Name: Aligning skills, talent & business strategy at Accenture
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T11:16:04.750Z
Duration: 52 min 40 s
Description: Aligning skills, talent & business strategy at Accenture

Transcript for "Aligning skills, talent & business strategy at Accenture": Right. So good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining this, looking forward to the webinar, on aligning skills, talent, business strategy at Accenture. So just before we introduce ourselves, let me just bring your attention to our product statement. So we may well make some forward looking statements about functionality in Workday. But please keep in mind that the the future is uncertain, plans can change, so only make purchasing decisions on currently available functionality. So let's introduce ourselves. I'll start with me. So my name is Richard Doherty. I'm Senior Director here at Workday in our HCM product marketing function. I've been with Workday for just over ten years, and, you know, HCM technology is my passion. And also I've been talking about skills and skills based organizations since about 2018. So this is a particular area of interest for me. So that's me. Filip, I can ask you to introduce yourself. Yes. Of course. So, so Filip Gilbert, within Accenture. I look after his, birthday, go to market activities for you and even globally, and also after HR transformation, related activities. I think for this call of, some probably in the audience now have been working on skills since many, many years, since the nineties actually. So it was something about my age. So I've been working on that and through about, well, Connect on the one hand with the internal Accenture team on the whole skill story and also the application of that and also working together with a lot of customers, in that space. Fantastic. Thank you, Filip. And, Yassy, can you introduce yourself? Thank you. So I'm Yassy. I'm the value realization lead at Accenture for the Workday business group. I've been in the Workday ecosystem now for eleven or twelve years, and looking primarily at skills, and also AI for the past few years. And that's really been my main focus. So helping customers, typically, after they've gone live, get the most value out of Workday. Fantastic. And, in case I forget later, thank you very much, Yassy and Filip, for giving us your time, for the preparation of this webinar and and joining us today to to share Accenture's skill story. So thank you very much. So, a bit of housekeeping, actually. Remember, I just heard someone say I can hear Richard but not Filip nor Yassy. Is it only me? So I don't know if my colleagues can let me know if that is the case. Okay. No. I think it's just you, just just earlier. Unfortunately, maybe maybe do a reboot. Okay. Thank you, everyone. I love this, the interaction here. So, a bit of housekeeping. Before we get into the content, we've we've set aside a lot of time at the end for q and a. And I know that this is not the first webinar that I've run with Filip Ignacio. I know it generates loads of questions, and we love it. So please, just type in your questions as we're going through. If something pops up and and it it it triggers a question, ideally, please put it in the q and a because that's easier for us to manage if all the questions go into one place. And then everyone else, if you don't have a question, but if you see a question, you think, well, that's a really good question, then, I think there's a function there where you can like it. And what we'll do then is that will help us rank the questions and make sure that we answer the most popular questions first. So, yeah, we'd love your engagement. We'd love your questions. So, yeah. Yeah. Engage engage with this webinar. So thank you. Okay. So our agenda today. So, I'm just gonna provide a little bit of context because I know there'll be some people on the call who are perhaps new to skills, others of you who are on that journey, but I'll just level set. And then we'll dive into the discussion with Filip Niasi, who are really gonna share, their insights around what becoming a skills based organization has enabled Accenture as an organization to do. So for those of you who joined the webinar that we've done before with with the Assi Infinite, that we've more previously focused on how do you become a skilled based organization, how should you approach it, and why. Today's webinar is more about, well, okay, if you do become a skilled based organization, this is the transformation that you can, expect. Okay. So let's start. Okay. So, just a little bit of context from me first. So, earlier this year in March, we published some research around the global state of skills, which was, we surveyed over over 2,000 business leaders around the world. And just some key findings, that I'd like to share with you. So, first of all, over half of the business leaders were concerned about potential skill shortage in the next three years. Only 32% of business leaders felt they had the right skills in the organizations to to to drive future success. And then this 54% of leaders said that they've got clear view of skills within your organization. I didn't I don't actually believe that, to be honest. I I think it's way lower. So so so there's there's clearly a your business business leaders are are skills is an issue. Skills is a topic that they're looking at, that they're thinking about thinking thinking about that they're worried about. Now, we also then asked, business leaders, well, why would you become a skills organization? What would drive that? And the top reason was to drive improved productivity and business growth. Secondly, more innovation and creativity within the organization, so creativity and innovation strongly linked. And then finally, coming in at number three was increased organization agility and internal mobility. Okay. So, what does it mean? Well, becoming a skills based organization, well, it's basically putting skills at the center of your talent strategies to drive business outcomes. And, really, that's what we're gonna be talking about today with Filip and Yassy. What