To answer these questions and streamline skill development, L&D and HR leaders must focus on three things:

1. Defining expectations clearly for every role 
2. Communicating those expectations
3. Connecting employees with the right information to fill gaps

With new Degreed functionality, you’re equipped to accomplish this, guiding employees to develop the skills needed to be successful in their roles. 

How Employees Can Leverage Role Expectations for Better Skill Development

Let’s use Cynthia, a fictitious Software Engineer, as an example. Cynthia just started at Acme, Inc. She held a similar engineering role at her previous company, but she’s curious how expectations differ at Acme. 

When Cynthia logs into Degreed, her profile automatically includes the skills that Acme prioritized for her role, along with the target proficiency level for each skill. There’s also a description for each skill and proficiency level, so she can understand the behaviors she should exhibit to reach the target level. She can then use this information, along with a Maestro Skill Review Coach, to identify and set her current proficiency level in her profile. 

Once she establishes this baseline, Cynthia can focus her development on filling any gaps. Degreed makes this process straightforward by creating a dynamic skill plans for Cynthia which is automatically populated with content targeting skill gaps for her priority skills. The plan is unique to her current proficiency levels and displays content that will help her progress to the next skill level.  

And when she searches for additional resources, she won’t lose any more time sifting through content that is too basic or too advanced. Instead, she will quickly find content that matches her specific proficiency level and where she is in her development journey. 

As a result of this process, Cynthia now knows what skills are expected of her, where she needs to improve, and what resources will help her grow the skills that matter most. This certainty and access to right-sized development resources will accelerate her skill development and increase engagement. 

How Admins Can Automate at Scale

Personalized learning experiences used to be an exclusively manual process that was too time-consuming to scale. Now, AI handles the manual work so L&D and HR leaders can focus on more strategic work, like defining which, role-based skills are required to align to business objectives

In Degreed Learning, the admins can upload a list of organizational roles, which skills are associated with those roles, and what target proficiency levels are for each. They can also set the priority skills they want to appear on employees’ profiles to target skill development.

In Degreed Skills+, admins harness AI to amplify the impact of the work they have done in associating skills to roles. For example, AI generates proficiency level descriptions for each skill, providing precision on what proficiency means at each level. This information guides employees when reviewing skills, so they can select the right proficiency level according to the organization’s definition. 

Admins are also empowered to use AI to automatically tag content in their catalog with proficiency levels. Admins can review and approve these skill proficiency tags as well. This helps match employees to the right content for their skill level.

How the Role-to-Skill Workflow and Tagging Creates Business Value

Administrative efficiencies and personalized experiences translate directly into powerful, scalable applications that drive business value. Core use cases that deliver immediate impact include:

• Strategic asset management: Identify gaps and eliminate redundant or outdated resources.
• Onboarding: Automatically serve new hires content tailored to their specific proficiency level in required skills, accelerating their time to readiness.
• Search and Discovery: Deliver search results personalized to each employee’s needs and skill level.
• Career Pathing and Internal Mobility: Clearly map out the skills needed to move up in seniority or from one department to another, creating a win for employees and organizations. 

Implement AI for Workforce Development

There are a lot of promises that AI will improve the learning experience and reduce admin workload. With Degreed Skills+, AI can do both. 

With our role-to-skill workflow, dynamic skill plans, and automatic proficiency tagging for content, organizations can now deliver highly personalized, meaningful development opportunities at scale—and without added work. Clearer role expectations and tracking mean businesses can speed up skill development to better match the pace of change.

*The functionality discussed in this blog is scheduled to be generally available in April 2026.

The post Accelerate Skill Development with Clear Role Expectations appeared first on Degreed.

This becomes easier with the right tools, integrated to meet your needs. Take Degreed and Workday. Together, Degreed and Workday create a unified skills ecosystem that turns insight into action. The integration helps you close skill gaps faster, adapt to change, and align development directly with business priorities.

Turn Skill Gaps into Growth Opportunities

In many organizations, skill data is scattered across multiple platforms. That slows workforce planning and creates a mismatch between talent and business needs. The Workday and Degreed integration solves that by connecting skill data in both directions, creating a single, reliable source of truth.

It also replaces generic, one-size-fits-all learning with highly personalized experiences. By combining Workday’s role and performance insights with Degreed’s AI-powered curation, personalized experiences, and 80+ content providers, employees get the right learning at the right time.

Whenever the market shifts, agility becomes a competitive advantage. Shared taxonomies, labor market intelligence, and real-time skill validation make it possible to pivot quickly and confidently. Most importantly, every learning activity can be tied directly to measurable outcomes—linking Degreed activity with business targets in Workday, like retention, productivity, and promotion rates—so you can prove ROI, not just report on activity.

Proof in Action: State Street

State Street uses Degreed to assess and grow skills, then syncs validated skills to Workday only when proficiency is met. The results:

• Employees who spend 5–10 hours/month learning in Degreed report higher engagement.
• 300K+ Validated Skill Ratings powering internal mobility
• 97% User Activation, driven by integration into internal mobility
• 72% Monthly Active Use (and growing)

Your Advantage

Our Skills and Learning integrations have a Workday Design Approved badge. That means they are reviewed and approved by Workday, built in close collaboration with the Workday Product team, and guided by real client use cases. Together, we deliver one source of truth for HR and L&D, a connected and personalized employee experience, and the agility to pivot quickly, measure impact, and invest in what works.

Don’t wait for skill gaps to slow your growth. Discover how Workday + Degreed can help you close them. Imagine the impact you could see in just 90 days.

The post Use Workday and Degreed Data to Fill Your Skill Gaps appeared first on Degreed.

Degreed Maestro is purpose-built to close this gap—delivering intelligent, personalized, and scalable learning experiences that convert Gen AI potential into productivity gains, innovation, and competitive advantage. Think of it as AI that can be used to build AI skills.

Here’s how:

Maestro Drives Precision at Scale.

• Automatically generates personalized learning pathways aligned to job roles, skills, and business needs.
• Maps Gen AI proficiency goals to learning moments—supporting roles like AI Trainers, Prompt Engineers, and Analysts.

