Nearly every organization has broad access to AI tools, but your workforce is unique to your company. People are the thing that sets your organization apart. Ultimately, that’s going to be your competitive differentiator. And your people are (smartly) doubling down on human skills.

New insights from Degreed show the top 10 skills professionals are building for 2026. And here’s the thing: Seven of the top 10 are human or business-centric skills, like leadership and communication.

Top 10 Skills Professionals Are Building for 2026

Based on learning pathways created in Degreed in 2025, the top 10 skills professionals want to develop in 2026 are*:

1. Leadership
2. Communication
3. Project Management
4. Problem Solving
5. Customer Service
6. Microsoft Excel
7. Data Analytics
8. Python
9. Adaptability
10. Stakeholder Management

The list makes it clear that the development of technical skills remains essential. Data analytics and Python continue to grow in importance. 

Yet, the majority of this list reflects something more foundational. As automation scales, the value of judgment, coordination, and influence increases. Those are the skills that competitors don’t automatically have access to just because they have ChatGPT.

There’s another important takeaway here: Not all tasks can be done by AI. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, “tasks tied to empathy, creativity, leadership, and curiosity” only have a 13% potential for AI transformation. They require too much human judgement and experience to be automated.

As technology advances, complexity increases and change accelerates. For employees, complexity requires human or soft skills and capabilities to amplify the value of technology while remaining adaptive and agile through the change technology is creating. These skills are what help AI investments translate into sustained performance. In other words, imagine how chaotic and stressful it would be to guide your company through AI transformation without good leadership, communication, problem solving, and stakeholder management.

AI Literacy Is a Growing Need for Workforce Readiness

While human skills are essential for sustained growth and resilience, organizations are not slowing down on AI implementation. AI transformation is no longer optional, but where it often breaks down for organizations is on the human layer. Employees need to be able to use AI tools successfully and productively, otherwise the transformation stalls.

It’s all about workforce readiness, which is why hiring managers are already looking at AI literacy as a must-have. In fact, more than half of hiring managers say they would not hire someone without AI literacy skills. The expectation is clear: Employees need to understand how AI works, where it adds value, and how to use it responsibly in conjunction with their human expertise. Even when new employees bring the fresh AI skills, hiring for those skills only addresses the problem in the short-term. Focusing on upskilling your existing workforce is a safer long-term strategy for keeping pace with any unforeseen changes that may occur.

AI fluency has become foundational capability, and it’s one that must be constantly maintained. AI and other digital technology skills have about a 2-year shelf life, which means they expire almost twice as fast as traditional skills.

For businesses, the advantage of AI literacy comes from combining that fluency with skills like leadership, communication, and problem-solving to realize greater sustained value of transformation initiatives. That’s why forward-thinking professionals are leaning into both areas.

Popular Skills Across Industries

The top ten skills listed above are aggregated from generalized data across businesses, but every industry has its own set of essential emerging skills. There are varying human and technical skills that stand out as up-and-coming in each industry. 

According to our data, here are some of the skill trends across key industries:

• Financial services professionals are strengthening leadership and stakeholder management alongside analytics capabilities.
  
• Healthcare teams are focusing on inclusivity, collaboration, resilience, and data-informed decision-making.
  
• Manufacturing and energy organizations are prioritizing leadership, project execution, and change management, as automation reshapes operations.
  
• Professional services and IT show a blended profile, combining demand for programming and analytics with strong interest in project management, communication, and problem-solving.

Across the board, industries demonstrate the need for a combination of human skills and AI or tech skills. It’s the combined strength of both that sets businesses up for success.

Human Skills + AI Literacy Is a Business Power Move

In any industry, technical capability can enable efficiency, but human capability will determine impact. AI systems can generate recommendations, but great leaders guide teams to interpret, innovate, and execute on them. AI can process data at scale, but teams must decide what to do with the results. 

Leading organizations strengthen both dimensions. Adopting AI tools faster isn’t enough. Your organization needs experienced, knowledgeable employees who can guide AI transformation from the start and sustain ongoing transformation.

*Top skills are based on the number of learning pathways created in the Degreed platform specific to those skills in 2025.

The post 70% of the Top Skills for 2026 Are Human Skills appeared first on Degreed.

To build those skills, my supervisor suggested I use Degreed@Degreed, which includes the Degreed Open Library, a free resource in Degreed Learning with pathways designed to strengthen professional and technical abilities. The “Deliver Presentations: From Basics to Professional Presentations” pathway became my guide. 

