Companies are facing a challenge: to empower their workforce to develop skills needed in the future, to enable them to find more opportunities within their organization – future-proofing skills gaps and matches with a forward-looking plan. This isn’t a once-and-done kind of process, especially with the nature of rapid changes in the world; upskilling will need to be done consistently to stay ahead of the curve.
This is the issue AXA Switzerland was looking to face head-on.
Future facing
Operating in 57 countries globally with over 160,000 employees, AXA is a global giant in the financial services and investment world, continuously striving to make customers’ lives better and safer.
They support visionary start-ups shaping the future of healthcare technology, research to help people live longer, healthier lives, and even driverless car projects to revolutionize road safety.
They challenge the way things are, and push boundaries, and this reflects the reason for this approach to business development opportunities and solutions to futureproof the business and employees.
Understanding the challenge
Identifying the need to empower employees to take development into their own hands, AXA Switzerland needed to understand not only the skills they already had within the business but also what will be needed in the future as the business changes and grows.
While many jobs evolve or require different skills, new jobs to meet the changing landscape are also being created that must be filled in the future. There is still the plan to hire new people, however, AXA Switzerland is facing this people development challenge by looking to match and reskill/upskill their current workforce in line with their identified future opportunities. Plus, current openings give opportunities for employees to progress with relevant matched skills or training.
The focus is understanding current skills, and empowering people within the business to develop and secure the skills that will be important in the future. Managers and HR needed to understand:
- How well their teams are positioned in terms of skills.
- Which skills will be important in the future.
- Which internal talents have the best potential to develop into a new role.
- How those affected can be better supported in their reorientation.
For employees, this means understanding:
- Which future-oriented roles in the company match their personal skills profile.
- Which skills are critical for success in the respective role.
- How skills gaps can be closed quickly and effectively through development opportunities.
- How to improve their own employability through additional learning.
- How they can get in touch with experts in the organization to learn from internal experts and peers.
All of these factors would combine to create a data-driven backbone to an internally mobile workforce, whose skills are known, and whose employees have transparency of skills gaps and opportunities to develop, move and grow.