Maestro Delivers Personalized Coaching for Confidence.

• Delivers AI-powered coaching prompts and role-specific simulations to build Gen AI fluency.
• Reinforces confidence through contextual support and feedback—key to sustained behavior change.

Maestro Embeds Learning in the Flow of Work.

• Orchestrates learning moments based on individual user actions, roles, and preferences.
• Promotes continuous learning habits by embedding recommendations and nudges into everyday workflows.

Maestro Has Measurable Impact on Skills & Business Outcomes.

• Tracks confidence growth, skill proficiency, and learning behavior over time.
• Integrates with Degreed Skills+ to provide real-time analytics and link Gen AI learning to business strategy.

Strategic Outcomes

• Accelerated Gen AI proficiency across the workforce
• Increased engagement, retention, and internal mobility
• Reduced time-to-impact for Gen AI use cases
• Alignment of learning investments to workforce transformation goals and business performance metrics

Your Next Move

Let’s explore how your organization can build Gen AI learning strategies—for faster innovation, smarter operations, and lasting business impact.

Schedule a personalized, one-on-one call with a Degreed expert today.

The post AI for AI Skills: How Degreed Maestro Accelerates Gen AI Fluency appeared first on Degreed.

What happens when one of the world’s most trusted financial institutions decides it’s time to realign its skill development strategy?

At State Street, the answer was clear: Build an enterprise-wide, data-driven, executive-backed foundation for workforce agility and internal mobility—embedded in the company’s annual business strategy and talent action plans.

With more than 50,000 employees globally and 11% of the world’s financial assets flowing through its systems daily, State Street needed a more strategic approach to skill development, one that could keep pace with evolving business demands and employee expectations.

“The business came to us and said, ‘We have no way of seeing what skills employees have. We have no way of understanding where our skill gaps are, where we need to upskill, where we need to reskill,’” said Laura Sullivan, Vice President, Talent Development.

That challenge sparked the launch of SkillsFIRST. More than an HR initiative, it’s a key lever putting skills at the core of performance, retention, and career advancement. Powered by Degreed and integrated into Workday, SkillsFIRST is helping leadership align talent supply with business critical needs—and empowering employees to take ownership of their skill development.

From Limited Insight to Connected Capability

Before launching SkillsFIRST, State Street lacked a unified view of its workforce capabilities, while employees sought greater clarity around growth paths and more targeted development support.

Rather than licensing costly inference tools, State Street used Degreed and Workday to build its own Skills Library, customized using a blend of industry benchmarks and internal expertise. With input from subject matter experts, learning teams defined seven core skills for each role and created tailored Role Plans in Degreed.

How the Degreed–Workday Integration Functions at State Street

At State Street, the integration between Degreed and Workday forms the backbone of the company’s skills-first strategy—bridging employee development with strategic talent planning.

The process begins in Degreed, when employees explore curated learning content and engage with the personalized Role Plans. Employees are encouraged to assess their proficiency using the Degreed eight-point scale, and then to initiate structured career development conversations by requesting manager input on their ratings.

Skills will ultimately be moved to Workday to power a range of critical HR capabilities including skills matching for open positions, internal job recommendations, and strategic workforce planning—all grounded in real-time evidence of capability from Degreed.

This integration ensures that career development isn’t just aspirational—it’s operational, measurable, and deeply connected to business outcomes.

Strategic Impact That Scales

In just the first year of implementation, State Street has seen meaningful results:

• Millions of dollars saved avoiding costly, third-party skill inference and talent marketplace tools.
• 50% of employees onboarded into SkillsFIRST
• 1,200 additional internal promotions in six months
• 11% increase in employee engagement scores tied to career development
• 34% of internal hires supported through SkillsFIRST data, avoiding costs of external hiring
• 21,000+ monthly skill ratings generating rich talent insights for planning and learning

These outcomes reflect more than a technology shift—they signal a cultural commitment to transparency, growth, and mobility.

Key Lessons for Talent Leaders

For HR, Talent, and L&D leaders looking to operationalize skills, State Street’s journey offers proven strategies:

• Begin with clear business objectives, not just system capabilities.
• Build shared language through a unified skills library and role plans.
• Integrate platforms to turn skills data into workforce intelligence.
• Empower employees to participate in—and benefit from—the process.

By positioning skills as the connective tissue across performance, planning, and development, State Street has redefined how a complex global organization can unlock potential and stay future-ready.

Learn more.

SkillsFIRST didn’t just transform learning at State Street—it improved retention, boosted engagement, enabled internal mobility, and delivered measurable cost savings.

Find out how a similar approach could accelerate outcomes at your organization. Let’s talk.

The post Skill Development at Scale: What State Street Is Doing Differently appeared first on Degreed.

Your product team spends a year developing a new platform. Extensive research reveals a solution that solves vital problems for the market. Your marketing team plans a creative launch campaign complete with strong messaging, email campaigns, digital ads, and social posts. A winning go-to-market strategy emerges, identifying key accounts and clearly defined buyer personas.

When launch day arrives, it’s time to pop the champagne, right?

Not so fast. Is the sales team enabled? Do your reps know less about the product than your prospects?

If you want a successful launch, your sales team needs to understand your product and practice the pitch. The team needs quick responses to key questions about how the product works and what it will do. It needs to articulate value in the context of specific client needs.

And your sales team needs to learn all this in fast and flexible ways that fit a busy schedule.

Customized Coaches for Your Business Needs

While out-of-the box AI coaches are powerful, the customization provided by Degreed Maestro amplifies the impact.

With Maestro, you can tailor AI coaches to reflect your company’s priorities, content, guidelines, brand-voice, and cultural style. This organizational context enables the coaches to converse with relevance, convey the right messages with specificity, and deliver impactful learning. 

This means that, with Maestro, you can scale activities—like personal feedback or sales coaching—previously limited by the rigors of human interaction. The use cases are numerous, but let’s focus on one example: Creating a customized coach that enables a sales team to launch a new product.