how how how have they embedded skills in their talent strategies, and and what what impact has that had, and what value has that driven? Okay. So, the so I talked to I I said in my introduction, I've been talking about, skills since 2018. That's basically when Workday released the Workday Skills Cloud, which is to help organizations manage their skills data and start gathering that data from from their employees to to, to to to become that skills based organization. And then over the years, we've taken that skills data and we've integrated it into various elements and function functional areas of Workday. So skills is now you know, you can leverage skills in recruiting, in performance, in learning, in compensation, in talent marketplaces, and so on and so forth. So we provide this this robust, broad, and deep solution for organizations to help them become skills based. And then the final thing we've done is then, you know, with recognition that you'll have skills information, other skill systems, we've we've created a number of strategic integrations with third party partners within that skills ecosystem so that we can provide you with that complete solution. Okay. So that's enough from me. Let's now dig into learning more about Accenture and, you know, the results that they have achieved by becoming a skills based organization. So this is when I just ask the questions and and Yasi and Filip start answering and and give us their insight. So, Yassy and Filip, so what does it mean, to become a skills based organization at Accenture, and how is this linked to your overall business strategy? Yeah. So so good question. And I think all of you on the call probably not seen us live. Yeah. We've been, on the journey together with Richard since, since a couple of years now. And, specifically, the first cycle that I used to introduce, skills of Accenture. Yeah. And our journey starts actually about ten years ago on the whole scale. So that was before, just a pity, but it was before Workday had that, fantastic capability, yeah, that they have today to support skills and also skills based organizations. Yeah. So at the time, we built a lot of bespoke systems, yeah, to actually support us from a skills perspective. Yeah. And more importantly, why did we do that is that, well, our our CEO, actually had that vision about ten years ago to say, well, if if Accenture as an organization wants to grow and remain relevant, then Skittles will be at the at the center of that growth strategy. Yeah. And it was quite visionary ten years ago to do that. And ten years ago, we started again that journey to become a skills based organization. And this slide is from about, I think, about a year and a half ago. So today we're closer. We we're we're starting to hit the 1,000,000 employee mark. Yeah. So so it's, it's, tremendous at the size of this company. Not my typical analogy to say Luxembourg is a country with 600,000 inhabitants. Doesn't even grow anymore when you're, 1,000,000 employees, but but we certainly continue to see that growth in in terms of the employee base as an exception. And, Yassy, he's going to talk about, how we hire, and and we hire people through skills and and and are even very adopter of hard score even before the Workday acquisition again. So we truly embed this into our recruitment practices. We need to elaborate on that. We use SkillsCloud. So that's as a as a backbone in Workday. So we have one version of the true skills, and that's in Workday, and it's driven by the SkillsCloud. We have Accenture specific skills. Right? So we, as an Accenture, when we mine all our skills, we have about 12,000,000 of them in in our organization. But we have 8,000 skills that we monitor actively as an HR function and that also are publicly available, grouped in 380 specializations. That's still the case. And we still have a number based on where they extend, a number of algorithms to manage that, which are highly accurate. Yeah. And talking about that, I told you that we started ten years ago with a lot of legacy. Every year and increasingly, we are dismantling that legacy and bring everything back into Workday. So so so we obviously, we're not in the business of of developing bespoke HR applications to use within Accenture. We're truly embracing the Workday platform for that. And, and that means that, today, we are we are really step by step dismantling these things and bringing it into the Workday standards. So if I to answer your question, more in detail, maybe go to the next slide, Richard. Yeah? Yeah. If we No. For sure. Yeah. For sure. And then I think really what we so, I mean, it's a massive organization. It's huge. It's huge. Right? So so, you know, remarkable achievement to get to get where you are now. And let let's drill into, some of these talent practices. And I know one of the really hot topics at the moment is workforce planning. Right? Everyone everyone I talk to is is is really focused on workforce planning and and really thinking about how can we do this more effectively. So now that you are a skills based organization, what impact or what changes has that has that impacted in terms of how you you plan the workforce at Accenture? Mhmm. Yeah. And, indeed, it's it's, again, it's a more statement I typically make make is that very few employees are interested in skills. Yeah. But I always say employees are interested in what you as an organization do with skills, what kind of value you deliver based on skills towards employees but also towards the business, those skills by itself are not very exciting. Yeah. Then you're outside of HR. And so and, indeed, one of the the the, I would say, use cases of skills in any company is in workforce planning and even more specifically into strategic workforce planning. Yeah? And and I think there's nothing better than an example app on on what that could mean, for a company like Accenture. So if I go to the next slide, Richard. I realized I jumped in too early too early with a question there, Filip. Oh, good. No. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. News to you. Sorry. People can ask questions. That's so so they they certainly so don't hesitate yet to to to as we have our conversation to put in questions. Yeah. But so strategic workforce planning. So I think in workforce planning, there's two levels. Yeah. You have financial planning. I would say that's your first level of maturity fully supported by Adaptive, and we are one of the biggest users of Adaptive, also, in the world, another Verdict product that we are embracing. So that's one. By the way, also, Prism and and, the the full Verdict product suite within Accenture. Geekon is another tool from, Workday that we use. But so we, so that's one one element that we use Adaptive for. That's for that financial planning. And then you have your next level of maturity, and that's strategic workforce planning. So that's skills based planning and actually using skills to to decide what your future talent, hiring, development, mobility strategy is going to look like. Yeah? Now the best example that I can give for that more than anything else is, a couple of years ago. So, actually, two years ago, we we we, started our AI business. Yeah? And this is the use case. Yeah? So we it's, again, extension numbers are, so so bear with me. Yeah? But, so our ambition is by 2026 to have a unit of 80,000 people that focus exclusively on AI and AI based applications for our customers. Yeah? We actually, in one quarter, in three months, using skills information, started that business with an initial 40,000 employees. So what we did is remind our skills, and we found that today in that organization, there are 40,000 people that have the required data and AI skills to operate in that business unit. So that was the beginning of that. Yeah? Then what did strategic workforce planning and skills learned us is that another as you can see, another 16% can be skilled then because they have the proximate skills or related skills like that. So about 60 will be added to that to upskilling, and they're working on that because they have us in this profile. And for that, we could talk about learning also. Right? We use word learning, and pathway yeah, to to actually upskill, and then another 80% will be redeployed. Yeah? So we, we are in one quarter being able through skills to set up 40,000 employee business units within Accenture. And thanks to the skills information and that planning process, we're we're able to scale this up to 80,000 people in about two years now. Wow. And, I mean, how would that have been before you became the skills based organizer? I mean, you know, just, I guess, not possible, right, in that within those time frame? Well, it's it's a not possible. Secondly, while you're quickly looking at periods like five years. And can you imagine what happens in the world of AI in five years? Right? It's like by the moment you've figured it out. I think, six months ago, when I said agentic AI, half of the world had no clue what I'm talking about. Yeah? So so today, it's in every boardroom, right, that they're talking about of the impact of agentic AI on our business. So it's an area that's moving so quickly that you actually you actually need that very strong data foundation, yeah, which isn't working anymore. So actually show the agility as a as a company, yeah, to to do that. And, again, this is an example at scale. We have plenty of other examples, around that. We are within Accenture. We reorganize, restructure, revisit areas of our business almost in real time to be better aligned to its market demands, and we do this truly on a based using skills and as a as a foundation around this. Yeah. And and just touching on that, you know, the fact that the world is changing so rapidly around us, and I'm sure that Accenture, you're modeling various different, you know, business scenarios moving forward from a workforce planning perspective. And so to be to be agile, I mean, I know Accenture is a very agile organization. How has sort of a skills based approach helped you become more agile in that respect? Yeah. So that I think that's a good example. That's also reallocating and refocusing on other businesses. It's also matching, operating amount, which is which is critical for a a very large technology and consulting organization like Accenture to to manage that almost in real time. So we're constantly monitoring. Certainly, for the 8,000 skills that I talked about, which is like that subset, constantly monitoring about, are those the right skills? What does it demand in the market? And to what degree can we, strategically invest in our people and in a targeted way, invest in our people to upscale and reskill them in the correct way to to actually, to actually align with that marketing mindset. And and through that, so guarantee us also employability of those people. You know, which is another important factor, you know, and how we contribute to society. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Good stuff. So moving on from workforce planning to look at talent acquisition and, Yassy, this is an area where you specialize. So in the in the abstract for this webinar, we talked about supercharging AI powered recruiting. So let's explore a little bit, you know, what that means, you know, for talent acquisition at Accenture. Give us a little bit of an overview of where you are today. Yeah. Absolutely. And as as Filip said, obviously, the size and scale and the speed that we work at means that we can't use more traditional recruitment methods. So just looking at some of the figures here, we, on average, get annually 4,000,000 candidates. A lot of those are kind of in areas like India, The Philippines, and through our early career program. But out of those 4,000,000, we then conduct about 600,000 interviews, offer around a 135, contracts. And then out of those, around 94,000, get onboarded. And these are the figures from last year. So we really have to look at modern and new ways of approaching recruitment to make sure that we're keeping up with demand, but also not losing any of that quality. So how can we use AI to maintain that? And one of the main things that we've done is implement a high score to help us with that. Thank you. So as Filip said, even