EP 141: Skills Over Job Titles - Workforce Planning in the Age of AI | AI & HR Series
Series: AI & HR Series · Host: Kerri Roberts · Run time: ~25 minutes
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Buzzsprout
📖 Read the full transcript below
Episode Summary
LinkedIn says 70% of the skills your employees use to do their jobs will change by 2030. That is not a far-off number. So why are you still planning your team around job titles and job descriptions you have not updated in years?
Most of the small and mid-sized businesses Kerri walks into either have no job descriptions at all, or they have a set everybody already knows is outdated. That is the system we are trying to run a workforce on while AI quietly pulls tasks out of every role, every month. The coordinator who used to spend half her week on scheduling and data entry is now doing work that was never written into her job description. If you plan around her title, you miss almost all of it.
In this episode, Kerri breaks down why job titles are a bad roadmap for workforce planning right now, what she sees every single time she runs a compensation data study (the outliers are almost never a pay problem, they are a title problem), and the three concrete moves a small team can make instead: inventory the skills you actually have, map those skills to where the business is going, then plan the gap by training, hiring, or redeploying.
She also draws the line on what AI can and cannot do here. AI can build the skills grid in ten minutes instead of a week of interviews. It cannot tell you who is ready to stretch, who is burning out, or who is a flight risk. The list is AI’s. The call is yours.
In This Episode
• Why the job title you were handed almost never matches the job that is actually being done, and how that shows up as a comp outlier
• The order Kerri now runs it in: job description audit first, compensation data study second (she used to do it the other way around)
• Why “job titles don’t matter to me” is a leader problem, not an employee problem
• The difference between headcount planning (someone quit, backfill the seat) and skills planning
• The three moves for a small team: inventory skills, map skills to business needs, plan the gap
• Why none of those three moves automatically means new headcount
• Why a skills gap is a growth cap, and why HR metrics are finance metrics
• What AI genuinely helps with in a skills inventory, and where human judgment has to stay
Chapter Timestamps
0:00 The 70% skills shift coming by 2030
2:23 What every compensation study exposes about job titles
4:43 Titles don’t matter to you. They matter to your people.
7:05 Headcount planning vs. skills planning
9:29 Move 1: Inventory the skills you actually have
11:49 Moves 2 and 3: Map to business needs, then plan the gap
14:14 A skills gap is a growth cap (and a finance metric)
16:34 What the data says: 39%, 59%, and the calm response
18:54 What AI can do here, and what stays human
21:09 How Kerri runs this with clients
23:30 Your action item and what’s coming next week
Resources Mentioned
• The HR Easy Button (book) - saltandlightadvisors.com/thehreasybutton - paperback, hardback, and Kindle on Amazon
• HR Foundations (course, under $400) - saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations
• All HR coursework (foundational, operating system, strategic HR) - saltandlightadvisors.com/resources
• Free Mini HR Audit (about 10 minutes, gives you a score) - saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit
• Book a conversation - saltandlightadvisors.com/contact
• Companion blog post: The Job Title On Your Org Chart Is Not The Job - saltandlightadvisors.com/blog
Episodes in the AI & HR Series
• EP 134: Is Your HR Actually Ready for AI? The 5-Question Readiness Test
• EP 135: Where to Start With AI in HR - 5 Tasks to Automate First
• EP 136: How to Write a One-Page AI Policy From Scratch
• EP 138: AI Is Taking Half of Your Managers’ Job (And That’s the Good News)
• How to Lead Your Team Through AI Fear (Technostress and FOBO)
• AI Governance for Small Business - The 4 Things You Actually Need
• Skills Over Job Titles (you’re here)
• Building AI Fluency On Your Team (coming next week)
Your Action Item
This week, write down what each person on your team can actually do. The real skills, not their job title. One page, one line per person, and be honest about the stuff that is not in their job description. Then next week, take that one pager and hold it up against where the business is trying to go in the next 18 months. The gaps will be obvious, and you will know whether you are training, hiring, or moving somebody into a different seat.
