Redesigning work for a new world

1. Redesigning
work for a
new world
2024 HR Predictions

2. Redesigning work for a new world
Navigating the new world
of work
As technology and the world of
work continue to change at a
rapid pace, it has never been
more important for HR leaders to
stay abreast of the latest trends
and understand what they mean
for their organisations. The rise
of skills-based job architectures,
talent marketplaces and just-
in-time talent intelligence are
just a few examples of how
the HR industry is evolving. By
understanding what is coming,
you can position your organisation
to be agile in meeting new
challenges, streamline processes
and prepare your people to be
both eager and equipped
for success.
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To help continue strengthening
your talent management
programmes in 2024 and beyond,
we spoke with industry experts,
clients and Cornerstone thought
leaders about the trends they see
evolving work and what you can
do to evolve with them.
2023 was an eventful year
for talent management and
HR in general.
Consider just a few of
these developments:
• AI and its powerful implications
for how we conceive, plan,
and execute work — not
to mention its potential to
personalise training
• Maturing hybrid work practices,
especially those that enable
meaningful collaboration
• Hiring based on skills rather
than ticking boxes for pre-
defined roles
• A continued reduction in
investments for diversity,
equity, inclusion, and belonging
(DEIB) teams and initiatives
• Agile talent management
models that help to ensure
top talent is available to
meet current and long-term
business challenges

4. Redesigning work for a new world
We identified some of these
dynamics in our first Talent
Health Index, which defines
the essential components of a
complete talent programme
and explains how to address the
most pressing talent challenges
organisations face in the
marketplace. For the index, of
which we surveyed more than
700 talent leaders and more than
1,400 employees across North
America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
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According to our Talent
Health Index for 2023
of surveyed employees don’t
believe they have what they
need to develop their skills
41%
of organisations aren’t yet using
AI technology to optimise their
talent programmes
Over
60%
of employees are on the lookout
for more career guidance
59%
Well-managed AI is no more
biased than the data that
feeds it in the first place,
which comes from the
humans who’ve worked on it.
So, let’s stop operating in fear
and seize the opportunity to
minimise that bias. Let’s talk
about how we can make sure
that we all understand what
we’re training our AI to do, that
we all understand what tools
we can use that are risk-free,
and that we have a quality
control process afterwards.”
Meredith Wellard
VP of Group Talent Acquisition
Learning and Growth
DHL Group

5. Redesigning work for a new world
A talent programme has many
dimensions that contribute to its
overall health. Because sweeping
predictions about HR aren’t
helpful or actionable when looking
to the future, we’ve organised
this report to reflect the same
seven dimensions we chose for
our Talent Health Index:
Culture & Technology
1
Skills Strategy
2
Learning
& Development
3
Content Strategy
4
Talent Reporting,
Data & Analytics
7
Talent Mobility
6
Performance
Management
5
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I can see talent strategy evolving because
of AI in two ways. One: I think it’s going to
be easier to map skills and map them to
content. Two: You can do role-playing with
AI to assist people in their learning. I think
the ability to make that more available to
more people is really going to change the
landscape.”
Chad Otto
Director of Global Learning
Learning Technologies and
Content Development
Encore

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The world of work today is almost unrecognisable from what
it was a few years ago. Employees now want to be in control
of their individual career paths. The 9 to 5 is fading and new
ideas like fractional talent are emerging. We are navigating
more legislation and compliance than ever before. The skills
confidence gap continues to widen. And, of course, AI promises
to accelerate it all beyond our imagination.
Learning has the power to shape this transformation. But
for organisations to truly thrive in 2024 and beyond, learning
must be personalised and accessible, and technology must be
responsible, intuitive and intelligent. Most importantly, learning
strategies must keep pace with the changing needs of the
workforce. Only then will you witness the power of a truly holistic
learning and talent experience.”
Himanshu Palsule
Chief Executive Officer
Cornerstone