before high school was acquired by work, we kicked off our journey with them back in 2023, where we went live in North America and LATAM with, high school. And then we kept rolling that out even further. So at the start of 2024, we went live with India and The Philippines, which are two of our, biggest regions. And then later on in 2024 in the second half, we went live in EMEA with high school. So we're now live globally, and we use it, apart from a few pockets. We use it globally at Accenture, to do all of our skill based recruitment. So we've really moved away from using experience or education, and we're focusing on on skills. So I think the impact of that change is really the speed and the scale at which we've been able to respond and to hire people and to grow. I won't read through all of the figures. I don't think go through them. But I think maybe a few just to call out, which I think are probably the most impactful is 70% of our requisitions are now being filled with our existing talent pools. So what we hear quite often is that that creates a really great Canva experience and initial onboarding experience. I think a lot of times people get told, thank you for applying. Not this time, but we'll be we'll be in touch if something comes up. And a lot of times people never hear back from a company. But using HighScore, using AI, we're now able to reach back out to people and say, hey. We've got this great job that we think you'd be perfect for. And, actually, we're filling the majority of our reps now with existing talent pool. Another one to call out as well is the thirty minutes to source a canvas each job. So similar to that 70% using HighScore, when we post a job now, within thirty minutes, we've got eight candidates. So, again, that just speeds things up. And those eight candidates, they typically do then kind of flow through to becoming the best new hire. So it's not like those eight candidates then kind of go off when we look elsewhere. So, again, it's that speed, that agility without using quality. And then it meant that we can review the screen cameras now in two days. Whereas before we implemented high school, that was in between two weeks. So it's similar to the same. It would have taken us thirty five years to create that the AI for the 80,000. It's these little things where you've reduced it from two weeks to two days that help, bring that to life. Yeah. I mean, if I just so so, the interesting one there for me is the 70%, you know, requisition to build with existing talent, which is something, you know, with the the this fetch capability, right, in in hired score. And I think the the AI what we the AI is enabling you to you and the Hyatt score customers is enabling you to do something you just wouldn't have been able to do, right, with with people. It's to be able to scan through those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of candidates you've already got in that pool and do some very clever matching to, you know, to to find the right candidate. And, also, you you often have candidates in the database who perhaps applied to the wrong job, but they're perfect for this other job. You know? So the AI is really opening up opportunity, I think, for people. And, obviously, at at the at the same time as well, saving time and driving efficiency and, and hopefully in the end, you know, better matching of of of candidates to jobs. So so that's fantastic. And also, maybe, Richard, another one is bias. We're moving bias from the whole process. Because we we're hiring based on skills, not on degrees, not, not on any any other aspects of, like, gender and things like that. We're truly although gender plays a role at some stage in the process because we obviously look after diversity in the workforce, of course. But, what we are fundamentally having based on your on your skills that you bring to the organization. And then that's I think creates an interesting aspect in terms of, of bias. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we are using AI to reduce bias. Yeah. No. That's fantastic. Mhmm. So, Yassy Shayesteh, just just before we we we sort of wrap up the lessons learned and so on, let's look at learning and development. And again, let me quote from the abstract for this webinar. We said, creating personalized high impact learning paths connected to organizational needs. So what does that look like in practice at Accenture for an employee? Yeah. So each employee at Accenture has their skills profile, which is the skills that you have, and the associated proficiencies. What each of us also can do is go in and say, this is what our ambition is. So whether I want to grow in my career and really deepen my current expertise or whether I want to broaden my skill set. So each employee can go in and do that. And then what the system does, it it carries out a fit gap analysis to say, okay. These are the skills you have today. Based on what you've said your ambitions are, these are the skills that you need, and it will create personalized learning pathways to get you from point a to point b. So it gives you a really clear guide of how to get where you want to go. And we can make that obviously to our organizational needs. We can give recommendations and suggestions, but it's really putting learning and development into the hands of the employee and using AI to make it really personal to that individual, which wouldn't be possible without the tech behind it. