Thanks to everyone who joined The 2027 Skills Blueprint: Keeping Pace with a Changing Workforce. In this follow-up, we’re sharing the ideas that stood out and what they mean for turning skills strategy into action.
The webinar brought together data from 1,000+ HR and L&D leaders with perspectives from Dr. Christie Vanorsdale, Vicky Kennedy, Loïc Michel, Jay Kolbenson, and Megan Beane Torres.
A few ideas stood out:
- The biggest barrier is alignment. Conflicting priorities topped the list of blockers (45%), ahead of tools (25%) and governance (21%). Only 52% said executives have full visibility into their skills strategy.
- Knowing the gaps isn’t the same as closing them. While 96% of respondents said they have role-specific skills defined, speakers emphasized that job requirements aren’t the same as actionable skills. Teams need to clarify what good performance looks like at each proficiency level.
- Make AI skills specific to the work. “AI literacy” can be too broad to guide development. Start with the task and business outcome, then identify the underlying skills and what proficiency looks like. A tool alone won’t close a skills gap.
- Tie the strategy to a business problem. Whether the priority is internal mobility, reskilling, or workforce planning, choose a clear starting point and connect the investment to outcomes leaders care about.
- Build it together, and keep it current. Bring subject-matter experts and business stakeholders into the process, validate competencies and ways to assess them, and revisit the data as roles and priorities change.
Megan also shared six principles from Docebo’s own skills journey: high-quality skills data, simpler job architecture, individual-centered paths, a whole-person view, continuous growth, and talent mobility.
The takeaway: skills intelligence becomes useful when it moves from labels on a framework to a shared, measurable way to solve real business challenges.
The on-demand version of this session is coming soon, but in the meantime we’d love to know…