cases to prove value quickly.
Popular starting points include:
- Filling critical skill gaps: Identify adjacent skills in the current workforce to reskill instead of buying talent.
- Improving internal mobility: Use skills visibility to match employees to open roles or stretch assignments.
- Increasing hiring efficiency: Replace static job titles with dynamic skills profiles to find better-fit candidates.
- Automation: Map out which tasks can be handled by AI agents, and how to redeploy human skills where they’re most needed.
“Eighty two per cent of leaders say this is a pivotal year to rethink key aspects of strategy and operations, and 81% say they expect agents to be moderately or extensively integrated into their company’s AI strategy in the next 12–18 months.” – Microsoft Work Trend Index Annual Report 2025
By framing these as business outcomes – not HR experiments – you secure broader stakeholder buy-in.
Step 6: Make skills everyone’s language 💬
Ultimately, the success of a skills-based transformation depends on adoption: not just by HR teams, but by managers, business leaders, and employees.
That means investing in change management:
- Educate leaders on how to use skills data in decisions.
- Train managers to talk to their teams about skills, not just roles.
- Help employees understand their current skills and identify growth paths.
This is a cultural shift, not just a system update.
So – where does skills-based transformation sit? 💡
It sits with the CHRO.
Not as a side project. Not as a digital transformation initiative. But as a core pillar of how the organization attracts, grows, and retains talent in a changing world.
The CHRO is the orchestrator – aligning vision, data, teams, and systems to shift from role-based to skill-based thinking.
If this sounds challenging: it doesn’t have to be. Beamery’s AI-powered platform helps CHROs structure, operationalize and scale skills-based strategies that deliver real business outcomes – quickly.
With the right structure and ownership, skills transformation becomes more than a buzzword. It becomes the backbone of a more agile, inclusive, and future-ready workforce.