The Business Roundtable — an association of more than 200 CEOs from top U.S. companies — announced three tools to help employers implement skills-based hiring strategies, according to a Nov. 13 release.
The three guides are available to employers of all sizes, the organization said, and feature insights from major companies’ attempts at implementing skill-based hiring, including Bank of America, Accenture and SAP, among others.
The first guide, called the “Impact Measurement Framework Playbook,” is focused on “practical recommendations to help companies quantify the success of their skills-based talent initiatives,” according to the release. The report focuses in part on successes companies have had in doing so; Bank of America, for example, revised its job requirements and trained managers to ensure they could make changes across the organization.
The second, “Cultivating a Skills-Based Culture,” focuses on how to build a company culture that supports the hiring and advancement of workers without college degrees. This report focuses in part on helping employers figure out their “why” for moving to skills-based hiring and how to communicate that to various stakeholders, including workers.
The third guide, “Regional Skills-Based Strategy Guide,” focuses on how employers can leverage their local and regional resources to meet their needs and the needs of their communities.
“With support from the initiative, Business Roundtable companies are implementing strategies to better recognize and evaluate the skills of qualified job-seekers without degrees. By emphasizing candidates’ skills in the hiring and promotion process, companies can expand their qualified talent pools and extend economic opportunity more broadly,” the release said.
While employers reportedly understand the benefits of skills-based hiring, many have struggled to actually implement it, a Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School report indicated earlier this year. Of companies that announced policy changes, about 45% made a change “in name only” and did not change their hiring behavior even after removing degree requirements.
“Our analysis makes clear that successful adoption of skills-based hiring involves more than simply stripping language from job postings,” the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School report said. “To hire for skills, firms will need to implement robust and intentional changes in their hiring practices — and change is hard.”
