SHRM's Skills-First Center of Excellence Launching in 2025

The cutting-edge Skills-First Center of Excellence (SFCOE) from SHRM and the SHRM Foundation will show employers how to prioritize job candidates’ skills, talents, aptitudes and competencies. The aim is to lessen an over-reliance on factors such as college degrees that can serve as proxies for job capability and, in doing so, overlook people with the skills employers seek.

The online hub is expected to launch in early 2025. It will consist of four main components:

• An AI-based skills advisor to help employees evaluate their skills journey and provide them with specific tools, trainings and actions to accelerate their progress.
• A library of skills-first resources for employers, consisting of case studies and tools from different providers.
• A skills-tech clearinghouse and solutions lab to help HR professionals assess the quality of different HR technology products—credentials, recruitment, and vetting technologies; human resource information systems, applicant tracking systems, and plug-ins; and various learning and professional-growth management systems.
• A skills-first credential that formally certifies HR professionals, hiring managers and C-suite executives.

“To meet the world of work of tomorrow, we need to transform our hiring and advancement practices today,” said Wendi Safstrom, SHRM Foundation president. “We commit to being a key convener and catalyst for skills-first practices, focusing on creating centralized, enterprise-level solutions that drive scale and trust. We are dedicated to supporting HR-inclusive innovation and employer-inclusive collective action to make it possible for all workers and workplaces to thrive.”

The SFCOE builds on the Foundation’s Skills-First at Work initiatives. In the next decade, the Foundation aims to transform hiring and advancement practices for 100,000 employers and 500,000 HR professionals, managers, and executives.

“The momentum of skills-based hiring is encouraging, but there is a risk it does not go far enough,” said Ryan Stowers, executive director at the Charles Koch Foundation, which is partnering with SHRM and the SHRM Foundation on the SFCOE. “Employers need tools that are designed to support culture change.”

According to SHRM Foundation research, 90 percent of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, but only 15 percent actively implement it, showing a significant implementation gap. The research identified three core barriers hindering the widespread adoption of skills-first strategies:

1. Uncertainties about whether the effort will be successful.
2. Lack of trust and knowledge among HR professionals and executives.
3. The absence of standard operating procedures in the field.

“This Center of Excellence is an exciting example of how SHRM helps employers empower their workers to pursue meaningful careers,” Stowers said in a press release. “By rethinking talent strategies to look at the full set of capabilities that people bring, companies can experience tremendous mutual benefit.” 

In addition to the Charles Koch Foundation, the SFCOE is being established in partnership with Walmart and a wide range of leading collaborators, including the Workday Foundation. Other collaborators are anticipated to include Opportunity@Work, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Business Roundtable, Jobs for the Future, Education Design Lab, SkillsFWD, the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), Grads of Life and SHRMLabs, according to SHRM and the Foundation.