{"id":62796,"date":"2024-09-27T16:44:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T16:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explore.local\/2024\/09\/27\/we-refuse-to-act-our-age-how-ericsson-puts-skills-to-work\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T20:45:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T20:45:56","slug":"we-refuse-to-act-our-age-how-ericsson-puts-skills-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/degreed.com\/experience\/de\/blog\/we-refuse-to-act-our-age-how-ericsson-puts-skills-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Refuse to Act Our Age\u2019: How Ericsson Puts Skills to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ericsson learning and business leaders have been laser focused in recent years\u2014on new ways of upskilling employees in AI and other business-critical capabilities, so they can out-learn and outperform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea? Put skills first, and make Ericsson a skills-based organization<\/a> that puts skills to work<\/em>. The strategy? Approach learning in ways that are no longer programmatic but instead systematic<\/em>\u2014to maximize potential, improve outcomes, and excel at adapting to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An impressive Ericsson success metric reveals the power of this path: Five years ago, the telecom giant began upskilling a relatively small group of 300 scientists to use artificial intelligence. Now, more than 30,000 of the company\u2019s 100,000-plus employees are considered very proficient<\/em> in A<\/strong>I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Skills First: Advancing with Purpose<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next time you use your cell phone, there\u2019s an outsized chance the data you send and receive will be traveling on an Ericsson network\u2014but it wasn\u2019t always this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leader in 5G technology, the Stockholm-based company\u2019s infrastructure, software, and services span the globe. The company\u2019s origins are more humble, however, dating to its founding as a telegraph repair shop in the 1800s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u200b\u200bWe’ve been reskilling, reimagining, and reinventing for a very long time,\u201d said Vidya Krishnan, Chief Learning Officer and Global Head of Learning & Development. \u201cWe\u2019re 148 years old. . . We refuse to act our age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Skills First: A Journey with Two Key Goals<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The skills-first journey at Ericsson has been unfolding in two parts. In part one, Krishnan said, \u201cwe want to build skills, build future-critical skills, and we want to do that systematically company-wide, which means we have to sense what skills matter, and we have to connect skills to [business] strategy, and we have got to make sure \u2026 that we build future critical skills with speed, with scale, and with accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart two is putting skills to work. We need to be equally systematic, equally reliable, and even more inclusive than we’ve ever been about putting skills to work in high impact areas, in growth areas, by being skills-based increasingly across all of our people practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that the people we have must continually become the people we need,\u201d Krishnan said. \u201cThe companies that are going to outperform other companies will do so by out-learning them and being able to put the right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time, again and again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Readying the Foundation: Efficiencies & Infrastructure<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To put skills to work, Ericsson has been creating an environment in which skills-first strategies can thrive. The effort dates to 2019, and Degreed has been a key partner, especially helping the organization to pinpoint the skills it needs, to personalize development, and to measure change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internal skill and job architecture frameworks had become stagnant. In some cases, job profiles hadn\u2019t been updated since 2013, fueled by inefficiencies in workforce planning and skill assessment. This led to a lack of career transparency. Employees faced uncertainties about career progressions and lacked clear visibility into the skills required for future roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people wanted to think about, \u2018Well, what do I do next?\u2019, it wasn’t clear,\u201d said Peter Sheppard, Head of the Ericsson Global L&D Ecosystem, describing missteps. \u201cWe’d spend a lot of time assessing people, understanding people, and then we threw away the receipts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tactical needs overshadowed strategic workforce planning, limiting the company’s agility. Key processes weren\u2019t automated or optimized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe hadn’t updated our old competencies catalog for three or four years. We needed it to be more automated,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cDo that, and we deliver more value.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making Change<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ericsson introduced a new digital job architecture and integrated skills deep into job profiles, aligning them with a new and dynamic skill taxonomy. In doing so, leadership embraced automation whenever possible and, moreover, generated momentum for a skills-based approach to business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company moved from ad-hoc training programs to a systematic approach of identifying and developing critical skills aligned with strategic business objectives. This included defining a set of global critical skills\u2014a vital few\u2014essential for the company’s future, irrespective of job roles or functional areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New approaches to governance made room for change in the flow of work. For example, business units were empowered to enhance job profiles as needed without waiting for HR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pivotal shift came when Ericsson embraced a skills-based approach to people practices\u2014from recruitment to learning and development and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n