Podcast: The Skills-Based Organization | Deloitte Capital H Podcast

Jobs have traditionally been the unit of analysis for organizing work. But as work becomes less predictable, more fluid, and affected by rapid disruption, many argue that work should be organized by skills and tasks rather than fixed and static jobs. And while jobs won’t completely go away any time soon, skills and task-based approaches to organizing work enable firms to deploy their workforce agilely and unlock workforce capacity. In this 30-minute podcast, Michael Griffiths, Deloitte’s lead for Learning Consulting practice, discusses skills-based organizations with Julie Dervin, who has been leading a skills-based transformation at Cargill, and thought leader, John Boudreau. Since many talent practices are based on jobs, firms must think through the implications of decomposing jobs into specific skills and tasks and using them (not job descriptions) as the basis of work. A few questions that arise include: How do skills and task-based approaches to organizing work impact workforce planning? What does this approach mean for job descriptions? How does organizing work by skills and tasks impact how we pay people and recruit them? For additional resources on deconstructing work into skills and tasks, check out John’s article with co-author Ravin Jesuthasan, Work Without Jobs, and Dave Ulrich’s article From Workforce to Work-task Planning.