Show Notes
As business priorities shift, skills shortages intensify and technology changes the nature of work, organisations need a clearer view of the skills and capabilities they have — and how to deploy them where they can create the greatest impact. But how can learning professionals support the building of new capability at pace and scale, when many organisations still struggle to see what skills exist in the workforce, to what level of expertise, or to move that capability to where it's needed most?
Join Nigel Cassidy and this month's guests – Shona Marshall, Founder of The ASM Difference; Laurell Hector, Managing Director at McManus HRD; and Andrew Jacobs, Learning Strategist and Founder of Llarn Learning – as they explore L&D's role in supporting the shift to becoming a skills-based organisation.
In this episode, our panel explores: Why L&D is critical to enabling skills-based transformation, by responding to business priorities and driving the performance they require How skills intelligence, taxonomies and internal marketplaces can inform smarter, workforce planning, internal mobility and learning investment. What must change in how learning is designed and delivered – moving away from linear, one-off training programmes towards continuous, skills-led development that keeps pace with changing skills landscape.
---
Your next listen: CIPD Podcast 231: The journey to a skills-based organisation CIPD Podcast 207: HR’s next top operating model HR People Pod – Episode 48: Leadership reflections | Skills visibility | Workload creep
More from this episode: Guide – Skills matching: Using and deploying people’s skills effectively in the workplace Analysis – How L&D can create value: Focussing on skills development Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from CIPD
What opportunities does building commercial acumen as a skillset bring for the profession? Does quality of management matter more than any productivity metric? And what does it take for organisations to be bold about AI, without being reckless?
AI governance, the framework that ensures AI is deployed ethically, transparently and with proper accountability, is no longer a secondary concern. It is foundational to organisational stability and trust. Yet governance has not kept pace with implementation, exposing organisations to real business risks: loss of trust, reputational damage or litigation. But good AI governance doesn’t slow innovation. It establishes the foundations that make innovation possible.
The CIPD’s latest Resourcing and talent planning 2026 report, supported by Omni, reveals that an increasing number of organisations are extending their workforce planning timeframes from the short to the medium term. Overall, 24% take a short-term approach (up to six months), down from 31% in 2024. However just a fraction of organisations (16%) are planning more than two years into the future.
What does it really mean for an organisation to know its culture, and is it possible to borrow the best bits of someone else’s? Who should hold responsibility for shaping culture when roles and structures are shifting so fast? And as AI transforms the workplace, can it be a genuine ally in culture change rather than a threat to it?
According to UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are approximately 548,400 refugees in the UK – yet many highly qualified, experienced people remain locked out of meaningful work. Not by ability, but by structural barriers: recruitment processes that filter out valuable candidates, unrecognised or unfamiliar qualifications, and in many cases, a basic misconception among employers about whether refugees can legally be employed at all.