Learning Powerpoint as a Google Slides Loyalist

Stepping into the world of PowerPoint after years of using Google Slides was like moving from your home town to a huge new city. Everything that was intuitive in Google Slides had to be intentional in PowerPoint. 

Thankfully, the Open Library pathway offered the perfect learning experience. With different kinds of learning content like how-to-videos, articles and more, the pathway walked me through the foundational steps: opening a blank presentation, customizing themes, adjusting font sizes, playing with shapes, and learning how to animate my slides.  

Designing with Purpose: Golden Rules That Stick

My favorite section in the pathway introduced the “golden rules” of PowerPoint design. These were more than aesthetic guidelines, they were guiding principles for creating the best audience experience. 

Key takeaways included using large, legible fonts, aligning visuals properly, avoiding overcrowding, and maintaining visual consistency across slides. The importance of contrast, spacing, and intentional white space became apparent when building a slide deck from scratch.

For those just starting out like I was, here are a few personal favorites:

• Stick to a simple colour palette, it enhances clarity.
• Use six or less bullet points per slide.
• Prioritize clarity over decoration. Clean layouts and concise text keep the audience focused on your message.

Power Tools: Hacks That Changed the Game
A few of the tools covered in the pathway were game-changers for efficiency and consistency:

1. The alignment button evenly spaces out objects and saved me significant time. 
2. Laser pointing, highlighting, and drawing attention to key elements with animation offered more control during delivery. 
3. Editing images, resizing, and using smart guides to auto-align shapes made for a consistent look and feel.

Another feature was the ability to record the presentation. Practicing delivery while reviewing pace, tone, and visual cues added another layer of readiness.

Building the Deck: From Learning to Application

The real test came when building the final presentation for my internship. Each section was shaped by lessons learned in the pathway. My slides, including “Projects & Tools That Shaped Me,” “Making a Real Difference,” and “Lessons for Senior Year and Beyond,” were crafted with clear intent, supported by visuals and the right spacing.

One of the most helpful learnings? The side-by-side example of a poorly-designed vs. well-designed slide. These comparisons influenced my decisions while building the presentation.

Bullet points were brief and visual hierarchy was carefully considered. Where possible, diagrams and campaign highlights were supported by clean layouts. Notes and comments acted as behind-the-scenes guides for my delivery.

Lights, Camera, Confidence: Delivering with Tools and Tactics

I also learned presentation delivery techniques—like pausing when speaking to let ideas sink in, using the laser pointer to guide attention, and leveraging the “notes” pane to reinforce talking points. Those made a huge impact during the final presentation. 

Tips for Fellow Presenters

• Use notes wisely. They’re not a crutch, they’re your invisible co-pilot.
• Highlight, don’t overload. Less is more on each slide.
• Practice with the record feature. It builds confidence and reveals pacing gaps.
• Use smart align tools. Your audience will thank you.
• Design with your audience in mind. Every element should serve them, not distract.

From Learning to Legacy

This pathway didn’t just teach how to build or present a PowerPoint, it helped grow my presentation skills and turn my final internship presentation into a portfolio-ready showcase. Whether building sales assets, designing a campaign strategy, or reflecting on skill growth, the tools from the pathway made every slide sharper and every message stronger. 

The best part? The learning content was easy to find, ready to use, and included with Degreed Learning. 

The post Building Presentation Skills with Degreed’s Open Library Pathway appeared first on Degreed.

The first was the printing press, which codified and spread knowledge at a scale the world had never seen.

The second was the industrial school system, which was built to skill up entire generations for factory and office work.

The third was the internet, which unlocked access to knowledge for billions. It took learning beyond traditional classrooms—into the workforce, into your homes, across your lifetime.

Now, we’re entering the fourth moment: The rise of AI.

Efficiency Isn’t Everything

AI is already embedded in our meetings, documents, and systems. But just because AI is infused into the work, it doesn’t mean people are learning. If anything, so far, AI has made people more efficient, but not more capable. Yet.

That’s a problem. Because most organizations are using AI for one thing: efficiency. That’s great, but speed does not equal skills.

Infrastructure Still Matters

We’ve seen this pattern before. When YouTube arrived, it revolutionized content distribution. It made countless learning resources available everywhere.

But it didn’t solve organizational learning. It didn’t create more capability. It also didn’t solve organizations’ needs for managing employee learning.

