Current societal and technological trends and megatrends such as the ageing of the workforce, new technologies, digitalisation and the demand for continuous learning are relentlessly transforming the labour market and its needs in all industries, and keeping pace with the latest trends and demands has become more important than ever. Both individuals and organisations need to stay competitive, agile, and adaptable to remain relevant in their respective industries. Continuous learning and development are essential to achieve this, requiring a constant assessment of existing skills and identification of areas for improvement. The concept of skills data has emerged as a response to this challenge.
Skills data refers to all the information used to represent the existing and future skills in the labour market, the needed skills by organisations hiring talent, and the skills developed by educational institutions. The ecosystem of skills data therefore connects three important stakeholders: people, organisations and education providers, in order to eg. match job seekers to the right jobs and develop organisational strategies in line with today’s labour market.
Skills data is a powerful tool for navigating today’s rapidly changing job market as it provides a data-driven tool for organisational development. Combining large, interoperable data sets enables organisations to make more informed decisions about talent development, career planning, and curriculum design on both strategic and executive levels and ensure they stay relevant and competitive by leveraging their biggest asset: their people. Conventional HR data such as role and task descriptions, training information, and development discussions are completed with data from diverse sources that encompass everyday activities and work. Such completely different and unstructured data sets can then be brought together using AI to accurately represent the complexity of the reality of the labour market and generate more complete insights into the skills required by employers and the skills possessed by individuals. Solutions like Headai’s Digital Twin makes texts contextually interoperable in a unique and innovative manner, constructing a detailed map that accurately reflects peoples’ skills, the company’s interest, educational offering, labour market demand or context behind investment decisions. This tool has made it possible to solve the global labour market mismatch problem by providing AI-enabled insight into the skills demand at the local, country, industry, or global level, and preparing demand-driven talent and skills development interventions at scale in a transparent, explainable, and machine-readable format, with high security and privacy.
Since winning the Ratkaisu 100 challenge organised by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra in 2017, we at Headai have been at the forefront of defining and developing skills data, going beyond old limits of AI and data interoperability and developing skills data solutions for a number of partners including global and local governments, educational institutions and businesses.
Since 2019 we have been working with Technology Industries of Finland to map the current status of the technology industry regarding skills data and provide solutions for bridging the existing gaps. The project resulted in a report, Teknologiateollisuus playbook, with recommendations for action in learning policy on all levels and four practical cases to test solutions. On a global level, a project in collaboration with the World Bank led to support adaptation of higher education curriculum in the Philippines to current labour market needs.
What’s next in the skills data revolution – and how you can be a part of it
Headai is on a mission to create a more connected and collaborative ecosystem for skills data, one that benefits individuals, organisations, and education providers alike and believes in the value of a human-centric way of exchanging skills data: the more technology we have access to, the wiser and more ethical people have to be. Through international collaboration, we can ensure the creation and safekeeping of ethical practices as the field of skills data develops and matures, as well as facilitate access to larger datasets to improve research results. Currently, Headai is a part of DS4skills, an EU-level project aiming to build the ground for developing an open and trusted European Data Space for Skills to support sharing and accessing skills data, funded by the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme.
Simultaneously, we are part of various projects to improve awareness of skills data and its utilisation for a number of stakeholders and purposes from individuals to public and private organisations. On May 16th, we are hosting a webinar with the collaboration of LinkedIn and Lightcast on how to utilise organisational skills inventories and AI to boost talent development strategy in your organisation. This is the opportunity for any talent developers, HRD, and business leaders to learn more about how skills data can help you and your organisation utilise AI and data pools to strengthen skills development to retain talent and align learning strategies to your broader business goals.
Skills data brings together the power of AI and data interoperability to map the skills gap in the labour market and solve modern workforce and organisational development challenges with solutions scalable to industry, organisation, local, or global scale. Headai is at the forefront of defining skills data and pushing further what we can do in the field to utilise all the tools and data available best and solve these challenges so you and your organisation can stay on top of current skills development in your industry.
Here are the top 3 ways that can help you with your organisation’s strategic development through data:
Find the right report to support your next steps in creating your organisation’s futureproof strategy
Sign up for our webinar to learn about how to use organisational skills inventories and AI to boost your talent development strategy
Follow the latest developments of the DS4Skills initiative through their website