Maestro in Action: Creating a Sales Enablement Coach

In our last blog post, Mark used the Degreed Maestro Skill Review Coach while onboarding as a Sales Director—to uncover skill gaps and create a personalized learning Pathway that filled those gaps. 

Now, Mark’s employer turns to Maestro to build a customized coach that will prepare Mark and the rest of the sales team for action.

And let’s face it: Launching a new product is chaotic. Important feedback comes late. Strategies change. Features are shoved in. Messaging gets overhauled. The sales team needs collateral yesterday. 

Now imagine this isn’t just any launch.

The executive team considers this product a key differentiator for the business. Everyone needs to be extra careful about who has what information when.

It’s no secret that this very scenario—a moving-target strategy combined with need-to-know-only restrictions—is a real-life conundrum of enablement. The result has always been high stress and ineffective enablement. But creating a customized coach with Maestro* is so simple and effective that the effort is massively simplified. Forget about coordinating, for example, schedules in order to host an internal webinar series. On the contrary, all the key information the sales team needs can be uploaded into the coach at any time, even the day of the launch.

And because of the personalized nature of Degreed Maestro coaches, employees each get exactly the enablement they need, when they need it. 

Let’s say a Sales Director wants to practice a tailored pitch for a specific client before an important meeting. A coach can quickly provide helpful feedback based on the resources uploaded.

A Regional Vice President wants to understand the product’s ideal customer profile (ICP), to identify target accounts and forecast opportunities. It’s as simple as typing the question and getting an answer.

A member of the sales team needs a quick answer to an FAQ, but the product manager is in back to back meetings all day. Now, they can ask Maestro instead.

No more scrambling to create an enablement program with information that is quickly outdated. No more plans getting ruined by last-minute changes. No more fire drills.

And feel free to tweak the pitch deck right before launch.

Maestro can handle it.

Sales Enablement Coaching from the Sales Perspective

We’ve seen how the enablement team created a customized sales enablement coach, but what about the sales team experience? How was the coach received and used?

Let’s look at how Mark uses the coach to successfully close a deal. 

When the enablement team demo’d the coach, Mark was impressed with its ability to answer questions he would usually have to send to the Product Manager who built the solution. Mark was motivated to try it out. 

Because the coach was embedded into a Pathway about the new product, it’s easy for Mark to access the coach in the flow of learning. 

Mark starts a conversation with the coach to work through key questions he has about the product, and he receives important advice on how to tailor his sales pitch. 

Three days later, Mark runs into a client at a trade show. This person saw a press release about the new product and wants to meet later that day to discuss it. It’s quite loud at the tradeshow, so Mark kicks off a text-based conversation with the customized coach, quickly getting advice on how to tailor his pitch to the needs of that specific client. He’s even able to practice the pitch and receives constructive feedback on some key improvements.

When he meets with the client later that day, Mark applies the advice he got from Maestro, and the client becomes even more intrigued. They schedule a follow-up call with the client’s broader team, which ultimately leads to the first purchase of the product.

The Power of Scaled Personalized Coaching

For Mark, the customized coach proved essential. It provided him with the individualized support he needed to sell the new product. But the customized coach didn’t help just Mark. It helped the entire sales team.

By scaling personalized support according to the company’s  unique new product, its goals, and its needs, Maestro upskilled the entire salesforce and equipped all members with what they needed to help grow the business. 

The launch was a success. Time to pop the champagne!

Find out more.

Schedule a personalized one-on-one call with us today.

*The Degreed Maestro customized coach is currently in development.

The post Degreed Maestro: AI Coaches for New-Product Sales Enablement appeared first on Degreed.

This is the second post in a series on building skills for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI). See the first.

DEI skills—such as critical thinking, cultural intelligence, and psychological safety—are no longer optional; they’re essential to a thriving, resilient organization that can adapt to rapid change.

By developing DEI skills, leaders and employees can create inclusive environments where diverse perspectives thrive, fostering a culture of belonging that boosts resilience, engagement, and innovation. Key DEI skills bridge the gap between rapid technological advancements and the human connection needed for collaboration—and they might just prove essential in helping your organization meet its most important objectives. 

Organizations looking to navigate periods of significant change need DEI skills to remain agile and resilient. Navigating change means more than responding to technology shifts; it’s about ensuring your people are equipped to thrive in an inclusive, fast-paced environment.

As periods of change become the norm, prioritizing DEI skills is key for organizations to stay competitive and agile. Whether it’s enhancing knowledge sharing or building resilient teams, focusing on DEI skills is the path to a truly adaptive, inclusive, and thriving workplace.

The Leader’s Role in DEI Skill Development

Leaders in particular play a crucial role in championing DEI skills. Why? Leaders empower individuals and managers to support inclusive practices and create a culture of belonging that drives engagement, grit, and resilience at a time when people need it most. Executive Leaders can prioritize DEI skills to foster an environment where psychological safety and diverse perspectives drive growth.

Engaging managers and leaders in DEI skill conversations begins with equipping them to act as skill coaches, fostering open dialogue and modeling inclusive behaviors. This process involves providing targeted training and tools to help leaders recognize and mitigate bias, facilitate psychological safety, and encourage diverse perspectives within their teams.

By embedding DEI into regular performance discussions and aligning it with business goals, managers can actively support their teams’ growth while driving a culture of inclusion and belonging.

Choosing DEI Skills to Prioritize at Your Organization

As you assess which DEI skills need attention at your organization, let’s explore a few examples to get you started.

Remember that skills should be measurable and developable.

You might be tempted to choose skills like compassion or empathy. These are important, but under scrutiny they’re revealed as inherent human traits. In other words, how can an employee get better at empathy? On the contrary, DEI skills allow for the evaluation of proficiency and improvement over time. To find out more on this, take a deeper dive into skills vs. competencies.  

Key DEI skills and the benefits they offer include:

• Critical Thinking. This helps employees recognize and address biases, question assumptions, and make fair, reasoned decisions that align with inclusive values. It helps them understand how best to utilize and evaluate AI tools. It’s not only about problem-solving; it’s essential for uncovering and addressing unconscious biases in decision-making and enabling fairer, more inclusive practices.