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just gonna say we've also recent not recently, but we've also acquired Udacity, which really focuses on that skills based learning as well, more so in the technology function. So, again, combining that with those learning pathways can deliver really targeted training for employees and really allow them to go and explore things on their own as well and drive that continuous and self led learning experience. Yep. Right at the beginning, I while I was sharing some of those stats, you know, we were saying that, business leaders, you know, only a small number are confident they've got the right skills for the future. So that means that, you know, we need to encourage our employees to develop new skills. Now, obviously, Accenture is really a skills business. Right? That's what you offer your customers. How how do you motivate or I'm sure it's easy, but but how do you motivate your employees to continuously develop new skills? Yeah. So I think there's a couple of different things. I think one of the most effective ways of motivating people is being able to show a clear connection between the learning that they're doing and that career growth. So whether it's new opportunities, internal mobility, helping them move into a role that's more interesting and more aligned to what they want to do, it's really showing these are the outcome, and this is how your career is growing rather than, like, learning for learning's sake, rather than analyzing new buzzwords that here's a bunch of training on AI. It's how is this gonna be relevant for you and your career. And I think once you've managed to show people that and people would buy into it naturally and create that culture of learning. I think also the personalization that using AI can offer really emphasizes that and create that learning culture because people aren't saying, oh, this is generic training that's going out to everyone. It's, okay, this is really specific for me. So, again, it helps with building that connection to career growth. Yeah. No. So it's it's answering that question. What's in it for me? Right? You know, that's how we get employees engaged. So fantastic. So, just wrapping up this sort of more formal section before we go to q and a, let's, move on to talk about sort of lesson lessons learned and also, I think probably really interesting, any key metrics that you're tracking to demonstrate the business value of this whole endeavor. So, Filip, give us give us some insights. Yeah. Certainly. And I think some highlights, there's a lot of lessons learned. I think we'll almost have a full session on on that alone. Yeah. But what are some lessons learned? We'll also answer some of the questions. The the first one, as you know, within Accenture, nobody answers skills in Workday. Nobody. So you have the possibility to do it. Right? So that's, to add to your profile, but all skills are mined automatically through they are. Yeah. So, and that's how we build and maintain the skills profiles for all and every single employee within the organization. So and it's a highly effective algorithm. And so both skills and proficiency of the individual are determined through a system that you have developed. Yeah? So, and there are obviously other options today. Yeah. Products like Tech Wolf that is also, embraced by by Workday themselves. These are products that allow you to do that kind of automated skills mining. Yeah? Where skills breakdown is that when you put the ability in that group. Yeah. No no no single employee is interested in maintaining a list of skills in the system. Believe me. I tried it many times before. It doesn't work. Yeah. So you need to find something smarter than that. So that's one. The other thing is that I would like to mention based on your question, Richard, is that, in terms of critical success factors is to really develop that employee and business value case. So not talk about skills. Actually, what will it allow you to do? And and so so the kind of capabilities that come out of that. And that translates into recruitment or that's or talent acquisition, as Jesse has talked about, development, performance management, coaching. So it's all talent areas that are impacted by, also within Accenture, by that by the fact that you have those skills, and and these are the areas that we use in terms of our value proposition. Yeah? Now last thing I would like to mention is that, well, obviously, Workday comes with a whole list of AI capabilities. Yeah. And and most of those AI capabilities in the talent space also depends on your skills profile. So if you don't have it in Workday it's another reason to do that in Workday. If you don't have it in Workday, then the reality is the Verbit AI cannot make it up either. Yeah. So the the performance of the Verbit platform increases dramatically if you have that up to date skills information in the system. Yeah? But it also allows us to do other things. And and, again, almost a session by itself, but we're really now into the next so skills, we figured out. Yeah? We're now in the next stage where we at scale embed AI in more of talent processes. And I wanted to share, so the output so last year, we, deployed something like five AI assets, Gen AI assets in performance management there to support for performance management cycle. And these are some, again, sometimes mind blowing statistics that come out of that. Yeah. So through the use of AI and, for example, the automatic generation based on all data collected, including skills of automated feedback generation, we saw an 89% increase in feedback given to people within our organization. We have something called the feedback culture. So as of August, that has been used half a million times. Yeah. The first week only in the first week, 40,000 people use that feedback coach. And so it looks at all kinds of data holistically about an employee and collects all that information, once again, including skills and skills gap to actually provide feedback to a person. So that's, 95% of people obviously found that it saves time. Yeah? And, actually, it's more accurate what comes out with that than what you can make up yourself. Yeah? So, and the if we look overall in terms of performance management within Accenture, so we have performance summary. We have feedback coach. We have a couple of AI assets that we plugged into Workday. We have in total in six months about 1,000,000 users of that. So strongly adopted by everyone. And, again, if you would have that rich dataset that sits in Workday, these figures would simply not be possible. And, Filip, that that feedback coach, that that's an extend app, isn't it, that you've developed internally for Accenture? Yeah. And, I mean, I think develop bespoke. Yeah. We don't develop bespoke apps anymore. Everything that