Oracle upgrades skills management as U.S. workforce shifts
Oracle has upgraded its skills management platform, making it industry-specific where needed and giving management and employees more control over their skills needs.
Oracle has significantly upgraded its Dynamic Skills management platform, underscoring the shift to skills-based hiring.
From Oracle's perspective, skills are changing so rapidly that employers might not know what skills their employees have or what they might need, said Yvette Cameron, senior vice president of global HCM product strategy at Oracle. Close to 50% of the skills today "are going to change in two to three years, as far as what's needed to manage the core work of jobs today," Cameron said.
But some skills will be "job-proof," according to a recent National Library of Medicine research paper, titled "Critical Thinking: Creating Job-Proof Skills for the Future of Work."
The paper, by Daniela Dumitru, a researcher in educational sciences at the University of Bucharest, and Diane Halpern, a professor of psychology emerita at Claremont McKenna College, argued that "relying on AI systems can lead to errors and misjudgments, emphasizing the need for human oversight."
Critical thinking a top skill
AI oversight underscores "the importance of critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, ethics, and other human attributes that machines cannot replicate with the same standards and agility," the paper's authors wrote.
To that point, in August this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began quantifying skills data into its employment projections. For instance, using a scale of 1 to 5, BLS rated the criticality of 17 skills needed for occupations it tracks. Some skills include being adaptable, detail-oriented or mechanical, or emphasized writing and reading, creativity and innovation, customer service or leadership.
The importance of critical and analytical thinking, for instance, was rated in each of the government's occupational categories. Here, BLS determined that chief executives and software developers have a similar need for a high level of critical thinking, rated at 4.1. At the bottom of the list are models, another occupation category, at 1.9. HR managers needed a leadership skill ranking of 4.2, not far removed from chief executives at 4.5.
[Close to 50% of the skills today] are going to change in two to three years, as far as what's needed to manage the core work of jobs today.
Yvette CameronSenior vice president of global HCM product strategy, Oracle
By only assessing 17 skills, the U.S. "will not forecast anything of too much value," said Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research.
Oracle's skills management platform has been out for several years. Still, this upgrade added AI-enabled data to help automate analysis of enterprise skills needs coupled with third-party labor market data. It has also refined its skills library, which the vendor said has thousands of skills tailored to specific industries.
The AI will create "a library of skills and associations for the customer to use that will be leveraged by all those processes across the organization," Cameron said. Those skills will be associated with employee learning and career paths, she said.
Mueller said skills are a focus for all HCM vendors, but Oracle has gone further by integrating skills across HR functions. "When people see that their skills make a difference for their career, they will be more motivated to keep them fresh and maintained," he said.
Patrick Thibodeau is an editor at large for TechTarget Editorial who covers HCM and ERP technologies. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.