• Psychological Safety. This is about creating an environment where individuals feel secure sharing ideas without fear of judgment, and it’s vital to inclusion. Psychological safety builds trust and encourages diverse perspectives, allowing innovation to flourish while creating a foundation of trust and respect. Psychological safety is pertinent to all levels of an organization.

• Resilience. This is the ability to adapt to challenges and recover from setbacks. It supports employees as they navigate change, including shifts toward greater equity and inclusion. Resilience is about equipping teams to thrive even during difficult times, which is essential for fostering a workforce that remains engaged and supportive.

• Cross-Cultural Agility.  This is about understanding and adapting to diverse perspectives in a way that drives better team collaboration. It helps individuals work productively across different backgrounds, enhancing communication and collaboration.

• Inclusive Communication. This involves learning techniques to actively listen, mitigate biases, and foster open dialogue. Inclusive communication allows for better understanding among team members and creates an environment where all voices are heard and valued.

• Equitable Decision-Making. This involves systematically ensuring fairness in processes like hiring or promotions through choices that are both inclusive and unbiased. Equitable decision-making lays the groundwork for fair practices that help attract and retain a diverse workforce.

Each of these skills is developable, actionable, and measurable. The important action is identifying skills to develop that are essential to DEI  as well as accomplishing your company’s goals.

How to Develop DEI Skills Aligned with Company Goals

Rather than viewing DEI as a standalone initiative, savvy organizations will recognize that DEI skills are directly tied to broader business objectives—for example, boosting innovation, increasing employee engagement, or improving customer satisfaction.

Step No. 1: Identify DEI skills that align with business goals.

Start by identifying a few essential DEI skills that align with your company’s strategic objectives. For example, if your goal is to foster innovation, focus on skills like creativity and cultural awareness, which support diverse thinking and collaboration. If the goal is to improve team resilience during times of change, prioritize skills like psychological safety and adaptability.

Step No. 2: Define clear outcomes for skill development.

It’s essential to clearly define what success looks like. Do you need employees to gain deep proficiency in one area, or is a broader understanding of multiple skills more valuable? Asking for both breadth and depth can lead to burnout, so keep the focus on a few key skills and make sure progress is measurable. This specificity will also help you track progress and make adjustments as needed.

Step No. 3: Take action with small, scalable steps.

Don’t wait for perfect data or a lengthy approval process to get started. Quick wins like engaging employees in discussions about skills or launching targeted training programs can build momentum. Analyzing employee skill profiles, for instance—to identify gaps in psychological safety or cultural awareness—might quickly help you pinpoint where to start. This in turn could help make your overall implementation process more responsive and agile.

Step No. 4: Provide targeted resources and training.

Asking employees to develop DEI skills without adequate resources is a recipe for failure. Ensure they have access to workshops, peer-to-peer learning groups, stretch assignments, and learning content that supports their growth. Be wary of blanket training programs, as these often lack the focus necessary to address specific skill gaps. Instead, opt for tailored learning experiences that address your organization’s unique needs.

A Note About Creating Lasting, Measurable Mentorship Programs

A mentorship program is a wonderful tool in the DEI toolbox. But if it’s your only tool, you’ve made a mistake. While many mentorship programs created during the DEI push of 2020 had good intentions, they often lacked long-term sustainability. To create lasting impact, mentorship initiatives must have clear goals and ongoing support. 

Leaders should be accountable for fostering inclusive cultures and providing mentorship aligned with measurable outcomes. Specific skills tied to a program can help define clear goals. By establishing structured, goal-oriented mentorship that complements other DEI initiatives, organizations can sustain DEI momentum and build a stronger, more inclusive talent pipeline.

The Measurable Impact of DEI Skills

Organizations that invest in DEI skills are building a foundation for sustained performance and adaptability, creating a workforce that’s not only more diverse but also more agile, innovative, and resilient. Integrating DEI skills into company strategy isn’t just about “checking a box.” It’s about making an investment in the long-term health and competitiveness of your organization. 

With the right DEI skills in place, your organization is better equipped to navigate change, embrace diverse perspectives, and drive lasting progress.

Degreed Professional Services

Hali Linn is a Learning Strategy Consultant on the Degreed Professional Services team.

Degreed Professional Services partners with business leaders and learning pros to explore learning strategies, technology goals, and questions. Book a free and private consultation.

The post DEI Skills in Action: A Step-by-Step Guide to Driving Change appeared first on Degreed.

Whatever work you do to get leaders behind skill development, whatever resources you secure for learning, and whatever successes you see with retention or innovation—everything eventually falls apart if your efforts lack skill coaching.

To lean into skill coaching, you’ll need to prioritize skill-building opportunities and lean on the managers who oversee employee learning. Unfortunately, our research shows that 26% of employees say their managers don’t support their professional growth, and nearly half of employees aren’t connected to work that stretches their skills.

“Most managers want to help their employees develop skills, but many managers have not received great coaching themselves,” said Ben Cowan, Director of Skills Strategy at Degreed. “They need training on how best to drive skill success, time and resources to do it right, and recognition that their skill coaching efforts are critical to the success of the business.”

Here’s why—and how—L&D can help managers be better skill coaches to help achieve critical company skill goals.

Why Managers Should be Skill Coaches

Ideally, managers have a profound and positive effect on employees in all aspects of their work, especially in learning. In a positive learning culture, people are 92% more likely to say their manager supported their development.

Our research also shows that 18% of employees say one of their favorite ways to learn is directly from their managers. Furthermore, 70% of employees learn from managers frequently, and 28% learn from managers daily.

And can you imagine implementing experiential learning like special projects, mentorships, and internal internship programs without manager support? We can’t. In fact, we’ve found that the most successful learning happens at companies where managers are excellent skills coaches.

“Managers are critical, not just because they find and connect learning to the members of their teams, but because they also contextualize and reinforce it within the workflow,” said Hali Linn, Learning Strategy Consultant at Degreed.

“By serving as both mentors and coaches, managers help bridge the gap between formal learning and the application of skill development. This is how managers foster an environment where continuous learning is part of the organizational culture.”