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Full Transcript
The 70% skills shift coming by 2030
By 2030, LinkedIn says that 70% of the skills that your employees use right now will change, or what needs to come to the table will change. That’s by 2030. I’m recording this coming up on fall of 2026. So this is a pretty short time frame. And so why are we continuing to plan our roles around job titles and job descriptions that we haven’t updated in years?
Most of the clients that I come in contact with either don’t have job descriptions at all or they haven’t updated them in years. They already know they’re outdated, and that’s not even taking into consideration the changes that are coming because of AI and LinkedIn’s projection that 70% of the skills your people use to do their jobs are changing. So we’re using an archaic system already. We’re already behind. So today we’re going to talk about what to do with that.
Welcome back to another episode of Don’t Waste the Chaos. I’m your host, Kerri Roberts. I’ve been doing this HR thing for over 20 years now. I did it in corporate for about 20 years, and then I went out on my own, launched my HR consulting firm, have been doing this for about three and a half years. And I am seeing some major changes, just like everyone else, in the world of HR. And I focus primarily on small to mid-sized businesses.
So right now I’ve got some early adopters. I’ve got some folks who are overusing AI and not training on it. I’ve got folks who are ignoring AI. It’s kind of all over the gamut. So you’ve caught me in the middle of a series where I’m talking about AI and how it relates to our people operations, which is essentially everything, because most of us are using people to operate our business, even though some of us, like myself, have replaced some people with AI.
I would call myself an AI enthusiast. I recognize the challenges of it, but I’m also saving about $75,000 or $80,000 a year by utilizing AI right now and replacing a couple of people on my team. And so I want to help you navigate this. Job titles specifically is what we’re getting into today. Skill gaps, job titles, job descriptions. When it comes to AI, job titles are a bad way to map your workforce planning. And if you’re doing that right now, if you’re basing it off of job titles, here’s why I would say this isn’t a great path for you to go.
What every compensation study exposes about job titles
I do compensation data studies very regularly, almost one a month for a client. And here’s how this happens. I’ll ask for all the employees’ names, their job title, when they were hired, the date of their last pay increase, their current pay rate, and their classification, whether they’re exempt or non-exempt. From that data, then I plot them on a scale of 10th percentile, 25th, mean, 75th and 90th.
Against some classification data, some compensation data, and it takes into consideration demographics, years of experience, revenue of the business, employee count, and a number of other things. Very comprehensive. This data gets pulled down from all of the major databases of HR payroll software. So it’s in real time, it’s geographically rated as well. And so the data is good.
I then plot where each person is landing in that range, the 10th to the 90th percentile. And there’s usually some outliers, right? Like some people are paid way above the range. Some people aren’t even hitting their range. And usually, I’m gonna say 9.9 times out of 10, that’s because the job title that was given to me does not match what they’re actually doing at all.
From there, I usually end up doing a job description audit, which since then I’ve kind of flip-flopped that and I do a job description audit first, and then we do a compensation data study, because we end up having to do both anyway. When I take a look at the job and all of the responsibilities, then I’m like, okay, well, this is why we’re completely off with the title. We’re either under-titling, most of the time it’s over-titling a position. And so we need to make some adjustments there. And then also we need to look at exempt and non-exempt classification and see what the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Department of Labor would have to say about that. So we’re digging into all of this.
Titles don’t matter to you. They matter to your people.
Well, if you’re using job titles right now that are out of date, or were maybe never accurate, maybe you let your employees pick their job titles. I have a lot of CEOs that are like, I don’t care about that. And I’m like, okay, well, I appreciate that you’re saying that job titles don’t matter to you, but they do matter to your employees. You know, think about how it feels when you’re an entry-level employee and somebody says, what do you do?
They like to be able to say, I’m a supervisor, I’m a team lead, I’m an individual contributor. My job title is X, Y, and Z. It helps them explain to other people what it is they’re doing. And for a long time, we went through a period where it was like, if you’re in HR, maybe your job title’s fun conductor or whatever. I could not stand that time period. I was in HR in mortgage at that time, and people could just pick whatever they wanted to for their job titles. It was horrible. It was not helpful from an HR perspective, and it might have been fun, but it was not accurate. And that bothers me.
