Struggling to decide on the technology platform for skills-based workforce transformation? The real question isn’t the platform, it’s whether your system is built for a skills-first future. For decades, workforce strategies in mid-sized enterprises have been built around jobs, roles, and rigid hierarchies, a model deeply embedded in popular legacy ERP systems like PeopleSoft. But today, that model is breaking down.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by economic uncertainty, rising inflation, and what many describe as the “Great Attrition,” organizations, have been forced to rethink how they approach talent fundamentally. The question is no longer whether employees have the right titles or degrees—but whether they have the right skills to drive business outcomes [Source: Taking a skill-based approach to building the future workforce: McKinsey & Company].
For mid-sized corporations and growing businesses, this shift is especially critical. With limited talent pools and increasing pressure to do more with less, they cannot afford to operate on outdated, role-based systems that obscure real capabilities. The limitations of legacy ERPs like PeopleSoft in enabling skills-based organizations become more pronounced in this context – where visibility into skills, agility in deployment, and speed of decision-making are essential. To remain competitive, these organizations must adopt skills-based workforce planning with Workday powered by real-time insights, enabling CHROs to move beyond static structures and toward a more dynamic, capability-driven model of growth.
The urgency for a skills-first approach is being driven by how quickly work itself is changing. According to World Economic Forum Summit Insights, skills are becoming the most reliable indicator of value creation – far more than roles, titles, or credentials. Organizations are increasingly aligning hiring, mobility, and workforce decisions around skills, not positions. The report further states that this transition is being accelerated by disruption at scale. Nearly 44% of core workforce skills are expected to change in the coming years, making static job architectures obsolete.
Hence, a well-defined skills-based workforce transformation strategy is necessary for organizations to respond by making skills visible and actionable across the enterprise. Through skills-based workforce planning with Workday, mid-sized corporations can move beyond subjective decisions and instead use skill data to guide talent deployment, career growth, and succession planning. This not only improves agility but also unlocks internal talent more effectively.
For HR leaders, the implication is clear: workforce adaptability is no longer achieved by redefining roles but by continuously understanding and activating skills.
While the move toward skills-based workforce models is clear, many mid-sized organizations and emerging businesses remain constrained by systems that were never designed to support it. Legacy HRIS systems like PeopleSoft operate primarily as a system of record, where workforce data is structured around predefined roles. This makes it difficult to track changing skills and use them for hiring, mobility, or planning. There is no native capability to dynamically map skills across the workforce, infer emerging capabilities, or align them with real-time business needs.
As a result, corporations face:
More importantly, legacy ERP systems lack the intelligence layer required to power skills-based workforce planning. Without embedded AI-driven skills intelligence in Workday, HR teams are left relying on fragmented and outdated data to make critical talent decisions.
If legacy systems like PeopleSoft make it difficult to operationalize skills, the next question becomes —what does a system built for a skills-first world actually look like?
This is where a modern ERP platform like Workday changes the equation. Instead of organizing workforce data around static roles, Workday is designed to continuously capture, interpret, and apply skills across the enterprise. It enables organizations to move from fragmented, role-based structures to a more fluid model where skills directly inform workforce decisions.
With Workday, business corporations can:
At the center of this transformation is Workday Skills Cloud, which brings AI-driven intelligence in Workday into action. It continuously analyzes workforce data to infer, map, and update skills, creating a living, evolving view of talent across the organization.
This allows organizations to:
A strong example of this in action is the Workday Skills Cloud Case Study for a multinational professional services firm. As a global organization operating across 150+ countries, the organization faced a significant challenge—skills data existed, but it was fragmented, inconsistently defined, and not embedded into core talent decisions. The objective was to move beyond simply tracking skills to making them foundational to how work is assigned, talent is developed, and workforce decisions are made.
By implementing Workday Skills Cloud, the organization was able to increase recorded skills by 90% within just one year, dramatically improving visibility into workforce capabilities. More importantly, skills were embedded directly into business processes, enabling real-time decision-making and shifting skills from passive data points to an active driver of workforce strategy. With machine learning continuously inferring and updating skills, the organization created a dynamic skills ecosystem, one that evolves with the organization and supports long-term workforce agility.
As workforce expectations continue to evolve, the shift toward skills is no longer a future ambition—it is already reshaping how organizations hire, develop, and deploy talent. For many mid-sized corporations, this shift begins with a simple realization: role-based systems can no longer keep pace with how work actually gets done.
With AI-driven skills intelligence in Workday, organizations can move beyond static roles and adopt skills-based workforce planning that is continuous, agile, and aligned with business needs. This is where E1 Consulting supports the journey—helping mid-sized business organizations transition from legacy systems to a skills-driven workforce model through its deep Workday expertise and transformation capabilities.
Want to explore more about Workday-enabled skill-based workforce transformation? Let’s connect!
Workday Skills Cloud is an AI-powered capability that identifies and updates employee skills in real time. Using AI-driven skills intelligence in Workday, it enables a skills-based workforce transformation strategy by making skills visible and actionable across hiring, development, and mobility.
In the legacy HR systems vs Workday for skills-based workforce transformation comparison, Workday enables skills-based workforce planning with real-time skill mapping and AI insights, while legacy ERP systems, such as PeopleSoft, rely on static, role-based structures.
Skills-based workforce planning aligns talent to business needs based on capabilities, improving agility, internal mobility, and decision-making through real-time skills data.
While Workday Skills Cloud is part of a premium HCM platform, it is not necessarily too costly for mid-sized enterprises. The value lies in enabling skills-based workforce planning, reducing external hiring costs, and improving internal mobility. For many organizations, the real concern is not the upfront investment—but the long-term cost of staying on legacy systems that limit skills visibility and workforce agility.