As technology transforms the nature of work, organizations are shifting from traditional assessment methods, like education or work experience, and evaluating talent based on skills and potential—and they’re using generative AI to do so.

“I am now convinced, in a way that I wasn’t maybe even a year-and-a-half ago, that you cannot do this without an HR, AI-powered skills intelligence system,” Sarah Tilley, ServiceNow’s senior vice president of talent acquisition and development, said during a panel at Charter’s Workplace Summit last week. “Otherwise, it’s just going to continue to be out of reach. It’s going to be manual.”

The benefit of investing in AI for skills development is threefold. For employees, AI can recommend relevant training, mentorship, and other opportunities based on the skills an employee has and needs to develop. 

For managers, AI can help them better optimize their team’s performance and engagement, identify training for employees, and hire for relevant skills needed to perform a role. As for companies, building a wealth of data about their workforce can help organizations find gaps and spot trends in their talent management strategy.

“Organizations are finally going to be able to build a data-driven talent management strategy…that ensures that HR investments are really maximized,” says Tilley. “That’s the bulk of the investment for almost any organization: 50% to 70% of the total costs. It’s really ensuring that you’ve got the ability to quantify all of that and close the gaps.”

ServiceNow introduced its own AI skills solution for clients in May, following its acquisition of AI-powered skills platform Hitch in 2022. The company has identified 13,000 skills across 175 job families, Tilley says, and is mapping 1,200 skills to categories such as experience, language, and critical thinking.

“Every company has a tremendous amount of data, and employees have a tremendous amount of data on their skills. How do we make it easy for them to access that?” says Tilley. 

Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion

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Degree drop. Cisco’s U.K. and Ireland CEO thinks skills and attitude are more or equally as important as a degree. He encourages young people to skip university for apprenticeships and experience. —Orianna Rosa Royle

Closing the tab. The CEO of tech company Expensify opened an upscale lounge at his company’s San Francisco highrise to test if employees would voluntarily return to the office. After six months without success, he now believes return-to-office employers are fighting a useless battle. —Steve Mollman

New RTO smell. A boost in Unilever’s Q3 deodorant sales was at least partly led by a wave of workers returning to the office, the consumer goods giant said last week. —Prarthana Prakash