Managers are also critical to everything else in your company—operations, productivity, employee engagement, and more. And that’s a problem. Why? Because managers are time-starved, caught between competing priorities, and missing critical guidance. They need support too, and that’s where L&D comes in. Here’s how you can help.

No 1. Save managers time: prioritize critical skills.

Research shows the average manager already spends 30 minutes with each direct report every three weeks, and great managers spend even more. If your organization is anything like those studied, it means managers are some of the busiest people in your company.

So if you ask a manager to add more skills development to their plate, don’t be surprised if you get the corporate equivalent of a shrug. 

Also consider that the number of tasks skill coaches could add to their plates—from discussing career goals and giving feedback to finding and assigning stretch projects—can quickly become overwhelming. Now multiply that by the number of direct reports and the number of skills each direct report needs to develop. 

It becomes clear that this is going to be a lot of work. This means that, if you want skills coaching to succeed, you’ll need to remove as many multipliers that you can and shorten the list of skills.

3 Ways to Help Managers Prioritize Critical Skills

To keep managers (and employees) from feeling overwhelmed, help them narrow their focus to the most important skills.

Which skills will have the most impact? Your managers may not know or have time to find out. But you can help them prioritize in one of three ways:

1. Top-down: Translate business objectives into high-priority skills using the first part of our workbook How to Win Learning and Influence the C-Suite.
2. Bottom-up: Democratize skill prioritization by asking individual contributors which skills would help them in their daily work.
3. Combination: Give managers and employees a list of high-priority skills from the business—then let them decide what to learn first.

“A combination approach has worked well for many of our clients,” said Stephanie Lyras, Director, Change Management, Engagement & Adoption. “It allows us to be clear about the skills most important at an organizational level, while respecting the need for flexibility and autonomy to focus on the aspects of the global strategy that are most critical for different business areas.” 

No 2. Incentivize managers: connect skills to successes.

Executives need to drive profit. Managers need to show impact. Employees need to provide quality work. Everyone wants your company to succeed. It’s your job in L&D to bring them together.

If you’ve prioritized skills using a top-down or combination approach, you’ve already aligned with the C-suite on skills. When you share these priorities with skill coaches, connect those coaches to available resources, pathways, and tools. Give them ready-made learning packages.

If you’ve taken more of a democratized approach to skill prioritization, coordinate efforts across teams. Pool resources to share among multiple teams—and provide the social learning that 75% of workers crave.

Celebrate the wins.

However you help managers prioritize skills, keep the focus dialed and the energy high by celebrating wins. Simply pointing out skills and expecting managers to take it from there won’t cut it. Prove to them that the skills highlighted will help them succeed.

Celebrate team members who complete stretch assignments related to high-priority skills. Track progress like increases in productivity, quality improvements, and skills assessments—and share them often. You’ll help reinforce that skills development is part of success, not incidental to it.

No 3. Build habits: give managers a manual.

Coaching is a skill like any other, and even the most seasoned managers need help leveling up their workers. L&D can help by infusing more conversations with skills terminology, creating new guidance, and leveraging learning tools.

Add skills conversations to existing guidance.

There are already existing processes in place at your company:

• Most managers address employee development and performance with evaluations, career development conversations, and annual reviews.
• Most executives likely already schedule recurring company events like strategy rollouts and quarterly kick-offs.

Your job is to ensure that these practices address skill-building. Work with HR and Talent executives to make discussions about skills a part of performance evaluations and raises. Provide skills talking points for career development conversations.

For example, you could add a task at the end of existing coaching or performance evaluation forms to align two priority skills to work on—and outline how progress in those skills will be measured at the next evaluation.

Create new guidance.

After incorporating more skill coaching language in existing processes, start outlining the specifics of new processes that help managers get the most out of the time they spend on skill coaching.

For example, managers coaching each direct report can: 

1. Schedule a 1:1 with the employee to identify one or two skills to focus on.
2. Set developmental goals with a clear timeline and measure of success.
3. Schedule regular 15-minute check-ins to discuss progress and challenges.
4. Reach out to L&D for support as needed.

Help managers leverage learning tools.

With the rise of learning technologies, AI, and vast content libraries, employees have more ways than ever to develop their skills. But without manager guidance, even the most advanced technologies are reduced to tools that sit on a shelf.

Letting learning tools sit on the shelf is a mistake. Gartner research shows that managers who connect employees to the right resources at the right time see 26% more performance and 3x the likelihood their employees will be high performers.

Managers need to be empowered to become skill coaches and be the connectors between those technologies and employee skill development. Help managers understand how L&D resources make skill coaching easier.

Focus on tools like these if you have them:

Degreed Skill Coach

Managers use Degreed Skill Coach to help track and analyze the skills their team members have—and to understand the gaps. Managers see employee skills ratings and set developmental goals. 

“Managers don’t often know where to start when it comes to facilitating coaching conversations,” Linn said. “But Degreed Skill Coach is designed for just that, a place to start. Skill Coach gives managers the view of their team member’s skills, where they want to focus their development, and how to help them achieve their goals.” 

Degreed Focus Skills

Degreed Focus Skills presents employees with learning and skill-building content based on relevance to their work, company, and manager goals.

“So often we, as L&D admins, get a bit too excited about selecting a bunch of skills for employees to focus on,” Linn said. “But the truth is that often leads to overwhelm, and employees tune out. Managers helping their teams choose just a few skills to intentionally work on is what yields results. Too many and employees will disengage.”

Degreed Button

Degreed Button is a plug-in managers use to share learning content on the fly.

Everybody needs a coach.

Turning managers into skill coaches is critical for skills development. With coaching, employees are 93% more likely to use career planning tools, 67% more likely to use skills, and 379% more likely to have opportunities to stretch their skills on the job.

Coaching itself is a skill, and it’s one L&D can cultivate by giving managers the support they need to succeed. And if you find yourself in need of a little coaching, Degreed can help with that. Our Professional Services team partners with L&D professionals like you to explore your learning strategy, technology goals, and questions about coaching managers. Book a free, private consultation.

