The Josh Bersin Company: Is skills velocity the secret to high-performing teams?

As more businesses are turning their attention to skills, HR leaders are debating what’s more important: velocity or depth of skills knowledge?

New research from The Josh Bersin Company reveals that the speed at which an individual can acquire new skills is more important than the depth of their current skills.

UNLEASH took a deep dive into the research, and speaks exclusively to Kathi Enderes, Global Industry Analyst and SVP of Research at The Josh Bersin Company, to find our more.

Six key strategies from “pacesetter” organizations

Every sector has 5% to 10% for companies that are clear industry frontrunners.

At The Josh Bersin Company these are known as “pacesetters”, as they take a unique approach to problem-solving and integrating skills throughout their organizations.

In fact, these pacesetters were found to learn, adapt, and adopt new technology faster than competitors. 

The study found that although many of these high-performing organizations are from different industries, many share similar strategies for overcoming challenges. 

Enderes explains: “One of the most surprising and fascinating insights was how, despite operating in vastly different sectors, the leading “pacesetter” organizations shared remarkably similar strategies for addressing their respective challenges – particularly in the context of AI transformation.” 

In fact, the overarching finding was that skills velocity was more important than skills depth, which is important in AI transformation as AI, tech, and industry skills change rapidly. 

She adds: “Just think of the change in skills around prompt engineering – a hugely important skill just a couple of years ago, but now it’s almost obsolete because AI tools now ask questions of the user to determine the real need. 

“It’s this level of dynamic reinvention that makes the pacesetters not just lead today but expand their lead exponentially.”

As skills velocity was found to be integral to businesses achieving success, the report identified six key practices common in pacesetter organizations: 

• AI for growth: Using AI to its full potential to boost customer and innovation outcomes, through automation, smarter insights, and more intelligent operations.
• Innovation: Ensuring skills are continuously evolving, while holding everyone responsible for its growth.
• Productivity focus: Understanding the necessity to redesign the workforce to identify the required skills needed. 
• Talent density: Leaning into talent density over quality, by understanding success comes from teams with complementary and evolving skills.
• Agility: Embracing new talent management structures to allow skills velocity to remain agile and forward-looking change.
• AI-powered systematic HR: Modern HR must integrate AI to enable dynamic skilling, career growth, mobility, and recruiting. 

What’s more, the report highlights the pivotal role HR leaders play in the role of AI transformation, while suggesting they can learn fundamental lessons from pacesetters.

The key focus for HR leaders

Speaking on prioritizing skills velocity over depth, Enderes says: “It’s no longer enough to focus on skills over jobs in recruiting, workforce planning, L&D, promotions, pay, talent mobility, performance management, but it’s critical to support rapid changes in skills directions. 

She also highlights that AI transformation is not just about technology, but rather about people and culture.

This means AI needs to be deployed as a tool to solve business problems, enabling innovation across the organization. 

“HR needs to redesign jobs and roles to put AI ‘on the team’, develop capabilities and skills at scale for these new AI powered teams, and support the transformation with change agility – bottom-up, employee driven change and experimentation with AI.”

Finally, Enderes advises HR to “reinvent” itself as well to become problem-oriented and systemic.

“Putting the AI transformation to work within the HR function means that legacy silos of COEs, HR business partners, and HR operations will break open, giving way to a more integrated systemic HR model,” she concludes. 

The role of the CHRO is fundamentally different in pacesetter organizations: rather than just leading the HR function, the HR executive is now a business leader first, and an HR leader second.”