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Culture & Technology
Mature organisations have
implemented a wide range of
cutting-edge HR and talent
technologies that are driving
their businesses forward. In these
organisations, people see learning
and knowledge sharing as a
strategic differentiator.
The right information at the right
time for the right needs will be
a focus for 2024. Organisations
have always needed to leverage
HR and talent technology to build
a positive workplace culture
and successfully meet changing
demands. In 2024, leaders will also
need to use HR technology for
just-in-time learning. This is true
for learners and employees, but
it’s also true for HR professionals
responsible for planning and
executing strategies to develop
and retain their people.
Karthik Suri, Cornerstone’s Chief
Product Officer, describes the
impact of just-in-time learning
as the intersection of “you”
(the organisation) and “me”
(the employees, individual
contributors and managers) to
create the combined power of
a “we” where each employee has
what they need for their own
growth and development and
can meet the best interests of
the organisation to win together.
AI-powered personalisation
will be key to streamlining the
flow of talent processes and
providing development at the
point of need. Since today’s
workforce has several different
generations of workers, everyone
develops differently and has
different expectations for growth.
Organisations need to build a
culture that supports this diversity.
Another strong trend is
open architecture. An open
architecture is based on open
standards and protocols, making
it easy to integrate with other
systems, including those from
different vendors. It’s modular,
flexible and interoperable, giving
HR leaders the option of best-
of-breed capabilities. Now more
than ever, it’s important that HR
technology can connect and
integrate with other business
systems. This open-architecture
approach saves time and
resources and ensures that data
works together to provide insights
into your business as a whole.
It’s not just about getting data;
it’s about using it to move your
organisation and people forward
in a connected way.
Talent strategies
need to be in tune with
the rest of the world.
Everything is faster,
everything is more
organic, and the way
we deliver learning
and development
opportunities to the
workforce needs to
match that pace. That’s
why the use of AI and a
focus on skills to generate
content and consume
it, in the flow of work, is
where organisations need
to go.”
Josh Silva
Manager
Educe
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Skills Strategy
Mature organisations can identify
skills across their workforce and
proactively address skills gaps
by transforming the organisation
into a skills marketplace for
workforce planning.
Skills as currency in the
management of human capital
will continue to see increased
investment and buy-in. The
demand is clearly there, with 65%
of employees surveyed in our
2023 Talent Health Index wanting
additional skills content.
Hiring for skills will become a
primary input into strategic
workforce planning, accompanied
by a continued shift away from
hiring for experience alone. HR
leaders with this skills-based lens
will use development and hiring to
align with the notion of have, want
and need — what skills do I have and
what skills do I want to create the
organisational outcomes I need?
Skills ontologies are related to
skills hiring because organisations
can use them to make hiring more
practical and powerful by creating
a common skills language across
the organisation.
We know that an internal-first
mobility mindset is a best practice
and an imperative. By prioritising
training, upskilling and reskilling
initiatives in 2024 and beyond,
the collective self-improvement
of employees becomes a shared
benefit for the entire organisation. I
see competency-based succession
planning becoming the precursor to
strategic workforce planning. Going
forward, it’s imperative for HR leaders
to embrace skills themselves as a
common language to democratise
development and execute effective
workforce planning.”
Mike Bollinger
GVP, Strategic Initiatives, Cornerstone
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Skills ontologies: Putting skills into context
An ontology is a set of
concepts and categories
in a subject area or
domain, showing both
their properties and the
relationships between
them. Unlike a skills
database, a skills ontology
creates a rich context for
how skills relate to each
other within and across
very different subject
areas. For example, an
ontology can show how
specific sales skills relate to
marketing, administration
or project management
skills, whereas a database
or taxonomy is limited
to showing how the
same skills relate only
within sales.

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Learning & Development
Mature organisations have
implemented more than
just a robust and formalised
learning programme. They are
transforming themselves into
proactive skills marketplaces that
empower their employees to not
only build the skills they need for
their own journeys but also help
their organisations identify the
skills they need now and in the
future to develop their people and
improve workforce agility.
By 2024, people will be using AI to
a greater extent to match existing
skills to content, to improve
the design of instruction and to
support the creation of learning
and development tools such as
virtual coaching. All of this will
significantly improve efficiency.
Intentional AI will also become
more important, delivering
dynamic, personalised
experiences at moments that
matter. Through customised
learning paths filled with bite-
sized training, organisations
will use AI to make it easier for
employees to train efficiently
and effectively.
It’s exciting to see the AI
pendulum swing for L&D leaders
away from fear and towards
highlighting all sorts of new
possibilities - how quickly they
can create new content, how
easily they can get better
insights from learning analytics,
even how efficiently AI can
help them do their own jobs in
terms of new workflows and
processes. I think this journey
from a state of conscious
incompetence about AI to
conscious competence about its
value is only going to continue.”
Marc Ramos
Chief Learning Officer
Cornerstone
of companies are currently using
AI to its full potential in their
talent programmes. Surprisingly,
companies with more than
10,000 employees are the least
likely to use it.
Only 38%
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Content Strategy
Organisations’ content is a critical
element of their learning and
development programme. As we
move through 2024, organisations
will curate their learning content
more closely and regularly and
link it more directly to business
challenges as a solution.
User-generated content will
become more integrated into
organisations’ content strategies,
and the technologies that
support it will make it easier to
format, store and access. For
organisations at the forefront
of their industries, the ability to
create and use this content will
enable team members to develop
their skills faster and serve
customers more effectively.
Content value and impact will
become key KPIs that learning
and HR leaders will need to
measure and report back to their
organisations as the demand
for workplace learning content
continues to grow significantly. As
noted in our 2023 Talent Health
Index, nearly half of employees
don’t believe they are getting what
they need from their employer
to build the skills they need for
the future. This disconnect will
shine a spotlight on employers,
pushing them to invest in the right
technology to support learning
and development needs.
Accessible learning for people
with disabilities will become
more strategic for organisations
in terms of both recruitment
and retention. Working with
employees to create accessible
learning will require the removal of
barriers that often define existing
modalities.
More instructional designers will
turn to AI to create content quickly.
So-called co-pilot methods,
where the designer collaborates
with an AI agent or LLM-based
tool, will become more common,
just as co-pilots are becoming
more popular in skill-building
experiences themselves.
Nearly half of employees don’t
believe they have what they need
from their employer to build the
skills they will need for the future.1
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Microlearning is becoming a big focus now, so
having the AI technology, the skills library and
the competencies all built into our platform
allows employees to see where they are and
where they can move forward in their career
path. What we’re looking for in the future is a
way to validate that the knowledge from that
content has actually been delivered and that
the person is actually using that skill.”
Jason Shepherd
LMS Administrator
MedPro Group