Why? Because infrastructure still matters. We need systems, context, feedback, and outcomes. 

That applies to AI too. A chatbot on your company portal is not a learning strategy. A CoPilot that summarizes meetings and HR policy documents will not build your bench strength in those topics. Answers don’t build capabilities.

What separates serious, successful AI learning systems isn’t going to be the model, it’s going to be the infrastructure behind it. It’s going to be the foundation that the AI is based on, including:

• Learning science
• Verifiable skill data
• Integration into systems
• Organizational context aligned to strategic goals

If your AI tools don’t have that, they will not be optimized for learning. That structure is what makes the difference. That’s what will determine the learning impact of this moment.

The Challenge to Upskill Better and Faster at Work

Let me be direct: According to WEF and Accenture, 60% of the world’s workforce need to upskill in the next five years. That’s an increase of 10 percentage points from 2020. And only about 40% of C-suite leaders say they are prepared, which is down 10 percentage points from 2020. 

We knew this skill gap was coming five years ago, and leaders are even less prepared for it now. This means that more people need learning and more skills, quicker, now than ever before in history. 

The concept of “just-in-time learning” was built in the third wave, the internet wave, and it was all about connecting people to content when they need it. But now, work itself is changing. Tasks are being automated. Roles are more fluid. Knowledge has become cheap, yet judgment, adaptability, and creativity are not.

We need a new model for learning. One that matches the pace of change and the reality of today’s AI world. That future looks something like this:

• Adaptive learning skips what people already know and targets the exact skills they’re missing.
• Real-time skills intelligence lets you close gaps before they slow you down. 
• AI helps people get smarter and better at their work, not just faster.

And that future? It’s here.

The post Why AI Infrastructure is a Learning Differentiator 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.

The global consulting and technology services firm has long recognized that new managers need support. This has proven especially true in a learning climate marked by digital fatigue,  and what some have casually described as “death by pathway.”

At a time when the Capgemini business is scaling rapidly and client demands are growing more complex, the organization understands the importance of supporting its first time managers, to set them up for success right from the get-go.

Yet, traditional leadership programs are hard to scale, difficult to maintain, and often disconnected from the pace and priorities of the business. Learning delivery teams spend too much time managing training logistics, emails, and manual processes. And Learning teams want something more coherent, modern, and impactful.

To meet these challenges, Capgemini has launched an Emerging Leaders program—a guided, cohort-based experience built on Degreed Academies. The result? A 26% jump in skills proficiency, a big drop in attrition, and a 4.6 out of 5 learner satisfaction rating—proof that Capgemini first-time managers aren’t just trained, they are equipped to lead. 

Leadership Development That Starts Strong and Scales Fast

Co-created with business leaders and learning partners, Emerging Leaders follows a complete learning cycle. It’s more than a content playlist. It’s a full development journey designed to embed growth into everyday work, supported by nudges, mentors, reflections, and social accountability.

To build the journey, learning teams worked closely with HR and business leaders to define success, select content, and ensure the program reflected the company’s Leadership Vision—a set of guiding leadership principles that the company believes every employee should develop.

The result is an experience designed to match the expectations of a digitally fluent, ambitious audience. Employees progress through a six-week cycle, combining curated digital content, real-world projects, mentoring, reflection, and guided practice—all within a single Degreed-powered environment.

How Degreed Academies Makes It Possible

Degreed Academies gives Capgemini the infrastructure to deliver a holistic, guided leadership journey within a single, unified experience. From onboarding and nudges to live events and reflections, everything is centralized—no more spreadsheets, scattered tools, or siloed communications. And, with Microsoft Teams integration and built-in calendar functionality, participants stay on track while balancing their day-to-day responsibilities.

Capgemini uses Degreed Academies to structure monthly cohorts in a fully guided, week-by-week experience—layering content, leadership simulations, mentoring prompts, and reflection points in a clearly defined journey. Employees always know what to do next and why it matters. Automated nudges and personalized messaging help maintain momentum and accountability, without overloading delivery teams. By streamlining what were previously resource-heavy, manual tasks like scheduling, communications, and tracking, Degreed gives L&D professionals more time to focus on content quality, learner engagement, and business alignment.