So we’re kind of in the same place. AI is absorbing tasks at a very fast rate right now. Like I said, LinkedIn says 70% by 2030. It’s reshaping roles every few months. And if you’re planning the workforce around your current job descriptions that are out of date, the current snapshot, it’s not going to work. So the smarter move is going to be to plan around skills. This is where this is going.
I hear a lot of talk about skills gaps specifically around AI. But if you’re planning around skills, what your people can actually do, this is how we can map out how the work can actually get done inside of your business, not boxes on an org chart. We all love an org chart. I want you to have an org chart. That’s one of the things that I ask for in my HR audit. And it helps employees understand span of control and things like that, responsibilities. But we don’t start with the org chart. The org chart is the end part. The workforce planning has to survive contact with AI. And right now, if you’re basing it off of your outdated titles and job descriptions, workforce planning is not going to work in the age of AI. So let’s talk about why and how to move beyond that.
Headcount planning vs. skills planning
Let me get a little bit deeper into why job titles are a bad roadmap right now. Most workforce planning is just headcount planning. That’s what I see a lot of people doing. You’ve got 12 roles, somebody quit, you want to backfill the role. That’s generally what I see clients do. Now, that’s not what I recommend. There’s a number of things, but that worked when jobs were a stable bundle of tasks for a number of years. Especially, let’s say, in distribution or in an industrial type of role. X amount of widgets had to be produced by X amount of people, so on and so forth.
Well, in a day of knowledge workers, but even in warehousing when things are getting picked up by robotics and a number of those things, that’s just not the way it’s going to work anymore. AI is quietly pulling tasks out of every single role with regularity every single month right now. And the coordinator who used to spend half of her week on scheduling and on data entry is now doing work that was never in her job description. It’s not captured at all. So if you’re planning around her title, you miss almost all of it.
So what does skills over roles actually mean? And I’m not saying we’re not going to have job descriptions or job titles, but we’re going to start with the skills first. Skills over the role, skills over the job title. So we can figure out how to actually get product out the door or get service accomplished in your business. You’re already living it right now, but you don’t really have a name for it. Most of us don’t. This is changing very, very quick. So most people do work that isn’t in their job description right now. Very common.
Companies know the old model is cracking. And I think that’s part of the reason why people aren’t loving job descriptions right now anyway, because they recognize they have trouble keeping up with those documents. They’re not using them for anything, which is wrong. And let me just real quick say, a job description is going to help you with your job posting. It’s going to help you with your interview process. It’s going to help you with your onboarding, with your training, with your performance management, and on and on, and termination if that happens to happen too. So a good job description guides all of that for a person. And that’s not me just saying that because I’m an HR pro. That’s the reality of it. A job description really is guiding all of that. So I’m not saying that this isn’t going to work anymore. I’m saying we have to make sure that these are better.
Fewer than one in five organizations have actually reorganized around skills as of right now. But 85% of HR leaders are saying they plan to redesign how work gets organized around skills in the next three years. Let me do that again. One in five organizations have actually reorganized around skills recently. But 85% of HR leaders say that they plan to redesign the work around skills within the next three years. So you don’t have to be first, but I’d recommend that you not be last. And once you know that this needs to be done, and you surely have had this feeling, but now you’re gonna know after this episode, you can’t unsee it. We need to start working on it.
Move 1: Inventory the skills you actually have
So for a small team, it isn’t a reorganization or necessarily a new title system. It’s just three concrete moves that I want to give you today for a small team. More complexity with bigger teams, but still the bar is going to be there.
You want to inventory the skills that you already have. So the hard skills that you already have in your organization, an actual list about what each person can actually do. So usually I recommend that you look at what the business needs first. Then you look at who has what skills. In the past, so many organizations, and I see this every single day, they want to develop a role around a person. And I don’t recommend that. I want you to develop the role around the skills needed for the job. And then we want to see what person has the skills. And if a person doesn’t have the skills, do we want to put a different person in it, or do we need to do a gap analysis and get training done?
But let’s talk about inventorying the skills that people actually have first. Not what their title implies. So the receptionist who is actually running your benefits enrollment. I mean, she knows benefits enrollment. She does employee benefits enrollment. The operations guy who taught himself how to build dashboards, that’s a skill. If you have a skills inventory, that’s a skill that he has. So we want to inventory all the skills that everyone has.
Moves 2 and 3: Map to business needs, then plan the gap
And then we want to map the skills to the business needs. So we know what the business needs. And if you don’t, that’s the very first thing that you should be doing. That’s a whole, I mean, strategic planning is very, very, very important. A lot of small to mid-sized businesses aren’t doing that. It’s another conversation. We’re focusing on this aspect today. But we want to know what the business needs. Then we are going to inventory the skills that we currently have. Then we’re going to map the skills to what the business needs next. Tie those skills to where the business is going, not to where the business has been. Not to where we’re at today, knowing that we’re behind the mark. We’re going to tie that skills inventory of people to where the business is going.
And then we want to take a look at the gap. You want to plan for the gap. So we want to be training for the gap, hiring for the gap, redeploying someone into that gap. You want to notice that none of these things automatically mean new headcount. Sometimes it means the skill you need is already in the house. It’s just in the wrong box. Sometimes it means that it’s a skill that needs to be trained and we can pay someone to train them into it or give them time allocated in their day to get trained into it.
But there are gaps out there. We have to be planning for them, or we’re not going to be able to move forward. And usually what’s happening is we recognize a gap after it’s already passed. And then somebody like me gets brought in because we’ve got a performance issue. And I’m like, all right, well, what are the expectations for the role? And does the person know that they have shortcomings? When’s the last time we had a performance conversation with them about the shortcomings? And then are they capable? Do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity for it, to grow into the role? Or is there someone else better suited for the role?
If you are just flying by the seat of your pants, you don’t really reflect on any of those. But when I have the chance to have a hard conversation with you as the business owner or the leader, and I’m asking these questions, a lot of times you’re like, actually, I do see it. You just have to slow down and usually be guided by somebody like me, somebody outside of the organization who can have the conversation. And I have no emotional tie to any of your employees. So I’m able to say, hey, this person ain’t cutting it, we need to bring somebody else in here for this. Or, why are we ignoring this person over here? Is there a landmine or some reason why we’re not grooming them up for this position? So I’m able to ask the hard questions, and then we’re able to make some progress with the conversation.
So that’s what we’re doing. We’re inventorying the skills that we already have with the people. And then we’re mapping those to what the business needs are. And then we’re taking a look at the gap and we’re making plans for that gap, whether we are going to hire to fill the gap, we’re going to train to fill that gap, or we’re going to redeploy someone else that’s in a different seat into that gap to make sure that we are moving the business forward.
A skills gap is a growth cap (and a finance metric)
That’s what I’m talking about, those moves. So this is a finance issue. You know I’m gonna say this. HR metrics are finance metrics. This is a finance issue just as much as it is an HR issue. And that’s because the skill gap is not a nicety in the business. It’s the number one thing that most employers say is blocking them from growing or changing the business. I was looking at some data, it said 63% of businesses say that skills gaps is what’s blocking them from growing or changing the business. Not budget, not tech. Skills is what the data was saying.
And every skills gap has a dollar sign on it. I mean, that’s why this is a finance metric, because if we can’t get something out the door, if we can’t get another client served because of it, it is an issue. The role you can’t fill because you wrote it into this unrealistic, nobody-has-this-exact-skill-set skill set, it leaves this wake in your business that you can’t take care of.
Or if a person leaves because they felt like there was nowhere for them to grow, because we weren’t casting the vision. We didn’t really even know what the business is going to need. We didn’t do the skills gap analysis or any of that. And a person leaves because they felt like they had nowhere to grow. And the reality of it is the sky’s the limit in your business right now. We’ve got so much opportunity for people to be adopting AI and to be helping take the business to the next level, especially in a small to mid-sized business. If you can be the person who steps in and says, I’m going to figure this out, you are so very valuable. You don’t have to worry about losing your role. You are going to be the one who’s going to train everyone else and help deploy this.
HR metrics are finance metrics, and a skills gap is a growth cap. That’s the reality of it. If you’ve got a skills gap, you’ve got a growth cap in your business, and we need to tackle this.
What the data says: 39%, 59%, and the calm response
This is not about robots taking our jobs. I talked a couple of episodes ago about FOBO, the fear of becoming obsolete. I talked about techno-stress, but that’s not what this is about today. The WEF’s own number is about 39% of core skills will shift by 2030. So LinkedIn said 70% of skills overall that your employees are using today will shift by 2030. WEF is saying 39% of core skills are going to shift by 2030. That’s actually down from the 44% that they projected just two years ago when AI was really starting to pop off.
So here’s the translation on that. The change is real, but it’s manageable. And the companies who are planning for it are going to calmly eat the companies who are not planning for it.
You know, I make posts all the time on a number of my social media channels, but I made a post the other day on TikTok about how if you don’t address this in your business, then people are either going to double down on refusing to use it, they’re going to get dissenting about it, or they’re going to be using the tools and then hiding it from you. So now you don’t have standard operating procedures on how you’re actually performing work. So it’s not repeatable inside of your business. And you’re rogue when it comes to it from a risk perspective, because who knows what tools are being used and what’s being put in what tools.
So roughly 59 out of every 100 workers will need some reskilling in this decade that we’re currently in. So 59% are going to need some reskilling. And that’s because of AI, right? That’s not a threat. That’s just a to-do list that we need to work on. And it’s time to start working on it in our business.
What AI can do here, and what stays human
Now, AI can help with the skills inventory, but obviously there’s a lot that you’re going to have to do from a leadership perspective to make sure that you move this forward. AI can help with your skills inventory. It can tag the gaps. It can even suggest training. But what it can’t do is decide which of your people is ready to stretch into the next assignment.
You’re the one who has seen the performance over time. It can analyze performance review trends if you’ve been doing performance reviews on a systematic basis and your managers were trained to score them correctly. So a couple of caveats on that. But if you have that, then you can have AI take a look at that data and see who might be ready for a stretch assignment. But as a person, you’re gonna have to make the call on that.
You’re also going to know who’s burning out, whose gap is really confidence that could be coached through, or maybe it’s a personal issue that can’t be coached through. What your business is going to need 18 months from now, that’s not going to be in any data set that AI can take a look at for you. So AI is only as good as the data that we put in it and what we’re able to supply it with. So a lot of this is going to have to stay human when it comes to your decision making. AI can just help tee you up with making the decision.
Skills planning is judgment about people. And so AI can take a look at patterns of data if you put it in there. But overall, we’re going to have to make the judgment on our people. The list is AI’s, the call is yours. And that’s the same case when it comes to pretty much anything in your business. AI can tee you up with information as long as you’re asking all of the right questions. And sometimes you need to ask your AI, what questions should you be asking me so I can answer you, so I can give you a good data set and something good to think about.
How Kerri runs this with clients
But once done right, the payoff on this is really real. Companies that define work by the skills instead of rigid roles are nearly twice as likely to place talent and to retain their high performers. That’s what the data is showing right now. Twice as likely to bring in the right talent and to retain their high performers. It’s really important.
So when I’m doing this work with clients, if a client’s needing to plan their team, I certainly am not starting out with job titles. I had a client the other day that was like, what position do you think that we need? And I know he was wanting just to have me give him the name of a job title so he could start thinking about who could fill the job title. And I was like, we need to talk about the skills that are needed and the skills that are missing amongst your current team. And have we evaluated your leadership team at a high enough of a level for us to determine what the skills gap even is? And what are your growth plans? Where are you trying to go? Are you acquiring more businesses? Your current co-founder, is that person going to be retiring? Are they staying? How long? What’s succession look like?
There’s just so much more that goes into it than what job titles are we missing in our org chart for an organization of our size. I mean, I could throw some out there by looking at your org chart, but is your org chart accurate? And all of these job descriptions, are they accurate based off of the roles that people are actually playing in your business? What are the skills?
If you’re not catching it so far, hopefully you’re catching it now. It’s just not that simple. And I think people think that HR is a bunch of paper pushing, but I just have a lot of questions about your business that in general you could be asking yourself, but you don’t even know the questions to ask. And you get caught up in your business day-to-day operations and you don’t take the time to reflect and really think through what you actually need. Feels like another job. That’s because it is. That’s the job of an HR pro. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
So what I like to do is I dump every person’s actual responsibilities and the tools they’re using into AI and have it build me a skills inventory, a grid of who can do what, where you’re thin, where you’re maybe doubled up, where there’s overlapping. For 10 minutes, you can knock this out where it could take you a week’s worth of interviewing your people. You can knock that out, or at least get a really good base layer to start asking some questions.
I do the part AI can’t. I’m sitting with the leader when we decide who can grow into the skills gap, or who’s not going to cut it, who’s a flight risk. I mean, we know we’ve got some people like that in our organization. And which gap we can close by moving one person over instead of hiring a new one. AI builds the map. We read the room of your people.
Your action item and what’s coming next week
And so if you’re listening to this right now and you’re thinking, okay, I don’t know if we’re ready for all of this, but I know that we need to be, and you want to have a conversation, you can always reach out to me at saltandlightadvisors.com/contact for an initial conversation.
But before we get into AI and your business, you know I’m always going to ask about your business foundation. I personally like to start out with an HR audit every single time with every client. Matter of fact, I just had a client two weeks ago reach out and tell me that they needed me to do a certain activity with two leaders in their organization. And I said, I would love to do this work with and for you. But the first thing I’m going to do is assess what’s going on. And then I want to play a part in determining what actually needs to be done instead of being told what needs to be done.
It’s not because I’m a Virgo and I’m thick-headed. It’s just because I have some perspective that is unique. After doing this for over 20 years leading human resources across distribution and mortgage and insurance and higher education and mergers and acquisitions, I’ve been doing this for a long time in a lot of different industries. And I’ve got some perspective that you might not. Maybe we’ll land in the same spot and I will absolutely tip my hat to you on that. But we need to get started with an HR audit.
If you’re wanting to start out with my free mini HR audit, you can go to saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit. Takes you about 10 minutes, I’ll spit you out a score at the very end and it’ll tell you if you’re in a risky spot, if you need some attention, or if you’re in a solid place. And then always after that, if you want to decide to reach out to me after that, we can get more comprehensive. Let’s absolutely do it.
I’ve got a couple more things that can help you if you’re not ready to get into consulting. First and foremost, I’ve got my book, The HR Easy Button. You can pick that up on Amazon. The one that’s out so far, I’ve got three. The one that’s out so far covers the legal aspects, the foundational aspects, hiring and onboarding, things like that. So it’s a great, great place to start. And then I do have all of my coursework out at saltandlightadvisors.com/resources. That’s where you can find all my coursework, the foundational coursework, the operations system coursework, and then the strategic HR coursework. All available there.
Here’s what I want you to do this week. Write down what each person on your team can actually do. The real skills, not their job title. And then take that one pager as a skills-based plan next week.
Next week we’re gonna go straight at the skill everyone needs right now and nobody wants to pay a fortune to teach for, and that is AI fluency. I want to talk to you next week on how to build that in your team pretty dang cheaply, if not free. Okay, spoiler alert, depends on if you have a business subscription to an AI tool so far or not. But that’s what we’re gonna get into next week, so make sure you’re tuning back in.
If you don’t subscribe to my channel, please do that. If you’re getting any value or benefit from these shows at all, please make sure you’re subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, wherever you’re catching my show. And the biggest compliment you could pay me is to forward this to another person that you think this would help. I know that you work with peers. You guys complain about HR. I hear it all the time. So forward this to someone else that this might benefit.
Listen, I know that AI and HR can feel like chaos. AI and your business in general can feel like chaos, but the work is worth it. So don’t waste the chaos. Embrace it. I’ll see you next week.
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