From Skills to Intelligence: The HR Transformation Story

Starting with the foundations: Skills

Our first virtual summit in 2024, The Skills Revolution: Transforming into a Skills-Based Organization, focused on how organizations were moving to a skills-based approach for their talent decision making.

Within the event, the need to move beyond static job descriptions to dynamic skill profiles that reflect real capabilities across the organization was a theme. It was a call for HR leaders to rethink talent frameworks and start building foundations for agility and growth. Over 30% of attendees identified skills development as their top skills priority, and over 40% stated ‘defining and measuring skills’ as their biggest challenge in transitioning to a skills-based organization.

The event also set the tone for future events with experts including Josh Bersin speaking about how AI would increasingly impact HR and the emergence of talent intelligence as key differentiators in future success. To lay the foundations, organizations first needed to invest in understanding and mapping their people’s skills to capitalize on new opportunities and adapt to rapid change.

What role do skills assessments play in measuring skills?

Measuring performance and potential with data

Later in 2024, our second event moved the discussion onto The Changing Role of Skills and Why Assessment Data Is Your Secret Weapon. This event explored how reliable assessment data enables HR teams to not just identify skills gaps but also make decisions with confidence. In an era of fast-changing job requirements, it became clear that decisions without data were decisions without direction.

The event also touched on the importance of upskilling and reskilling workforces, with industry leaders highlighting challenges with change management and the value of assessment insights to bridge the gap between potential and performance. 

What specific soft skills will be important moving forward?

Connecting the dots: From data to decisions

The 2025 summit, Preparing Your Workforce for 2030, zoomed out to the bigger picture: purpose-driven workforce planning and HR’s strategic role in shaping business success. Experts emphasized that the future workforce depends on proactive, insight-led decisions, aligning data about talent, capability, and culture to business priorities.

As part of the summit, SHL revealed latest HR research into the key skills essential to success for HR professionals at various stages of their careers, how these skills have evolved over time, and what skills will be needed to succeed in the future. HR’s own meaningful transformation will be key in the evolution of AI beyond automating individual tasks to integrating entire workflows, and preparedness for the fundamental change in how work is organized and executed.

Why AI transformation is about people

The HR impact from AI, and the future of work

At the end of last year, our most recent virtual summit, AI & the Future of Work: How HR Leads the Skills Transformation sparked conversations about AI’s growing role in helping HR understand, predict, and develop talent at scale. Industry leaders spoke about the need to double down on human skills and making sure that they are leading the organization in a way that helps people to work alongside AI.

Josh Bersin spoke about the $450B bet that organizations are placing on AI, which ultimately will still rely on employees to ensure its success, with the ability to measure AI readiness key to uncover gaps and areas to focus development on.

What do you see as the most urgent shift HR leaders must make to prepare their workforce for efficiency, long-term adaptability, and resilience?

The next frontier: Talent Intelligence in an AI-driven world

Now, in 2026, we can already see how AI is altering how people are assessed, hired, developed, and mobilized, and HR is navigating the balance between opportunity and trust.

On May 19, our upcoming virtual summit, Talent Intelligence in an AI-Driven World explores Talent Intelligence as the foundation for confident, defensible decision-making, turning fragmented data into coherent insights.

With keynote perspectives from Gartner, fireside discussions with leaders from Lloyds Banking Group, Honeywell, and General Mills, and real-world examples of SHL’s responsible AI approach, attendees will discover how to connect skill data, assessment results, and workforce analytics across the entire talent lifecycle.

Don’t miss this critical event! 

Register now for the SHL Virtual Summit 2026