Because everything runs through Degreed, Capgemini can access real-time insights on progress, engagement, and outcomes. This allows learning leaders to tweak delivery based on cohort behavior, and to identify bottlenecks early. With Degreed Academies, Capgemini isn’t just delivering training—it’s running a scalable, data-backed leadership product.

Features like live events, embedded reflections, and automated reminders help create a sense of connection and momentum.

Completion rates have peaked at 81%, with learner satisfaction scores averaging 4.6 out of 5.

More Than Engagement. Measurable Growth.

In 2024 alone, nearly 4,000 employees across 39 countries completed the program. Capgemini is on track to scale cohorts of 2,000 people per month in 2025. Attrition of managers who completed the program dropped to 6.5%, versus a much higher company average among the same target population.

And employee feedback has been resoundingly positive. Participants consistently call out the program’s relevance, structure, and challenge.

“The Emerging Leaders program was unforgettable among the other trainings I’ve taken,” said one employee.

“One of the most practical, useful, and challenging programs I’ve participated in,” said another.

Employees show a 26% average increase in skills proficiency from pre-program assessments to post-program outcomes. And more than 90% of those surveyed said they’d apply what they learned in their current roles.

A Model for Strategic Leadership Growth

Capgemini hasn’t just improved leadership development—the company has reimagined how it should operate. Instead of a fragmented or manual model, Emerging Leaders is now a repeatable, data-driven experience that’s aligned with the long-term Capgemini leadership strategy.

For enterprise learning teams facing similar challenges, the takeaway is clear: When leadership development meets thoughtful design and scalable technology, impact multiplies.

With momentum building and demand accelerating, Capgemini continues to refine and expand the program—proving that with the right model, early leadership development can be both high-impact and high-scale.

Learn more.

Build a scalable leadership program like this one. Let’s talk about how Degreed Academies can support workforce development at scale at your organization.

The post Innovative Leadership: Capgemini’s Approach to Emerging Leaders 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.

For enterprise leaders navigating transformation—whether it’s rolling out agentic AI, automating legacy processes, or entering new markets—the pressure to reskill fast is real.

The upshot? Skill data isn’t just an HR metric. It’s a strategic asset.

That said, many organizations are flooded with skill data yet starved for action. That’s where Degreed Skills+ can make a big difference. It doesn’t just surface skills. It uses them to create positive outcomes.

Step No. 1: Pinpoint Skill Supply and Strategic Gaps

Let’s say your CEO is investing heavily in agentic artificial intelligence to accelerate your product roadmap. HR and L&D leaders must identify skill gaps, define a build-buy strategy, and upskill the right people—fast.

Degreed Skills+ is designed for interoperability, not isolation. Integrations with platforms like Workday, SAP, and 80+ content providers help you streamline—instead of complicate—your data landscape.

Skills+ brings clarity to chaos by ingesting taxonomies from across your ecosystem—for example your HRIS, LXP, LMS, or talent marketplace—and using AI to normalize everything. That means cleaning up duplicates, aligning synonyms, and even generating skill descriptions and skill level definitions to reflect how your organization talks about and measures growth.

You stay in control of your taxonomy. The AI suggests, but you approve.

This reduces manual maintenance, increases reporting accuracy, and empowers IT and HR teams to move from data cleanup to strategic planning.

The result is high-fidelity skill data that reveals your true skill supply, pinpoints critical gaps, and gives you the visibility to align learning and talent development to workforce planning.

Step No. 2: Personalize Development at Scale

Once the gaps are clear, the next step is putting learning into action.

Skills+ powers highly personalized development across Degreed Learning. How? Because skills are embedded into the fabric of the platform. Search results, mentors, recommended experiences and more are tailored to each employee’s skill profile.

You can also create targeted Plans—on topics like “AI Fundamentals” or “Responsible Data Practices”—so employees know exactly what the organization wants them to learn.

Skills-powered automations—rules-based workflows designed to help the business deliver training, updates, and nudges at key employee moments—ensure essential content is assigned and followed up with nudges.

And Degreed Maestro, our AI purpose-built for learning, instantly generates custom Pathways based on employees’ unique goals, roles, or gaps—making learning feel personal and purposeful.

This isn’t just about consumption. It’s also about alignment—between business needs and individual growth.

Step No. 3: Measure Skill Growth and Prove Impact

Once the learning is in motion, how do you prove it’s working?

Degreed offers multiple ways to validate skill growth including AI-driven skill reviews, manager feedback, and robust analytics dashboards that help you compare current skill levels to skill levels before learning, so leaders get a live view of progress.