Contributors

Ben Cowan

Director of Skills Strategy at Degreed

Hali Linn

Skills & Talent Expert at Degreed

Stephanie Lyras

Director of Change Management, Engagement, and Adoption at Degreed

The post How to Turn Managers into Skill Coaches appeared first on Degreed.

Like a translation app on vacation, AI tools are always ready to help you at work. They can answer questions, give suggestions, and even do some of your work for you.  

With the ability to get help at work “just in time,” you might think you won’t need to learn important tasks ahead of time. Or that it may not be worth the effort to learn tasks “just in case” they’ll might pop up during the workday.

It’s true that AI capabilities will transform how you get work done. Still, I believe that, amid all this change, a simple and time-tested fact of work life will persist: Employees need to draw on skills and expertise without the help of technology. I call this skill fluency.

AI assistants are getting smarter.

OpenAI, Microsoft, and Apple have announced that AI assistants will soon be able to understand context. In other words, they’ll be able to “see” what we’re doing on our digital devices and across applications. As such, we’ll be able to ask them to assist us in the digital work we do. 

If you haven’t already seen it, check out the video demo below from OpenAI. This video demonstrates the types of interactions you can have with GPT-4o when it can see your screen.

And check out this video from Google to see how AI can assist us in navigating physical spaces using our cameras.

AI is the Translation App, Your Skills are Language Fluency

AI demos (like the videos shared above) can leave us reeling and rethinking what skills we should spend time developing. Similarly, when OpenAI recently demoed its live translation capabilities in May, the stock price for Duolingo, a free language learning app, fell 3.5%. The market was wrestling with the question, “Do people still need to learn a language if they can use real-time language translation everywhere they go?”

The stock price has since recovered, perhaps based on the understanding that while translation is undoubtedly useful, it will never replace actual language fluency. You need fluency—and not just after a move to Mexico.

You need fluency for everyday life, wherever you might be. You speak about 16,000 words per day. You can’t outsource your most critical and fundamental form of communication. In interactions and relationships where speed, collaboration, and intimacy matter, you need fluency.

Skill Fluency in the Workplace

You also need skill fluency at work. Ask yourself this, “Is my work like an everyday interaction or more of a short vacation?”

Certainly, practical use cases exist for each approach. For tasks you perform infrequently (the short vacations), your ability to look up information is critical. I never seem to remember how to write a vlookup formula in Excel. Whenever I do need it I do a search, and AI makes that process seamless. 

But for the core parts of my work (the everyday interactions), there are tools and processes I rely on seemingly all the time. I don’t want any friction using these tools. I want skill fluency.

This analogy of fluency (everyday use) vs. translation (infrequent use) addresses a key dynamic of AI use. But it’s not the only dynamic at play. AI can help you with new or rare tasks, and it can even take on repetitive, mundane everyday tasks. It can also help you start, overcome obstacles, or gain new perspectives.

And through it all, one thing will remain true. No matter how AI assists you, your own abilities will remain the critical component at the core of the process. The bigger and stronger your core, the better the interplay between you and AI becomes, and the better off you’ll be.

5 Reasons to Develop Skill Fluency in Your Core Areas of Expertise

1. Speed and Associative Thinking 

Internalized knowledge helps you think fast, connect ideas easily, and see patterns without always having to search for information. To highlight the importance of speed in our work, computer scientists use a flute analogy. Imagine trying to play the flute with a one-second delay between blowing a note and hearing it. The delay would make it difficult for you to practice or perform, right?

Your thinking and problem-solving skills work best when you can access your knowledge without any distractions. Studies on working memory reveal that expertise involves complex cognitive chunks that boost reasoning skills. These chunks, like mental building blocks, enhance your capacity to unlock deeper understanding and creativity.

2. The Automation Paradox 

The paradox of automation is this: When you use machines to replace work, those machines also need to be installed, maintained, and managed, which leads to additional types of work. Replacing routine work increases your dependence on the expertise needed to maintain a complicated system and manage exceptions.

We’ve seen this trend with airplanes. Have you ever looked into an airplane cockpit recently? They’re complicated systems.

As Captain Chelsey Sullenberg (who heroically landed the plane on the Hudson River) has said, “It requires much more training and experience, not less, to fly highly automated planes.” When it comes to AI, every individual needs to maintain the expertise needed to oversee and manage AI systems.

3. The Unreliable GPS 

I use GPS to navigate my path almost anywhere I go. This means my ability to get anywhere unassisted, especially when I’m crisscrossing a new city or country, is really bad. Like “I refuse to pull out of the grocery store parking lot until my GPS is ready” bad.

Research shows that London cab drivers, who must legally memorize the city’s complex and twisty street map, boast larger brain hippocampi than the rest of us. But most of us don’t drive cars for a living, so relying on GPS is a rational trade-off between convenience and navigational dexterity.

The real challenge comes from the fact that AI is an unreliable GPS. What if 10% of the time the GPS guided you to random coordinates? Even worse, what if you had no way of knowing you were off course until it was too late?

The problem with being wrong about something is that it feels exactly the same as being right—until it’s too late. Outsourcing expertise to AI is an unpredictable trade-off because it is difficult to anticipate the manifestation and cost of errors.

4. The Last Real Competitive Advantage 

When AI tools are in everyone’s hands, you’ll need something non-AI to set you apart from everyone else. We’re used to relying on traditional “moats” such as prior experience or a college degree that helped us maintain our positions in the workplace.

Now, AI is a great equalizer. If you rely on AI for most of your work, then you’re easily replaceable by anyone else who has access to the same AI tools. This means that being able to constantly learn has become the new way to set yourself apart and maintain your personal competitive advantage.

5. Values and Craftsmanship

Not everything should be about short-term economics. I feel great joy and satisfaction from learning and being good (for brief moments at least) at what I do. As technology eats into more of our everyday lives, we may be headed for a crisis of meaning (if it wasn’t here already). 

Designing work that amplifies joy and meaning may not bring a short-term ROI boost, but I do think it will matter in the long run. AI is making it easier than ever to create mediocre work and products. But I suspect people will gravitate towards companies that value craftsmanship.