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Performance
Management
Leaders in mature performance
management organisations will
continue to drive performance
as a strategic process to achieve
business results. HR teams are
likely to review data and identify
trends and biases, ensuring that
employees have full visibility and
transparency into performance
goals, metrics and results.
Over the course of 2024, expect
to see these five performance
management trends.
Objectives and key results (OKRs)
will become more widely used as
a framework to help organisations
manage their performance and
goals. Originally developed in the
1970s, OKRs are experiencing a
strong resurgence — replacing the
SMART goals many of us learnt
in the workplace — because they
identify key objectives at the
top of the organisation and give
teams a way to locate and align
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themselves towards achieving
these corporate goals.
The move away from annual,
manager-driven performance
reviews will continue, with
managers replacing them
with ongoing performance
conversations that take place in
a more agile way, for example on
a quarterly basis. Over the next
three to five years, employees
will increasingly drive these
reviews and, as a result, feel
more empowered to drive their
own development.
Formal rating systems and scales
will continue to be replaced
by simpler assessments of
whether or not employees have
met specific objectives. These
assessments will use open-ended
questions about performance and
even career development goals.
Using AI for performance
statements and reviews will
streamline the process of creating
these documents while making
them more accurate. AI products
are now available to collect and
analyse data such as employee
feedback, self-assessments and
work productivity metrics. Expect
to see more of these products in the
coming year.
Linking performance conversations
to skills will increase the
engagement of both employees and
managers. Both will be more willing
to discuss how they’re developing
skills and what learning resources
employees can use to strengthen
the skills they’re targeting.

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As organisations become more comfortable with
democratising decisions, employees will initiate
conversations about performance management.
As that happens, I think performance management
will start to evolve into what’s called performance
development. So instead of these performance
conversations always being about what people
have done or produced today or this year, it will be
more about how the work is helping them grow and
develop professionally. And, of course, how does that
development add value to the organisation?”
Cheryl Paxton-Hughes
Director of Strategy Services
TLAS
Cornerstone