This closes the loop between strategy and execution—and gives you the confidence to report back to the business with real metrics, not just anecdotes.

From Complexity to Confidence

What once felt like a massive, messy problem is now a structured, data-driven process.

Degreed gives your people:

• A clear view of what skills they have and need.

• Personalized development aligned to business goals.

• Real, measurable progress in areas that matter.

Skills+ helps advance workforce development into something that’s not just efficient, but also strategic, approachable, and effective.

Find out more.

Let’s chat about how Degreed Skills+ can help you develop the skills your workforce needs next.

The post Turn Skill Data Into Workforce Action with Degreed Skills+ appeared first on Degreed.

At most organizations, this requires breaking down silos. Indeed, upskilling and reskilling takes cross-functional teamwork—a meeting of the minds among HR, IT, the C-suite, and of course L&D.

Do this effectively and you’ll get the skill data and insights you need to drive big business impact. 

“Every road trip is better with a copilot,” note the industry analysts at Deloitte. “High-performing organizations ensure the L&D function, leaders, and stakeholders are all accountable for a successful journey. They aren’t just along for the ride—the business understands the right questions to ask to improve the trip.”

Let’s take a closer look at two key steps you can take to promote cross-functional teamwork and bring powerful learning to life.

Step No. 1: Build a cross-functional team focused on business objectives.

If you’re a savvy business leader, you understand aligning agile and scalable workforce development priorities with the business is crucial.

So how can you get there? Making sense of learning and skill data is critical, because you can use that data to inform L&D decision-making.

But before you can turn insights from those juicy analytics into action, you and your stakeholders must come together to align programs and unify technologies.

Picture a global organization that integrates its learning, HCM, and talent marketplace platforms to streamline skills development. HR provided the direction, IT integrated the platforms to connect learning data across teams. And leadership supported the initiative because the desired outcomes were directly tied to strategic business goals.

This partnership allowed the organization to deliver personalized learning at scale, track ROI, and ensure the workforce stayed aligned with business needs.

Step No. 2: Embrace data and enact a skills-based learning strategy.

The best learning and technology strategies are guided by analytics. By understanding trends, skill gaps, and learning behaviors, your company can uncover actionable insights. Instead of guessing, you can take a proactive approach by using real-time data to identify emerging skill demands.

Imagine an IT department tasked with preparing an organization for AI adoption. By using skill data to assess current capabilities, IT can determine which employees need upskilling in areas like machine learning, automation, and AI ethics. This precision ensures that learning resources are allocated where they’ll have the most impact, while employees gain the confidence and expertise they need to lead innovation.

The Future of Your Workforce Strategy

For your company to compete in a world where technology and skills are constantly evolving, unifying learning systems and leveraging data are no longer optional—they’re essential. Cross-functional teamwork across HR, IT, L&D, and the C-suite ensures your organization’s learning strategy is flexible, responsive, and future focused.

Learn more.

Let’s chat about your skill-building strategy. Schedule a personalized one-on-one call with an expert at Degreed today.

Make skill data your business differentiator. Check out The Ultimate Skill Data Handbook.

The post Unlocking Potential with Data—and Cross-Functional Teamwork 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.

But just 20% of leaders at enterprise companies say they have the talent they need to leverage generative AI.

Furthermore, AI threatens to displace droves of employees. Globally, 300 million full-time jobs could be exposed to automation, especially those in finance and banking, legal services, media and marketing, and IT.

If you want to fully leverage this developing technology—while reducing AI disruption across your organization—skill building will be critical. Savvy learning and business leaders are planning to not only upskill workers to use AI in their current roles—but also to reskill AI-displaced workers into new roles.

Reskilling for New Roles

AI is already displacing workers and will continue to do so. Tech giant Cisco laid off 5,500 employees in 2024 so it could invest more in AI. Meanwhile, IBM was expected to lay off or slow hiring for a whopping 26,000 roles—8,000 of them in the next five years—due to AI disruption.

But displacement doesn’t have to mean layoffs. Four in 10 surveyed leaders expect no change in headcount due to AI. They’ll need to reskill their employees to achieve that. By retaining most of a workforce, they’ll hold onto all the expertise in their organizations—like years on the job, company-specific knowledge, and rapport among workers.