Don’t stop investing in expertise.

We can expect that new AI capabilities will continue to shape L&D trends and advance on-demand performance support. No doubt there will be huge productivity gains from these technologies.

However, we cannot write off the need for skill fluency and the processes that develop it. We cannot let our organizations and leaders discount the need to continue to invest in underlying skills and capabilities. Never assume that inexperienced employees using AI are equally as capable as your internal experts.

I believe the future will dramatically reward people and companies that continue to develop expertise and not merely rely on AI shortcuts. If something really matters, aim for skill fluency.

(And maybe don’t end that daily usage streak on Duolingo just yet.)

The post The Case for Skill Fluency in an AI-Assisted Workplace appeared first on Degreed.

Perfect—you’re exactly who I wanted to talk to. 

I want to chat with the fairly large population of L&D pros out there who either shy away from or tune out skills. I get it. Skills is sucking up a lot of oxygen in our profession right now. Colleagues, leadership, industry leaders, and even vendors pressure you to get on board. 

I promise that the purpose of this article isn’t to convert you to join a skills-based organization (SBO) club. But while you don’t need to hitch a ride on the fast-paced, all-or-nothing express, it will help if you and your L&D team take at least a few steps down the skills path. 

Let’s take a look at the most common reasons L&D professionals either ignore or delay progress on skills. After that, I’ll offer advice so it’s easier for you and your team to start taking small steps toward skill development. 

No 1. “Skills? They’re not our responsibility.” 

A lot of skills wallflowers are holding back out there. When skill development discussions ignite, some may fade into the background. It’s a comfortable position to take. In many companies, talent management and L&D teams are often organized under the HR, Talent, or another department. 

If your company assigns talent and career development to other departments outside L&D, it’s natural for you to focus on the more tried and true elements of the job like learning engagement, learning culture, or cohort-based learning. It’s easy to think you can relax because someone else has “skills” covered.

But this thinking will become increasingly problematic. Holding on to divisions between HR, Talent, L&D, and other departments runs the risk of skills falling into a corporate no-man’s land. Corporate skill strategies often fail because there is confusion about who owns skills and or agreeing on a definition.

L&D pros can’t afford to be skills wallflowers. 

L&D professionals, you may feel comfortable with how your company has organized learning, talent acquisition, and career development positions. However, these old divisions of labor responsibilities do not address rapidly growing skills gaps. The truth is that no department can afford to be a skills wallflower any longer. 

A skills initiative is too big of a challenge and project for one or two departments to own. Skills is a vertical, horizontal, top-down, and bottom-up initiative. It’s all-inclusive. And it certainly calls for responsibility and ownership from a department that helps employees learn and develop.

No 2. “Skills? They’re not in our DNA.”

Another common reason to wave the skill development bandwagon on by is ontological. Many learning pros believe L&D exists to champion competencies—not skills. This is understandable because the building blocks for Talent and L&D has been competencies. 

Over the past few decades, L&D professionals were trained to use competency models, and these models have grown strong roots in organizations. We’ve been trained to develop competencies: the complex mixtures of behaviors, abilities, knowledge, and skills that are tied to specific job roles. 

Why would we abandon the competency model we know and love for a skills model that may end the role of jobs? From this perspective, skills aren’t just different but almost antithetical to rock solid L&D structures.  

But here’s the thing: defining learning and development solely with competencies is problematic.

Focus on the overall mission of L&D—not competencies.

I know we’re comfortable with competencies, but we must see the bigger picture. This brings me to an important question: What is the purpose and function of L&D? 

No matter where someone falls on the skills or competencies scale, the answer to that question, at least in my experience, is fairly universal. The function of L&D is to help people do new things or do current things better than before. 

And if we can agree that this is our mission, then skills have a role in our mission. Skills are defined as learning that can be applied. Skills are learned and developed—they’re what we do. We can’t help people do new things without skills entering the equation. 

No 3. “Skills? They’re too hard to switch to.” 

You might not have anything against skill development, but you still might not feel ready to jump on the bandwagon. The vehicle is moving fast, and getting yourself on board seems to require some expert stunt double maneuvers. You’ve got to move from your solid competencies platform and leap onto the fast-paced skills train. 

To start making the move from what they know—competencies—to where they need to get—skills—lots of professionals define and compare the two models. They assume that if they compare the two long enough, they’ll find the magic key to get from here to there. But this definitional approach isn’t the answer. 

Stop fixating on skills vs. competencies.

We’ve all seen the hype around skills vs. competencies. I’ve seen it in LinkedIn posts and comments, on webinars, at conferences, and during client discussions. Avoid getting sucked into it. While it may seem like a way to make the transition easier, it just psyches you out and makes something simple appear hard. 

You don’t need a complex way to translate competencies into skills. Why? Because the skills are already there. Competencies are made up of skills. You just need to identify the skills in the competencies you’ve worked on for decades. 

Once you identify the skills that make up competencies, focus on how you can better help employees to develop and practice them. Additionally, you may want to consider adding new ones. Skills change quickly, so keeping your eye on the skills needed to get work done is important.

No. 4 “Skills? They’re just too complex.”

Nothing scares L&D professionals off the skills path more than complexity. I’ll be honest with you: if you look at them holistically, skills are complex. From a numbers perspective alone, there are far more of them to track than competencies. Many companies that create a skills taxonomy have hundreds or even thousands of skills.

L&D pros are also scared by what they perceive as a steep learning curve. Many approach me holding a long laundry list of questions:

• How should we define skills?
• How do we get the whole company to agree on a single definition?
• How do you validate skills?
• What assessment model should we use?
• What technology platform is the best for capturing skill data?

And the list goes on and on. While questions in general are critical to learning and solving complex problems, you need to ask the right questions in the right order. This will vary from organization to organization, but let’s take a closer look.

You don’t need all the skills answers to get started. 

Many L&D professionals believe they must know everything about skills before they can begin. While doing preliminary research is a tried-and-true strategy, the questions should enable you to act and not falter. 

People always want to know the WHY in things before they change or adopt something new first. WIth this in mind, consider making your first step answering the why question.