we do, including our skills extension, all of that is based on the. Yeah. So that's quite nice. You'll see no Accenture. I mean, in employees, you can have your own specific ways of working. And now with extend, you can you can actually build out top of the platform. But then, you know, there'll be smaller organizations perhaps on our on on this webinar today who who can use maybe some of the more standard functionality that that that serves living with Workday. And and anywhere in between, right, we give we give we give our customers that that flexibility, which is cool. Okay. I tell you what, we've we've gone past the half hour. So let's should should we jump into doing the q and a? Should we do that? Let's do that. So and let's actually stop sharing so people can see us in our full beauty. Well, maybe not. So let's I'm just gonna have a look at the questions. I'm gonna start with the ones that got the most votes. So, from Bethan, are the skills in your global skills library, excuse me, captured as maintained skills in Workday? Bit of a detailed question there. Yeah. It's a mix so some of those obviously, we we try to maximize the use of SkillsCloud. Yeah? So if there's an overlap with SkillsCloud, we obviously we're going to use the SkillsCloud skills. And and some of those are, I would call it, more soft skills or transferable skills. So it could be leadership skills, for example, and this is available in SkillsCloud. So then we use that. Sometimes, we have very Accenture specific or or fairly advanced technology related skills that you serve in the field of AI. And then, indeed, we with that, that's something that we manage on top of the Verde SkillsCloud environment. So I would say it's a hybrid, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So second number two from Dorcas. How did you confirm the 40,000 odd skills? Was it through surveys, self proclaimed, or through competence tests? So, yeah, I guess, yeah, how do you confirm which skills are important for you guys? Okay. So that's what's been so it's was a process that was driven, and it's still driven today by HR. So I know there's the two, I'd say the two schools that that still should be owned by the business and different areas in the business or that it should be owned by HR. Within Accenture, HR plays a big role in that. Yeah. So they they own that. But, obviously, they also engage with the different business areas to develop that. And, for example, we have, part of our multi matrix organization is organized around industries. So HR then engages, for example, with our retail industry specialists to say what are now the most relevant skills within that area. Yeah? So that's the the interlock, if you want, between HR and the business to make sure that that skills, the priority skills, at least, that we manage remain up to date. Yeah. And and, just to extend it, so at Workday, what we sort of did there was it's about sort of mapping critical skills onto job profiles. And at Workday, we looked for, like, 10 to 12 critical skills per job profile. And we went through a process of, surveying, sort of managers of those profiles because, yeah, you don't wanna have 50, you know, you don't have, like, fifty, sixty critical skills in a job profile. Just be a nightmare. So we surveyed and, you know, went down from 40 skills to 50 skills, and ultimately, the executive leaders would then then sort of distill it down to about 10 critical skills per job profiles. So that's sort of the approach we did with surveying. And And we also used TechWoof to help us with that process. Right. So let's have a look. The here we go. From Nicole, how did you organize the understanding of what skills the existing staff have, especially in in orbit in, so in collaboration with workers councils? So, the German question. Any other thoughts on that? It's another question. So in terms of understanding what skills existing employees had, we used an AI to do that. So we took employee profiles, and we ran them through, the engine, which identified based on a whole host of different data sources. So both their workday profiles, using our scheduling tools to see what programs are they on, what roles are they doing on programs, looking at learning certifications. So all all the data you could think of, it looks through all of that. It captured what skills, each employee had, and they run it through a proficiency calculator. So, oh, sorry. The screen changed. So it run it through that, and that that's how we kind of understood the skills that we have within our organization. In terms of the works council question, I don't know the specifics about how we took it through the works council, but I know when we take it through the works council for our clients, it's mainly around engaging them really early on and being really transparent about what data sources are being used, how the data is being used, and how the AI is using, that data. So I think, for the works council point, it's that. It's just the transparency and really early engagement to make sure that they come along on the journey with you rather than feeling like they've been playing something at the last minute, in which case they're always gonna say no, aren't they? Yeah. It's about working closely, isn't it, with the workers' council? I think that's so I'm sorry. Well well, I'm not sure what was going on with the sharing. That's not me. There's some ground in the system. But, anyway, I managed to get rid of it. So this is, where is it now? There was a question about, and it's moving around. Second, where is it now? Ah, yeah. Here we go. From, Alisa. How do you assess the quality of skills, on employees' profiles? You know, I guess they all yep. That's a good question. One. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I think both aspects of that's good at that. So first and foremost, and that's also answers a bit the work's counsel question, is that I'm still in control of my skills. So the system infers it themselves. But if I don't agree with that, I have the right to say, yeah. I I I think this is too low or too high for those and those reasons. And based on that, it's possible that we change that. Yeah? So it's not that the system dictates everything. I still have an element of control of I owe that. Yeah? So that's one. Secondly is that how do we, ensure the quality? Well, it's it's by the use of that skill app. So there is a feedback mechanism as you can see at this, that's why I gave the answer also around performance management, that is ongoing performance feedback. So if I declare that I'm a Nobel Prize winner in quantum mechanics, I'm not by the way, but the the the Accenture context and feedback mechanism will detect very, very quickly that that is not the case. Yeah? So if I influence the data that is being used to determine the skills and the proficiency levels, reality is that we can detect that almost from a social perspective. And so that we can detect that very, very quickly. So there's no interest whatsoever to start to to start tuning or fooling the system. Yeah. Yeah. I think as well, in my experience, the employees are you know, they may they may overestimate their capabilities. Right? But I don't think they will deliberately gamify the system because they're gonna get caught out, and they're very foolish very quickly. Right? You can. You can. I can't I can't fool the system, but then the editor calculates that's what it calculates skill set and proficient. I will get a profile which is which which I can fulfill, and I will get the the good on engagement and roles that I could Yeah. But you before one. Yeah. You're gonna look pretty pretty silly pretty quickly on that. So yeah. Here's another good question. So, actually, I mean so so the question is, what are the key steps to to move from being sort of a competency based organization, to become skills driven? Were you never asked this question before, actually. Were you competency based before you, ten years ago, started shifting to the skills? Are you still competency based as well as skills? Yeah. So we were indeed a very competency based organization and and a multi matrix based, competency based organization. Maybe also interesting one is that so our job architecture is very simple because we have, like, standard grades. We have, like, a manager, a senior manager. So any entity of the area in which you work, you can be a manager or or you can be a managing director. It's actually your, specialization that determines what kind of skills that you have. So I'm, for example, I'm the managing director, but I specialize on Workday and in a number of industries. So I inherit all those skills from those specializations. So it's it's a different model, but that's for our business and there's a lot of participants here that are in very different industries. For our industry, that's the model that is applicable to us. Yeah. There are different models that that, exist around that. Yeah. So one just wanted to clarify that thing. And second thing, yes, we were competency based. We completely dismantled competencies. So there are no competencies also not in Accenture. We don't manage competencies. So we manage skills, and we manage we have 380 of them, manage 380 specializations. So that can be industry, technology, leadership. So that's specific specializations that we manage, and that's the foundation of our model. Very good. Very good. I've got another question here. So how do you combine your skills information with the job architecture? Yeah. Yeah. So is it yeah. I mean, I I I touched on it, how Workday doing it. How how have you sort of integrated the two? Go ahead, Cassie. If you if you want to. I don't know if you would like to answer, but yeah. Yeah. So I think within our job architecture, as Filip said, we've got very clear kind of roles. So, like, manager, senior manager, managing director, and each of those have kind of skills that are tied to them, like managing people, sales, etcetera. But realistically, each job within the specialization will have the skills attached to them. So for example, when we come into talent acquisition, I'm a senior manager in the workday practice, and these are the skills that are tied to that particular job. So we I wouldn't say we combine them, but they are holistic and they are all using the same source of truth. So our jobs based on the specializations will have the skills attached to them, so we analyze it together. I don't know if I answered that correctly. Yeah. I think so. No. I think yeah. No. I think that's good. Thank you. Thank you. So another question here from Chandini. So from a cultural change perspective, what shifts were necessary to move from relying on a proprietary or internal Accenture taxonomy to adopting a universal market standard tax which I guess is is quite and you kinda touched on this. I think you're somewhere in between, aren't you? But in terms of yeah. That that sort of because yeah. I mean, did you but before before you sort of really started moving you know, Workday to become that source of truth, single source of truth for skills, did you have your own taxonomy, skills taxonomy, back in ten years ago before you had the skills capital? Yeah. And we we also gradually deployed it. That's so one of the first areas that we, deployed this in was, for example, in learning app. So so in development, we didn't copy all talent areas in Mongo. Right? So it was a gradual rollout. And, like I said, it's a pity that that it only started a couple of years ago and that it wasn't able to take birthday. You know? This with all with all respect to the birthday events, it could have made your life so much easier. Yeah? It's just single that we did seven or eight years ago. But, so seven years ago, we were forced to to build that whole infrastructure for ourselves. And and, indeed, that's why we have our own mining algorithms. That's why we have our own proficiency calculation, and that's why we used to have our our own database around skills. Yeah? And and once again, one of the big we did this about, I think, now a year and a half ago. So we activated skills clouds on one hand. And secondly, we moved that whole proprietary infrastructure into the Verde system. So even the sales mining today is an Amazon Web