Keeping Up with AI

You can reskill displaced workers into other roles, but you’ll need to start now to minimize layoffs. AI is advancing so quickly that workers need new skills now just to keep up. The good news is that skill building doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Just ask Verizon.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Verizon closed 70% of its physical stores—while simultaneously needing far more telesales and remote customer service reps. Verizon retrained nearly 20,000 displaced workers—some of them completing just eight additional hours of training before starting their new roles. How was it possible? In-store workers already had plenty of customer service skills, brand knowledge, and product experience. 

If you see the threat of displacement as you forge into AI territory, look for adjacent roles for at-risk employees.

For example, if a new AI chatbot displaces some of your customer service staff, you could quickly reskill people into sales positions, because they already have high emotional intelligence, product expertise, and communication skills.

Staying Curious

Another key to the Verizon success was foresight. While leaders couldn’t have predicted the pandemic, they had already been experimenting with remote work. The company had piloted remote customer service and telesales programs for some employees. It had invested in the right technology and knew how to train people into those roles.

So when disruption came, it was just a matter of scaling those efforts.

While you can’t predict exactly how AI will disrupt your business, you can start building some tactical advantages now. Make small investments to explore AI uses so you’re ready to lean into them if it makes sense to later. Stay curious about AI even in its early stages, even if it’s not as capable as you’d like yet.

An impressive Ericsson success metric reveals the power of this path: Five years ago, the telecom giant began upskilling a relatively small group of 300 scientists to use artificial intelligence. Ericsson used Degreed to support its focus on 5G and AI technologies, emphasizing agility and ensuring employees had the necessary skills to meet evolving industry demands. Now, more than 30,000 of the company’s 100,000-plus employees are considered very proficient in AI.

Check out Degreed Experiments for some L&D-specific examples of ways you can start planning for—and start using—AI today.

Reskilling for AI Roles

While some workers will be displaced because of AI, others will need to leverage it to keep their companies competitive. Upskilling workers in their current roles is critical. You’ll also need to be ready to move staff into new AI-support roles. For example, you might need someone to track the value creation of your AI initiatives, validate AI-created content, or conduct internal audits to ensure regulatory compliance.

Here, too, there’s no time to waste. AI is developing so quickly that failing to keep up with the necessary skills could sandbag your investments.

Using AI to Teach AI

Luckily, AI is proving to be just as useful in L&D as it is elsewhere. Consider making your first AI investments in learning, so you lay the groundwork for developing an entire workforce of AI-savvy smarties. 

• Use generative AI tech to quickly create and market learning content throughout your company.
• Use automations like those offered by Degreed to quickly deliver the right content to the right people—and keep them engaged in learning.
• Embrace AI coaches like Degreed Maestro to pinpoint individual needs and personalize learning at scale.

Teach employees how to learn, not just what to learn, so they become skilled at reskilling themselves. They’ll become better at keeping up with the ways AI impacts their work than you are.

Planning for AI Disruption

Because AI promises to drastically change the way people work, it’ll also change the way people organize work. How do you structure new roles around the future of this technology? Right now, with AI disruption still so fresh, it’s nearly impossible. But you can find ways to build adaptability right into your talent.

Consider changes made and shared with us by the technology transformation experts at CI&T. Leaders there have democratized AI skills so workers find ways to use it in their roles. All employees can train to use its AI development tool (FLOW) to benefit from AI in their roles. And it’s working. Since its launch, 38% of employees use FLOW, 12% have been certified, and CI&T has successfully adopted it for 9 of 10 clients in 6 months.

Another way to get ready? Build in the ultimate adaptability by becoming a skills-first org (SFO). 

A skills-first organization prioritizes skills as the organizing unit for its workforce. It leverages skills data from platforms like Degreed to inform talent and management practices. These insights help leaders understand workforce capabilities, development needs, and deployment options.

Focusing on skills (rather than job titles or formal educational requirements) gives you a structure for homing in on the exact skills workers need, speeds them toward upskilling and readiness, and helps you flexibly organize workers to deploy projects as needs arise.

Making the shift to a skills-first strategy is at least as big of a change as adopting AI. That’s why we created The Ultimate Guide to a Skills-First Future. Download it today to start building the kind of adaptability you’ll need to help your workforce keep up with AI disruption.

Find out more.

Explore The Ultimate Guide to a Skills-First Future—to find out why skills-based strategies matter and how you can get started.

The post Catch Up and Keep Up: Skill Building Amid AI Disruption appeared first on Degreed.