On May 21, Alixio Group brought together two of its skills transformation experts for a webinar : Audrey Klieber , Director of Employment and Skills, and Carole Menguy , Expert in Artificial Intelligence and Skills-Based Organization (SBO).
Their starting point is unambiguous:
artificial intelligence doesn’t just eliminate jobs . It transforms professions, hybridizes skills, and challenges work organization methods at a speed that few companies anticipated!
AI and Strategic Workforce Planning: A Permanent Transformation of Jobs
What stands out first is the scale of the change. We are no longer talking about one-off transformation programmes limited to a particular sector or country.
AI is affecting every job function – from support services and sales to operations and production – across all countries, simultaneously.
Alongside this technological revolution comes unprecedented demographic pressure. In France alone, around one million people are expected to retire by 2030.
These two trends – automation and mass retirements – are converging, and organisations that have not yet started preparing for these changes are already falling behind.
Why strategic workforce planning is becoming a major strategic priority again
In this context, Strategic Workforce Planning is regaining strategic importance. It is no longer simply another social dialogue requirement, but a fundamental approach to:
- anticipate changes in jobs and skills requirements,
- adapt organisational structures and career pathways,
- engage employees in transitions that will be neither linear nor temporary.
“Do not underestimate the time required to bring your entire organisation on board. Data needs to be collected and structured, tools need to be put in place, and a clear approach needs to be established.
The real challenge is anticipation: ensuring that the right people, with the right skills, are in the right place when they are needed, and having a clear view of when those needs will arise.”
Audrey Klieber
Skills-based organisation: putting skills at the heart of strategic workforce planning
From jobs to skills: a new HR paradigm
This is precisely where the concept of a Skills-Based Organisation (SBO) comes into play. The principle sounds simple, but implementing it is far from straightforward: skills, rather than job titles, become the foundation of all HR processes.
In practice, this means that:
- recruitment is based on the skills genuinely required for success,
- internal mobility is built around transferable skills,
- learning and development efforts focus on the most critical skills to be developed,
- workforce planning becomes a detailed exercise in managing existing and future skills capabilities.
In a skills-based organisation, everything is organised around what employees can do today and what the business will need them to do tomorrow.
Anticipating critical skills in the age of AI and deskilling
With AI, the challenge is no longer simply quantitative – how many people may need to change roles? It is increasingly qualitative:
- Which skills will be needed in the future?
- Where in the organisation will they be needed?
- When will they be needed?
Equally important is the question of which skills may gradually disappear as certain tasks become automated.
Carole Menguy highlights this through the concept of deskilling. She compares the widespread adoption of AI to the arrival of GPS technology:
“The widespread adoption of AI can be compared to the arrival of GPS. We all know what it did to our sense of direction. For some professions, the risk is very real and could ultimately affect business continuity.”
For organisations, it is therefore becoming increasingly strategic to map skills, identify those that are critical to business continuity, and develop pathways to maintain, renew or redeploy them over time.
Skills frameworks and AI: towards dynamic, operational models
Accelerating skills framework development with AI
Historically, building a skills framework was a lengthy and resource-intensive undertaking. In some cases, it could take up to two years to complete, with the risk that it would already be outdated by the time it was published.
New AI-powered tools are changing this reality. They now make it possible to develop dynamic, operational models in just a few months.
Carole Menguy shares a practical example:
“We recently completed a project involving 600 job roles in just four months. We start with the company’s actual job postings, build from managers’ needs, and create something that remains relevant and useful over time.”
Rather than relying on a static framework, organisations can now implement a living system that is continuously updated based on business requirements, organisational changes and labour market data.
Winning executive buy-in: focus on ROI, not skills frameworks
One key question remains: how do you secure the support of a leadership team that may be hesitant about Strategic Workforce Planning, Skills-Based Organisations and AI?
The advice is clear:
“Don’t talk about skills frameworks. Talk about the pain points keeping the executive team awake at night. Reducing reliance on external contractors, shortening time-to-fill, improving internal talent mobility – these are the business outcomes that matter. The value of the initiative should be measured in terms of ROI.”
To gain executive buy-in, the conversation needs to move beyond HR terminology and focus on tangible business benefits. Demonstrating how these approaches can improve workforce agility, reduce costs and strengthen organisational resilience is far more likely to secure leadership support than discussing frameworks and methodologies alone.
AI, strategic workforce planning and skills-based organisations: why culture change comes first
Evolving the roles of employees, managers and HR
One message came through particularly strongly during the webinar discussions: the biggest challenge is neither technological nor financial. It is cultural.
Moving from a job-based model to a skills-based model means:
- asking employees to embrace reskilling, career transitions or significant changes to their roles,
- asking managers to support the internal mobility of their top performers and welcome employees transitioning into new positions,
- asking HR teams to evolve their role from process administrators to career and workforce transformation partners.
Implementing Strategic Workforce Planning and a Skills-Based Organisation in the age of AI therefore requires a deep and sustained change management effort across every level of the organisation.
Fostering ongoing dialogue about the future of work
This transformation also requires continuous and meaningful dialogue with employees and their representatives.
Strategic Workforce Planning can no longer be treated as an annual communication exercise. It must become a living process that:
- provides visibility across the organisation on how jobs and skills are evolving,
- enables different scenarios and strategic choices to be shared and discussed openly,
- adapts over time based on feedback from the business and the workforce.
The organisations making real progress in this area – still relatively few today – are not those that waited until they had all the answers. They are the ones that accepted the need to work with scenarios, recognised that some assumptions would prove right and others wrong, and involved their people in the conversation rather than presenting them with predetermined conclusions.
To learn more
AI, strategic workforce planning and skills-based organisations are no longer optional considerations. They are becoming essential to an organisation’s ability to:
- anticipate changes in jobs and skills requirements,
- safeguard critical capabilities,
- provide clear and meaningful career pathways,
- maintain performance in an environment of continuous transformation.
Organisations that act now – by strengthening their Strategic Workforce Planning approach, placing skills at the centre of decision-making, and leveraging AI as an accelerator – will be better positioned to navigate the challenges ahead.
To access the webinar replay and explore what these developments could mean for your organisation, please get in touch.