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Talent Mobility
Many organisations are taking
a fresh look at their employee
value propositions to reset and
redefine what employees get out
of being with the organisation
and how they can leverage their
skills across departments and
even business units. That’s one
reason why internal recruiting will
become more proactive in 2024,
as organisations give employees
more transparent insight into
open positions, projects and gigs,
as well as the job requirements
and skills needed to move around
the organisation.
There will be a greater focus on
connecting employees with the
business-critical skills they are
passionate about. These are the
skills that leaders know they need
to create adaptive businesses
and agile organisations that
attract new employees and retain
existing ones.
Initiatives to encourage greater
project variety for employees will
be a natural outgrowth of greater
skills as organisations offer
employees more opportunities
to take on internal stretch projects,
gigs and different roles within
the organisation.
Supporting internal talent
mobility will be a strong
push. It will be supported by
organisational leaders who
discourage talent hoarding and
celebrate internal talent mobility
and collaboration. This will require
building the capacity of leaders
to understand the value that
developing and sharing talent
brings to the organisation as a
whole. Leaders rightly want to
keep the best people in their
teams, but recognising that there
are opportunities for people to
grow beyond their teams, and
that talent from other teams can
ease their team’s succession
anxiety, can open their eyes and
encourage greater talent mobility.
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15. Redesigning work for a new world
According to the Cornerstone
2023 Global Talent Mobility Study,
talent mobility is
important because:
now want to know about
career opportunities within
their organisation
prefer to use self-service
technology to explore
career opportunities
employees prefer to learn new
skills is through experience
73%
of employees
80%
of employees
The
# 1 way
Companies will focus more
on connecting the skills that
employees are passionate about
with the mission of creating
adaptive, agile organisations.
New initiatives will give employees
more opportunities to take on
internal stretch projects and
collaborate across departments
and roles. Of course, one of
the challenges of encouraging
internal talent mobility is that
it may require a bit of cultural
change, creating a culture of
shared talent rather than one
more accustomed to hoarding
talent. But celebrating internal
talent mobility will be key for both
the employee and the leader, as
it lands the value of growth for
employees while supporting the
success of the organisation.”
Brianna Foulds
VP of People Experience
Cornerstone
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Talent Reporting,
Data & Analytics
Cornerstone’s 2023 Talent
Health Index found that mature
organisations use centralised
reporting, while managers have
access to self-service reports.
Organisations that rely on visual
dashboards are more likely to
have a dedicated HR analytics
team. These organisations
use data to inform people and
business strategy and are
exploring predictive analytics to
anticipate future business needs.
There are three main ways HR
leaders can rise to this level in
their organisations.
Specific new functionality will
take the workload off HR.
This means more automation,
alerts, verification tools, flexible
reporting, and linked records.
More proactive data approaches
will emerge to help companies
manage employee information,
employee wellness and mobile-
enabled HR functions to
better communicate with and
personalise information sent
to employees.
Customised outcome dashboards
will also become more popular.
Because every company and CEO
is different, HR organisations will
adopt dashboards that put data
into context and prioritise a focus
on the outcomes that matter
to them, correlating actions and
the decisions behind them with
actual results.
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17. Redesigning work for a new world
HR has a long history of collecting
vast amounts of employee data that
goes unused. This perception has
only increased with the proliferation
of HR systems and new AI capabilities.
However, as soon as organisations use
this data to influence work-related
issues, we can see the power of HR
and talent analytics. Once we build
transformative data governance,
data analysis and storytelling
capabilities, HR and talent analytics
can lead to trusted executive-level
reporting. When this reporting helps
our business leaders answer critical
workforce and operational questions,
we begin to inform business strategy
and drive business results. There
is no quick fix for building these
capabilities within an organisation,
but the investment has real value. In
Sapient Insights Group’s 26th Annual
HR Systems Survey, strategic HR
functions were twice as likely to use
data from HR and talent systems
to inform business strategy, and
those same organisations achieved
an average of 8% higher business
outcomes in areas such as profitability,
innovation and market share.
Every time an organisation asks an
employee to take a test, complete
an assessment, provide data or
otherwise share information, it
should have a clear plan for how that
information will be used and, more
importantly, how that use will benefit
the organisation and the employee.
With the advent of AI technology, it is
more important than ever to develop
strong data governance models that
include an ethical code of conduct for
the use of all employee data. Solving
tomorrow’s very real skills shortage
will require solid data, and all eyes will
be on HR and talent leaders to answer
the call. Will you be ready?”
Stacey Harris
Chief Research Officer
& Managing Partner
Sapient Insights Group
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18. Recap
While no set of predictions can
offer a surefire roadmap to guide
your talent management strategy
for the coming year, you should
consider acting on the themes
we have identified:
AI will power more personalised
learning
Companies will prioritise skills
over experience
Companies will transform into
skills marketplaces
Content will be more directly
linked to business challenges
Ongoing conversations will
replace annual reviews
Talent sharing will increase
Real-time analytics will improve
outcomes
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Always looking forward
Top HR predictions for 2024
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In 2024, the number one call to action for organisations is
clear: invest in your people. Our industry is experiencing
a seismic shift in employee demand for internal growth
opportunities, facing persistent skills gaps and shortages,
and navigating a new world where technologies like AI and
machine learning are transforming the way people learn and
work. Each of these key components requires a strategic
shift in perspective. One where our people are in the driver’s
seat of their careers, and our leaders believe that embracing
intuitive technology as a co-pilot — not a replacement
— is paramount to creating a future where technology
is a supportive means of enhancing the capabilities of
people and the organisations that support them. This is an
incredible moment for organisations across industries to
invest in the power of learning and explore more innovative
ways to empower their people to grow.”
Bernd Leger
Chief Marketing Officer
Cornerstone

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Cornerstone People Research Lab, 2023 Talent Health Index, 2023
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20. About Cornerstone
Cornerstone empowers the future-ready
workforce with its leading AI-powered talent
experience platform, designed to unite
technology, data and content to inspire a work
environment of growth, agility and success
at scale. With Cornerstone, organisations
modernise their learning and development
experiences, deliver the most relevant content
from anywhere, accelerate talent and career
mobility, and establish skills as the universal
language of growth and success across the
business. Cornerstone serves more than 7,000
clients and more than 125 million users in 180
countries and 50 languages.
©Cornerstone 2024
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