Silos Are Collapsing, Career Growth Ain’t What It Used To Be, and Other Thoughts from Talent Connect 2023

Earlier this month, I joined 1,500 of my fellow talent leaders at Talent Connect in New York City. The tagline for the conference was “Work changes today,” which underscores the unrelenting change and uncertainty in the modern workplace. 

Whether it’s the demographic shifts in the workforce, transformative technology like generative AI, or the need to find new ways of helping more people find career opportunities by focusing on skills, there are no shortage of issues and new realities forcing us to change the way we think about work, the workplace, and the workforce. 

In his opening keynote, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky insisted that organizations can’t rely on traditional playbooks and practices to solve these challenges but need to develop new playbooks. 

His call to action reminded me of my favorite Albert Einstein quote: “You cannot use an old map to explore a new world.” 

If we want to seize the moment and create a better, more equitable world of work, we have to start building new ways of thinking and working to do that. And the rest of the conference gave me a taste of how some companies are beginning to trailblaze to get us to a new place. 

Here are a few of my highlights:

1. The silos are coming down as companies embrace a “one talent” approach

Early in the conference, I was struck by how talent leaders of all backgrounds were thinking much more systematically and strategically about how they are working and what they are working on. 

I attended four breakout sessions where the company that was presenting featured speakers across the entire talent function (for example, learning, talent acquisition, and talent development), showcasing how they were working much more collaboratively to deliver a much bigger business impact. Instead of operating in silos, these leaders had embraced a “one talent” mindset, be it for skills-based hiring, internal mobility, or employee learning and upskilling. 

For example, Zohra Yafai, vice president of talent acquisition and internal mobility at Cisco, and her colleague Alicia Lopez, global head of learning and careers, spoke about how they've partnered to create a talent mobility program that allows people to find new opportunities inside their organization. And with over 80,000 employees at Cisco, this is a huge undertaking. But having TA and L&D aligned for a unified talent approach boosted their case when they sought to get buy-in and sponsorship from business leaders.

Canva’s global talent acquisition leader Amy Schultz spoke about how her company has even created a “talent agility” team that embodies this direction by combining internal mobility, contingent workforce, workforce planning, and talent programs. Why? All with an eye toward building a more fluid culture and workforce.

2. Everyone is headed to a skills-first approach, but no one is sure how to operationalize it

As companies look to meet the ever-changing needs of their business and hire and develop in more inclusive ways, a skills-first approach to hiring and talent development has been a hot topic. While momentum is there, operationalizing and moving forward have been challenging. This is a complex subject. 

In a session titled “Equity Is the Motive: How Delta Enriches Careers with a Skills-First Focus,” leaders from the airline’s talent acquisition, DEI, and learning and development teams (see point No. 1 above) shared how they’ve built programs and processes focused on creating a more equitable workforce. These efforts include everything from removing degree requirements from 90% of their job postings to partnering with a university to launch an Analytics Academy, where employees can learn the skills needed to join Delta’s analytics team. Delta has also invested heavily in apprenticeship and sponsorship programs that provide the resources needed for mobility and growth for talent from historically marginalized groups.

Delta convinced me of just how important it is to have the right teams working together and to make sure that you’re hearing what employees need and supporting them appropriately through these types of robust upskilling and reskilling programs. 

Their pioneering work reminded me that Delta is not just the name of an airline, it’s the mathematical symbol used to signify change.

3. Career growth ain’t what it used to be — it’s much more 

With the workplace in sustained flux, it only makes sense that our idea of career growth has been entirely exploded. I heard several references to “zigzag careers” at Talent Connect. In her keynote, the futurist April Rinne hailed the advent of “career portfolios.” And Terence Morley, the vice president of global talent development at NBCUniversal, had yet another way to look at it. “There’s a concept we didn’t invent called a squiggly career,” Terence said, “where not every career is a ladder.”

In a session entitled “Accelerating Internal Mobility by Rethinking Roadblocks,” Terence noted that NBCUniversal has used labs called “Grow Yourself, Know Yourself and Your Impact” to help employees own their own careers “in a complex, diverse organization.” 

The labs are two hours virtually or three hours live and they delve into questions such as What engages you? What are your strengths? How do you understand the business? By the end of the year, 3,500 employees will have participated in 65 labs.

4. We’re in the people business but technology will be critical to how we get it done

It seemed like you couldn’t have a conversation at Talent Connect without talking about technology and, specifically, artificial intelligence. As a profession, we will always be about people. But it’s clear that technology is now a huge part of what we do too.

In a session billed “Technology Isn’t Taking People Over, It’s Empowering People,” Donna Morris, the executive vice president and chief people officer at Walmart, spoke about how her HR team is using AI to improve the talent experience for the company’s 2.1 million employees. A powerful example of this is an app they’ve developed for 50,000 corporate employees in the U.S. called My Assistant.

The easy-to-use app, which can be accessed on desktop or mobile, leverages generative AI to help employees write drafts quickly or summarize large documents, with the goal of freeing up time for associates so they can better serve their consumers. 

To me, this is the ideal application of AI in the talent space — to allow people to move quickly through work that can be monotonous or hugely time consuming and to focus on the things that get them fired up about their jobs.

Final thoughts: Creating a new playbook starts with us as talent leaders

The swirl in the world of work is real.

“While the pace of change has never felt as fast as it is today,” April Rinne said, “it may never again be this slow.”

Whoa.

Much of that swirl, of course, is about the impact of AI on the workforce, how it will shape how work gets done and what work needs to get done. Everyone I spoke to about technology came back to risks, trust, and impact on people. So, it makes sense that one TA leader said to me “this is exactly the reason why we must be advocating for the policies and practices that we believe are best for people.”

We talent leaders have a great responsibility — and a great opportunity.

We get to write the new workplace playbooks, and we get to chart the new map of the world of work, one that views talent holistically, emphasizes skills-based hiring and internal mobility, and blends technology and talent to improve the way we work.

Al Dea is a LinkedIn Top Voice and a veteran talent and leadership development consultant. He helps organizations build strategies for developing diverse talent, and growing the next generation of leaders inside their organizations. He is also the host of The Edge of Work Podcast, which inspires leaders to create a better world of work for their people.