Start with answering the WHY skills development question.

To better understand why, think about your company’s goals and plans. Show leaders how improving skills can help them reach these goals more quickly and efficiently. This discussion will help you determine what you need to do. 

Perhaps leaders want to identify your company’s most critical skill gaps. Or perhaps they know which skills gap to tackle, and they need you to help them fill that gap. Ask questions about these specific action-focused items. Ask questions that lead to actions that will make a difference.  

Skill Development—take it one step at a time. 

While you may not realize it, you’re probably further down the skill development path than you think. Just look at the Learning Continuum grid above to see where you fall. If you see your organization as being anywhere on the continuum, guess what—you’ve already started your journey!

And keep in mind that you don’t have to jump on that fast-paced SBO bandwagon. You just need to start discussing skills and begin walking down the skill development path. For more help to start your skills journey, download a free copy of The Ultimate Guide to a Skills-First Future.  

The post 4 Ways L&D Dodges Skill Development & Why It’s a Mistake appeared first on Degreed.

In light of this year’s challenges and changes, Degreed has continued to help L&D with innovative ideas, research, and solutions. Particularly this year, we’ve studied and discussed the most pressing topics in L&D—whether they were time-sensitive, technical, foundational, or forward-looking, we’ve covered them all. 

And everyone likes a present—wrapped or unwrapped. So we’ve compiled some of the big 2023 L&D headlines, research, and strategies for you to unwrap as the year comes to a close.

A Timely Kit For Overcoming Economic Uncertainty

At Degreed, we’re always playing the long game. But early in 2023, Degreed quickly realized the colossal impact shrinking budgets were having on L&D departments. 

L&D teams around the world needed to address the economic issues—quickly. Learning leaders faced dramatic budget cuts, and many were put in the stressful position of convincing their C-suites of the value of learning during an economic downturn. As usual—albeit more urgently—learning leaders needed to get more done with less, and we showed them how in our Recession Survival Kit for L&D Leaders. 

3 Must-Reads for Working With a Tight L&D Budget

While concern of a recession has faded from the news cycle, L&D teams at many organizations are still feeling the squeeze. If you’re anticipating a reduced budget for 2024, we’ve got resources for you. And if you’re still trying to convince senior leaders why they should invest more in learning, our thought leaders have written some excellent articles to help you. 

• “Speaking the Language of Your Peers Through the Right Metrics”

Annee Bayeux’s CLO article shares how to use your learning metrics to convince internal leaders that downturns are actually the best time to invest in upskilling your people. 

• Learning Spend & Impact Scorecard

When money is tight, best to double-check that your spending accomplishes what you’re paying it to do. To help with your learning budget audit, we created an easy and helpful scorecard of common L&D-related investments and their impacts. 

• “Safeguarding Your Workforce During a Downturn”

Degreed’s own Janice Burns wrote on HR.com compelling research that proves how investing in your people sets you up to come out stronger on the other side.

A Technical Guide for Navigating A Crowded Learning Tech Market

As an L&D professional, your main driver is your people’s learning, but it’s not always as simple as that. With tech advancements come more nuances for L&D pros to consider and navigate. It’s a crowded and confusing market, and this requires L&D leaders to have more and more technical know-how. 

Specifically, the C-suite is asking L&D leaders to solve more and more problems, which often requires additional technology. We’re seeing L&D leaders both consolidate their technology to save money and add new technology to address emerging learning problems. This turns their learning tech ecosystems into wild, disorganized messes characterized by gaps, lost information, and more.

Seeing L&D leaders struggle with this issue, we created helpful resources for evaluating, simplifying, and improving any learning tech stack. If your ecosystem is like the Wild West and you don’t know how to tame it, check out the Degreed whitepaper Building Your Learning Tech Ecosystem.

Top Content for Learning Ecosystems

A Foundational Study to Understand How Your Employees Learn 

While there are always technical topics to explore, smart L&D teams consistently take the pulse of learning. They keep current with how employees prefer to learn. They stay up to date with new concepts and skill-building strategies. In other words, they don’t forget the fundamentals.

Degreed prizes itself in putting the learner experience at the center of our platform. This is the reason we spend hundreds of hours gathering, analyzing, and presenting fresh insights into how the workforce learns bi-annually. 

To understand what your employees need to learn effectively, check out our 2023 report on How the Workforce Learns. 

Additional Insights Into How Your Workforce Learns

A Forward-Looking Introduction to Win the Skills-First Future

To recap: in 2023 we’ve covered timely, technical, and foundational topics. What’s left? The future. We’re always thinking about the future, and that future revolves around skills. The World Economic Forum estimates that, amid the lightning-fast pace of technological change, businesses worldwide will need to upskill approximately one billion workers in the next few years. 

The way to fill that skills gap? Help employees learn skills—fast. Of course, L&D will play a critical role in the new skills economy because it provides people with the learning they need for skill development. In many ways, L&D can lead the charge by preparing companies for the quickly approaching future. 

To learn more about a skills-first future and the role L&D will play, check out our quick 15-minute introduction to Embrace the Skills-First Future.

3 Resources to Dig Into The Skills-First Future

After Reflection Comes Ambition and Innovation 

It’s been a turbulent year, and we’ve felt it. But more than ever, Degreed is here to help L&D navigate this tumultuous and exciting time in the world of work. 

• If there is a time-sensitive issue, like an uncertain economy, we’re committed to providing you with resources to help you persevere.

• If you’re getting stuck in the technical elements of your L&D role, we’ll break down those technicalities for you. 

• If you need fundamental information about the state of learning in your workforce, we’ll provide the raw data.

• If you need help seeing the future of L&D, we’ll let you borrow our chic Degreed wayfarers to see what’s on the horizon.

In many ways, Degreed is one of the best in the business at figuring out the complexities coming your way and innovating accordingly. And after reflecting on the challenges of 2023 and our skills future ahead, Degreed has built a product plan that anticipates and innovates. 

In other words—bring it, 2024! We’re ready for you.

The post 2023 Unwrapped: Big Headlines, New Research, and Emerging Strategies appeared first on Degreed.