“AI has very quickly brought the future into the present, requiring us to reshape our approach to talent acquisition and development,” shared Jennifer Shappley, VP of Talent at LinkedIn, when she spoke to a room of some of the brightest minds in talent and learning and development at the recent Talent Connect events in Sydney and Singapore,“as cycles of change come faster than ever, HR leaders have to be adaptable.”

We know AI is augmenting and automating the human experience in the workplace. Skills for the same job are expected to change by 68% in the next 5 years and 55% of members in Australia stand to see their jobs either disrupted or augmented by AI.

LinkedIn, like so many organisations around the world, has been on a journey to build the optimal workforce to ready itself for now and for the future. Maximizing efficiency. Building capabilities. Closing skill gaps. And doing so while the world of work is changing at a faster pace than ever before.

LinkedIn’s new  2024 Most In-Demand Skills report revealed adaptability was the top skill of the moment. The trick to continuing to thrive in this era of change is to embrace it and for talent leaders that means being agile and adaptable in rethinking playbooks for hiring and developing talent.

In fact, LinkedIn's latest Future of Recruiting Report revealed 91% in ANZ and 97% of talent pros in Southeast Asia say they are focused on being agile to adapt to hiring needs.

Here’s how two companies are adapting in the age of AI to ensure they have the skills for today, and for the future.

As the world of work changes, Mark McLaren, Head of Talent & Capability at Bunnings, says adaptability is at the core of their talent strategy to prepare for the future of work, and the organisation is leveraging AI to drive efficiency.

“Adaptability needs to be built into our mindsets, as individuals and as an organisation. We’re seeing great examples of embracing a test-and-learn culture, where there is a genuine curiosity among our workforce for the potential of AI," says McLaren.

"Our employees are naturally gravitating towards AI-related courses on LinkedIn Learning, with the top three all about generative AI.”

Bunnings has been focused on balancing technical skills and human skills to meet the increasing demand for soft skills in the age of AI. The Bunnings workforce has undertaken impressive AI upskilling over the past six months, with a 138% increase in skill growth for ‘Generative AI’ and 156% for ‘A.I. ’ by its LinkedIn Learning users.

Soft skills are also part of Bunnings L&D talent strategy.

“Our executive team understands soft skills evolve and are keen to fast track the focus on skill development. That is adaptability. Talent isn’t set and forget. It has to be agile, which is how we are thinking about our skill strategy, how we leverage AI and how we build a stronger workforce.”

LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report shows that 95% of L&D professionals in ANZ agree that soft skills are increasingly important, and Bunnings is making sure its employees are developing in the areas of greatest value to set them up for the future of work.

Amy Schultz, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Canva says her team has evolved its approach to skills to highlight the importance of staying agile to better develop the capabilities of its workforce.

Over the past three years, Canva has experienced a period of hypergrowth, jumping from 1,100 employees to around 4,500. The change that has occurred both within its workforce and around it, thanks to the emergence of AI, has made adaptability key to Canva’s capability building.

“Canva grows because our people grow, and our people grow because Canva grows. We’ve made an intentional shift over the past few years to evolve our skills strategy. In 2016, Canva did its first 360 feedback process and identified four key skills pillars: craft, strategy, communication and leadership & coaching.

"Over time, we realised we needed more specificity, so we created our 12 skills framework, which is what all of our capability building is now anchored to. Now, we’re leveraging GenAI to better understand written feedback on the skills our Canvanauts want to build, so we can provide sessions tailored to them.”

The experiences of the talent teams from both Canva and Bunnings are a testament to the importance of experimentation and adaptability when building talent strategies for the AI era.

We’re only at the start of the conversation on how to build a workforce equipped for the future of work. ,

“LinkedIn is on the journey with you.” says Shappley. “We can build a future that isn’t constrained by the processes and systems of the past, so long as we’re willing to let go of what’s no longer working and try something new.”

We've known that the skills landscape has been changing for some time now, but to date, the conversation has stayed at a very high level. Now, we need to take the theoretical vision of skills as the building blocks for the future of work and put it into action in our talent strategies.

1. Hiring based on skills. Skills are the common thread throughout our talent practices, from hiring to onboarding to development and performance management. When we anchor work to skills, we can align our most critical talent to our most critical priorities. LinkedIn, has spent the past 18 months developing a cohesive, multi-year skill strategy, starting with establishing foundations and a maturity model.
   
   And our 2024 Future of Recruiting reports reveals  80% of recruiting pros in ANZ and 74% in SEA say hiring based on skills is a priority.
   
   
2. Bringing Talent Acquisition and L&D together. “At LinkedIn, we’ve made some big decisions, including consolidating our talent function by bringing acquisition and development together, creating a portfolio approach to skills efforts, and launching a talent architecture initiative.” says Jenn Shappley.
   
   “This foundation has been critical for us to develop the right technology solutions for the skills revolution, including our AI-powered coach, but it’s also highlighted the importance of remaining nimble. Because while a multi-year strategy can give us clarity of where we’re going, it couldn’t have predicted the surprise push for generative AI talent that began last year. There will always be unknowns, and the rapid pace of AI innovation means that’s more true now than ever.”
   
   
3. Focus on soft skills. The potential of AI to take over repetitive tasks is well-recognised, freeing us to focus on what humans do best: innovate, solve complex problems and create. But this shift is not just about efficiency; it's about elevating the human element in our work, allowing us to spend more time on the creative and strategic endeavors that humans are uniquely capable of.
   
   
4. Embrace the power of AI. The potential of AI to take over repetitive tasks is well-recognised, freeing us to focus on what humans do best: innovate, solve complex problems and create. But this shift is not just about efficiency; it's about elevating the human element in our work, allowing us to spend more time on the creative and strategic endeavors that humans are uniquely capable of.

• 4 in 5 people want to learn more about how to use AI in their profession.
• The number one retention strategy is providing learning opportunities.
• 7 in 10 people in ANZ and 8 in 10 people in SEA say learning improves their sense of connection to their organisation.

Top trends in talent acquisition:

• The number one topic shaping recruiting for the next five years is ‘quality of hire’.
• 91% of recruiting pros globally are focused on being agile to adapt to hiring needs.
• The number of remote job applications outweighs the number of remote job postings (13.4% vs 6% in ANZ and  6.2% vs 3.3% in SEA).