Does Your HCM Have The Skills Data Your Business Needs?

HR leaders realize that skills are the foundation of future-ready talent strategies. But simply recognizing the importance of skills isn’t enough. The real question is: does your HCM actually give you the skills data you need to plan, hire, and mobilize talent effectively? 

For many businesses, the answer is still “no”.

In a world of widening skills gaps, fast-evolving roles, uncertainty, and rapid AI adoption, clear visibility into your workforce’s skills is essential. Yet only 10% of HR executives feel they have a clear understanding of the skills within their organization. 

Without a unified, dynamic view of skills – supply and demand, today and tomorrow – it’s impossible to close the gap between what your business needs and what your people can deliver.

The Challenge: Skills Data You Can’t Use 😔

The skills gap isn’t new. But it’s growing more urgent. According to the World Economic Forum, 60% of companies say local labor shortages are holding back transformation efforts. Gartner reports that 83% of TA leaders struggle to find people with the right skills. And, with 70% of job skills expected to change by 2030, the challenge is no longer just about hiring – it’s about anticipating and adapting.

So why is it still so hard for HR teams to get ahead of these challenges?

The answer lies in fragmented data. Most organizations sit on a wealth of information about their people, roles, and external talent – but it’s scattered across disconnected tools: your HCM, ATS, CRM, LMS, and others. Without a shared language and integrated infrastructure, that data remains static and unusable.

Outdated HR Tech Isn’t Helping 🪫

Many businesses have invested heavily in technology to solve this. But adding more tools hasn’t improved visibility — it’s just added more noise.

Only 24% of HR employees say they get full value from their HR tech, and just 35% of HR leaders believe their technology supports business goals. (Gartner) The result? Time lost. Money wasted. Insights missed.

That’s because most HR systems were never built to connect. They were bought in silos – and often still operate that way. Even attempts to unify data across tools tend to rely on manual workarounds and one-off integrations that don’t scale.

If you want better outcomes from your people data, you need more than a tech stack. You need a connected foundation — one that unifies, enriches, and activates your workforce data around a consistent data language: skills. 

Skills: The Language Of Work 📧

While humans may use the language of “tasks” to describe work and what people do, “skills” are the most flexible, and future-ready way to describe jobs and people behind the scenes. They offer the granularity needed to match evolving tasks to emerging talent — and the adaptability to keep up with shifting business priorities.

A skills-based approach transforms how you think about roles and capabilities. It allows you to:

• Describe roles in terms of the outcomes and skills required — not just job titles.
• Understand employee potential based on adjacent or inferred skills — not just what’s on a résumé.
• Make fairer, faster decisions across hiring, development, and internal mobility.

But to do that at scale, you need more than a skills taxonomy. You need skills intelligence: data that’s dynamically generated, constantly updated, and deeply integrated across your HR ecosystem.

The Solution: A Unified Skills Data Layer 💡

Instead of migrating everything into one platform (a costly, resource-intensive effort), leading HR teams are building an intelligent layer across their existing systems. This layer:

• Structures data around skills, creating a shared language across tools and teams.
• Connects fragmented information from your HCM, ATS, LMS, and more.
• Uses AI to enrich talent profiles and role descriptions with inferred or missing skills.
• Activates skills intelligence in everyday workflows, from recruiting to performance management.

With this infrastructure in place, your HCM doesn’t just store information: it becomes a decision-making engine. You can visualize current skills, predict future gaps, and plan strategically for hiring, upskilling, or redeploying talent.

And critically, this foundation unlocks the power of AI for your entire HR function and beyond. 

The Role of AI: From Cold Start To Continuous Insight ❄️

AI has matured to the point where it can handle the heavy lifting of workforce transformation. It can take unstructured data – like résumés, job descriptions, or learning history – and turn it into structured, actionable skills intelligence.

But AI doesn’t just create a one-time snapshot. It keeps skills profiles up to date, recommends adjacent skills, and uncovers patterns humans might miss. It acts like a flywheel – starting small, building momentum, and delivering increasingly powerful insights over time.

For example, an employee’s basic profile may list five skills. But AI can infer another 10 based on their work history and suggest relevant learning opportunities to expand their capabilities. Over time, these insights feed back into the system – enriching both individual development plans, and enterprise workforce planning.

Of course, not all AI is created equal. As you embed AI across your talent lifecycle, it’s critical to ensure your tools are ethical, transparent, and compliant. Look for explainable models, clear audit trails, and a focus on augmenting human decision-making – not replacing it.

Unlocking The Value Of Your HR Investments 💸

Ultimately, skills intelligence is the next layer of maturity in talent management. It connects your workforce strategy to your technology investments, and your business goals to your people.

A unified, AI-powered skills data foundation helps you:

• Maximize ROI from your HCM and adjacent systems.
• Reduce complexity by connecting data across tools.
• Make faster, smarter workforce decisions.
• Create fairer, more equitable talent practices.

And it gives your business a real competitive advantage in a fast-changing world.

So ask yourself: Does your HCM give you the skills data your business needs? If not, it’s time to build the connected foundation that does. Discover how to do that in our whitepaper, How To Unify Your Workforce Data.