slash extend based application that is integrated into our Verde environment. Yeah. And that actually, leads me onto the next question. And we've talked about this before. Yeah. So, you know, years ago, when you started on this Workday, you didn't have all the functionality you needed, so you built it yourselves and so on. And in more recent times, you've been able to start retiring some of that legacy, if I could call it that. So I've got a question here from Rebecca. I'm able to share more about your technology landscape, with Workday, which modules, alongside which other solutions and in house solutions. It might be difficult to do without a slide that maps it out, but maybe just at a high level. Well, mainly, I think it's it's becoming more and more Workday centric. That's that's, I think, the general thing. So we we used to use Beam three. We decommissioned that because Beam three is fit for is no longer needed. I mean, we we get this out of the word functionality. Yassy gave the example of we have our own learning management system and and LXP. We don't see a need for that anymore, so we're decommissioning that, moving it back into the Workday platform. We are the early adapter of Accenture even before the Workday acquisition. So luckily, that's that's integrated. Well, I talked about HiredScore as a third party product, that we we had our bespoke, we're we're obviously a technology company. Yeah? So we'd also develop things. So, so we, again, build out our own skills architecture, no longer meet our decommissioning and bringing back to Workday. So I think what we see in HR is is quite a tremendous simplification of that back end of HR. So we have less and less third party applications that we need to integrate. Where we do invest it in the front end. So the usability, the teams integration, chatbot integration, we have agents that we are developing as an Accenture that that sits on top of that. So if we build something, it's more in that space than in core functionality where we try to align more and more with the Workday standards. Yeah. So you've kind of been going through a simplification Yeah. Journey, I guess, by standardizing, you know, as much as possible on Workday. So so that's great. So, another couple of questions, then we'll we'll wrap up. So, a nice question here from, Ruta. I think that's how to pronounce it. How do you assess the impact that the measures, e g learning parts, produced on the employee upskilling? Go ahead, Jacqueline. So we we have standard metrics that we use, like, how many certifications people have, how many skills on their profile, learning hours, etcetera. I think the real way that we've been measuring it at Accenture is around attrition and internal mobility. It's how we keeping people within the organization and giving them the opportunities to stay and grow their career instead of leaving or looking externally. So that's the real area where we're seeing value and where we're measuring rather than some of the more traditional how many hours did someone spend on learning? Filip also mentioned pecan. We do have questions track it through that kind of sentiment analysis as well. So it's more, qualitative as opposed to the kind of traditional quantitative measures. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. I think we'll probably start wrapping up now. There are a few more more questions, things around people are interested to hear more about that shift from competencies to skills, Philip. But probably what what I would suggest to, attendees is a poll now. So, which is basically said, do you wanna be contacted, after this webinar? So, you know, respond to that poll, and and then, you know, send get someone in touch to to discuss some of those more some open questions you may have. Yeah. Let's just see. Yeah. So there there's a lot of questions. They haven't got any votes yet, but they just come in. So, lots of open questions, but we will we will do our best to follow-up on those. And and then, yes, do please, respond to that poll if you'd like to be contacted. But, I'd like to thank all of our attendees for joining us today, and thank you for your engagement and all your questions. And I've just noticed my Workday logo is the wrong way the wrong or the wrong way around. So or maybe is it the wrong way around, Yassie? Or is it just correct. Then your speaker is the other way around. But you're looking perfect. You have the Workday logo. I'm looking good. Okay. Okay. Okay. I was panicking there. I I get done by the Workday brand, please. But, so so thank you to our attendees, and thank you, you know, so much to, Yassy and Filip for sharing your experience, talking about, you know, how Accenture's experiences and the impact that becoming a skills based organization has had on some of those talent practices around learning, talent acquisition, workforce planning, which I know are hot topics for everyone. And the scale at which you're doing this is is remarkable, and I'm sure everyone has learned a lot today. So so thank you so much. I'm sure, and I hope that we'll do, more web more webinars around this topic in the future. So thank you very much. And on that note, I will just bring up the the final Workday slide and say, you know, thank you very much, everyone. This, webinar will be available on demand. And, also, I should say in the docs panel, there is some, information around skills that, you know, the research that I quoted at the beginning and some other assets there. So, you know, click on the docs tab, and you can download those assets. Maybe that'd be interesting some interesting reading for you. But, yeah, thank you very much everyone for joining us today. It's goodbye from me. And and Yassy and, Filip, any final words from you? Nice and thank you for joining. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. And, yeah, don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Sometimes there is in the details. So so happy to, to give that next level of detail to the audience if they're interested. Brilliant. Alright. Thanks very much. Goodbye, everyone. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye.