Skills have been on the HR agenda for decades, but they rarely became the basis for real decisions; frameworks took so long to build that the business had moved on before they were finished. What's different now is that AI agents are starting to handle work that used to require a person, and that changes the question employers need to ask. It's no longer just about who to hire; it's about whether the work needs a human at all. When you can map work to the skills it requires, you have a basis for deciding what stays with people and what moves to an agent. Making that shift isn't straightforward, though; it raises questions about what HR itself needs to look like and what capabilities the function needs to develop. So what does it take to make skills the basis for deciding how work gets done?
My guest this week is Ciara Harrington, Chief People Officer at Skillsoft. In our conversation, Ciara shares how Skillsoft is rethinking which work needs a person, why HR has to become more technical to lead that conversation, and what happens when you add "bot" to your talent strategy.
In the interview, we discuss:
How is AI changing the way we think about skills?
Build, buy, borrow, bot
Helping leaders understand what work could be done differently
Tasks, skills, jobs, and units of work
How understanding skills underpins this transformation
AI can be more expensive than humans
Building an effective governance model
Hiring technical skills into HR and connecting the data
Critical human skills and why they need to be developed faster
What does the future look like?
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify.
