Whether you are feverishly updating your fantasy football lineups ahead of Sundays, are locked into each and every pitch of playoff baseball, or are just excited for the return of your favorite winter sports season, the sports world has a way of capturing our attention and offering a front-row seat to witnessing the best of the best compete in real-time. Sports provides a platform for celebrating achievement in the most dynamic and challenging environments, inspiring us to witness the thrills of victory, the pains of defeat, and the results of a lifetime commitment to training and hard work to develop specialized skills and talents.
For businesses there are also moments of achievement that result from hard work and honing new skills – though they may not end with lifting a trophy above your head in front of thousands of fans. These are personal and professional victories that come from digging in and building out a skill that takes an equal amount of dedication and drive. But going in on your own can only take you so far — we all need a coach and a team to help get us across the finish line.
The need for new skills is accelerating faster than ever – and the gap between current and future skills is turning into a chasm. In this environment, HR practitioners navigating the changing workforce is similar to how trainers work with athletes to compete in their sport. Agility might look different for an HR team compared to an NFL team, but the need to move quickly and seamlessly is still there.
Technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace, combined with unpredictable market dynamics. The result is a growing inability to maintain growth and productivity amidst the pace of change – a workforce readiness gap. To adapt and close the gap, organizations need a holistic and comprehensive workforce agility strategy that recognizes that when people are at their best, organizations are at their best. Taking a page out of the sports playbook can help HR leaders adapt to an agile mindset and close the workforce readiness gap within their organizations.
Converting on Fourth Down: Create a Culture of Continuous Learning
Any football fan knows the stress of having their team “go for it” on fourth down. For the players on the field though, they have trained for facing this adversity, prepared for each scenario, and are ready to adapt and execute their gameplan to keep the drive alive. The same mindset is needed in talent management – business priorities are shifting, and the speed of technological change isn’t slowing down. To close the workforce readiness gap, we need to prioritize training employees to not just live in this constant state of change but to thrive in it.
The most elite athletes know that victory thrives in adversity – just ask three-time ITU Paratriathlon World Champion and four-time Paralympian, Melissa Stockwell. In 2004, during a deployment in Iraq, Melissa became the first American woman soldier to lose a limb in active combat when a roadside bomb struck her Humvee. Her bravery earned her a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Despite this adversity, Melissa remained unbroken and went on to compete in multiple Paralympic triathlon competitions. Melissa’s grit and determination are a lesson in how leading with adaptability can help you compete through all of life’s moments.
Developing a mindset of adaptability though isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach – HR teams must know their players and give them the tools and encouragement they need to foster those skills. Personalized learning will make employees more confident in their roles and will allow them to continually build on their current skills and learn new skills they may need for the future. Learning programs specific to each employee will help them supercharge their career growth, making them more invested in upskilling.
The Pick and Roll: Establish Team Chemistry That Supports Learning
One of basketball’s most recognizable plays, the pick and roll is all about teamwork to create opportunities for success. You set a screen so your teammate can get open and hopefully score a basket. In the workforce, this similar approach to teamwork is key to closing the workforce readiness gap. The play requires communication, knowledge sharing, and an understanding of where your teammates need to go – employees, their peers, and their managers need the same level of fluid communication and information sharing to understand how their positions work together to feed an organization’s common goal.
Sloane Stephens, a rising tennis talent who competed at the U.S. Open this summer, understands that teamwork, even in a singular sport like tennis, is what it takes to win. Sloane may have had a successful singles tennis career, but she didn’t get there on her own. Support and guidance from coaches, family, friends, and even rivals have all inspired her to learn, grow, and succeed. As a lifelong learner focused on continuous growth and development, Sloane knows that a winning mindset is best supported by the team you surround yourself with.
Teams work best when the skills they have complement and amplify one another – but in the business world, a visibility gap can exist that makes it challenging to see where employee skill sets lie and how they align with the business direction. As HR leaders work to close the workforce readiness gap, they need to communicate and share knowledge across teams, but a visibility gap can cripple organizations’ growth potential to win.
Visibility is a two-way street for businesses. Employees want visibility into their career path and growth opportunities. Employers want to easily examine the proficiency and skills gaps their workforce holds and how those skills align with business objectives. Technologies like AI can provide this visibility and overcome gaps plaguing an organization’s business strategy by providing data and context to the skills conversation.
Total Football: Strategic Upskilling Across an Organization
Total Football revolutionized the global sport of soccer, or football, for those outside of the United States. This innovative approach to soccer strategy shifted players away from rigid positions and toward a style built on fluidity and adaptability. This is the paradigm shift we need to see happening in the business world to truly close the workforce readiness gap.
Within the business world – there is a lot of focus on developing the “it” skill of the moment. For years it was data analysis, now it’s AI. But, for organizations to truly unleash their potential they need to focus on developing the full person, so they can move fluidly in an organization and not stay rigid in a singular position. This means focusing on the technical skills alongside the human and functional skills.
This approach is supported by data too – Cornerstone’s recent 2024 Global State of the Skills Economy report found that human skills are in demand 2.4 times more than digital skills. Similarly, despite a 473% surge in GenAI-related job postings since 2019, Cornerstone found that the skill set employers are looking for to support these roles requires an even mix of technical, functional, and human skills.
These insights highlight what many of us have already known – you can’t over-index on training one department on a skill set, it must be an organization-wide initiative. Just ask defending World Super League champions Chelsea FC Women, the dominant club of England’s premiere women’s soccer league. While there can only be eleven Chelsea players in the field of play at any one time, an organization of over 3,000 Blues are there for the assist. Every save Hannah Hampton makes, and goal Lauren James scores was put into motion by each person in the Chelsea FC organization. Chelsea FC Women prioritize training for the players on the field and for their back-office folks who bring the beautiful game to life.
The workforce readiness gap is having a significant impact on revenue, performance, and employee engagement, but despite the challenges organizations face, a dedication to skills development can help overcome that adversity and result in a winning business strategy. There are a lot of lessons we can derive from the world of sports, but the commitment to skill development at every level is foundational for winning teams on and off the field.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernd Leger
Chief Marketing Officer at Cornerstone
Bernd Leger is the Chief Marketing Officer at Cornerstone, where he leads all areas of the company’s global marketing function, including global field and digital marketing, product marketing and brand and customer advocacy. With more than 25 years of leadership experience in the global technology industry, Bernd has a proven track record in developing and executing go-to-market plans that have resulted in double- and triple-digit revenue growth across a variety of SaaS organizations.
