Bold Questions, Unfiltered Answers
(Listen to the full episode on Spotify)
- What’s one thing you learned in the last 5 years that completely changed how you lead?
- In your opinion, what’s driving the shift from role-based thinking to skill-based workforce planning?
- What’s your take on How can HR teams can practically begin mapping skills instead of static roles across their organizations?
- What are the constant risks of continuously hiring and developing people around job titles?
- Should performance management evolve into skill-based frameworks?
- How do we balance special skills with broader cross-functional agility, especially in fast-changing teams.
- Should this internal mobility be skill-led rather than tenure or role-bound?
- What are the biggest roadblocks to adopting a true skills-first mindset from tech 2 mindset?
- How do you see AI accelerating or derailing skill-based workforce strategies?
- What advice would you give to CHROs who are trying to future proof their talent strategies in the talent-first world.
Mic-Drop Moments:
“AI should be a co-pilot, not a captain.” —Rajiv Naithani
Rajiv explains it’s good that AI surpasses human intelligence, but the judgment that comes from a humanly empathetic mind? It’s superior. Why? Because we have to deal with people. And we can’t be robotic. Empathy has to lead our decisions.
As the last gulp of thought, Naithani recommends AI use to boost productivity and minimize the manual work to make future workforce more efficient. But let’s put constraints on it. Otherwise, our growth and visions will be too profitable to be meaningful to the world.
No Prep. Just Perspective.
- Job title or skill tag what will matter more on LinkedIn in 2028? Titles impress but skill tags open the doors.
- Hard skills or soft skills, which one’s harder to build in-house. Soft skills. Hard skills like coding can be taught easily.
- What’s the most underrated skills HR should be hiring today? Curiosity. It drives learning, fuels innovation, and keeps people relevant.
- Should skills influence pay more than roles? Yes.
- Is it time for HRs to rewrite org charts based on skills and not seats? It’s not about replacing hierarchy. It’s about making them responsive, dynamic, and talented.
Want to balance your teams’ deep skills with cross-team flexibility? Equip yourself with these 4 smart strategies and groom the future of the workforce.
Skills over Roles: Get Food for Thought
1. Why are transferable skills more important than job titles in the future of the workforce?
As HR, your biggest priority is building a workforce that’s ready for change. Job roles are evolving fast, and with that, the skills needed to succeed are shifting too. A job title may reflect hierarchy or position — but skills are what truly define performance. And the most valuable ones? They aren’t tied to any single role. They’re transferable.
Transferable skills are your team’s anchor in a changing world. Unlike technical or domain-specific skills (like coding, design, or marketing), these are portable; they move with the individual. Skills like communication, leadership, problem-solving, organization, collaboration, and digital fluency aren’t dependent on a role or function. They stay relevant no matter the industry or career stage.
So, how do you know if someone truly justifies the role they’re hired for? Look beyond the resume. It’s their transferable skills that often make the difference between someone who just fits the title and someone who actually delivers.
Take this example: a marketing manager switching to an HR role doesn’t lose their ability to lead teams, manage projects, or think strategically. Those skills travel with them — and in many cases, become even sharper over time.
Why do transferable skills matter so much?
- They future proof your workforce: Employees with strong core skills can adapt faster to changing business needs, tech shifts, or new roles.
- They ease career switches: Instead of starting from scratch, employees rely on what they already know to hit the ground running.
- They accelerate upskilling: With a solid base of transferable skills, employees can focus on learning role-specific tools or knowledge faster.
In short, transferable skills are what help your people grow, pivot, and perform—no matter where the world of work heads next.
2. How will a skill-based hiring approach shape the future of the workforce?
As job descriptions become more skill-focused, roles are evolving into little more than labels.
But real businesses aren’t powered by titles — they’re driven by real, transferable skills.
Hiring skills, not roles, help companies build agile teams that adapt fast to shifting business priorities. And that agility multiplies when HR enables internal mobility — helping people with cross-functional skills move fluidly across departments and break down silos.
In a world shaped by AI and automation, future-proofing your workforce is no longer optional. HR’s role? Hire for learnability, data literacy, tech fluency, and adaptability. Prioritizing transferable skills also levels the playing field. It reduces bias against those from less privileged backgrounds and shifts hiring from “gutfeel” to capability-first.
So, if you want to build a future-ready workforce, then start with skills that are important.
To cut it short, skill-based hiring approach can help in:
- Breaking down the barriers to biases in hiring
- Aligning talent with business needs
- Improving internal mobility
- Future-proofing the organization
- Keeping up the continuous learning culture
- Improving retention
3. What are the top in-demand skills for the future workforce beyond traditional job roles?
Some of the top in-demand skills that are important for the future of the workforce are:
- Digital Fluency: If you think digital fluency is like using tech, then it’s not the case. Where tech like AI tools and digital calendars are getting outcomes from them, digital fluency is the ease of access to digital spaces. For example, fluently navigating digital workspaces without bottlenecks, understanding how to work with AI and automation tools, data dashboards, and collaborative tools. It essentially measures how you can navigate a tool with minimal intervention.
- Adaptability and Learnability: Unlearning, relearning, and pivoting are surfacing to be key skills for a powerful future of the workforce. Why? Because skills get obsolete quickly and to stay progressive and unfailing in every aspect, candidates should be pre-emptive and fast learners.
- Data Literacy– It’s all about talking about numbers, data, figures, and asking the right questions. To be able to understand and interpret data and stats is a skillset required to adapt to the future of the workforce. Today, data is the language everyone uses. Why? To make decisions more informed and less risky and that’ll make the future of the workforce more reliable and promising.
- Collaboration Across Functions– Collaboration is the future of the workforce. Since the future demands agile cross-functionality and resilience, husting together will fuel more power ideas, innovative solutions, and smooth navigation through difficult conversations.
- Emotional Intelligence– With more machines taking over most of the organizational work, human judgment is becoming a competitive advantage. Leaders with high emotional intelligence will be able to improvise collaboration, leadership, and customer interaction, making the workplace more people-oriented and outcomes more customer-oriented.
- Creativity & Innovation– With tech tools doing manual and routine tasks for companies, brainstorming solutions, and applying new approaches become the responsibilities of the human mind. Also, the future belongs to those who think differently and have their problem-solving skills and have experimental tendencies, which is a limitation of artificial intelligence and tech, so far.
Other skills that’ll also play a huge role in building a future-ready workforce include ethical judgment and integrity, communication skills, resilience and mental agility that will help employees elevate both performance and purpose.
4. Why is upskilling and reskilling more critical than role-based training in the evolving job market?
Roles are evolving faster than ever. What’s hot today might be irrelevant for tomorrow.
That’s why companies aren’t just training people for roles anymore. They’re training them to grow with those roles.
Role-based training becomes obsolete the moment the role itself is. But skill-based training? It unlocks potential across functions. When HR focuses on upskilling and reskilling, the workforce becomes more adaptable and grows with their work and stays relevant in a shifting marketplace.
It also means less dependency on constant hiring. Internal mobility allows people to move into new roles as the business evolves, creating a dynamic, sustainable workforce from within. At the end of the day, jobs aren’t just about titles. They’re potential, and it’s time HR started treating them that way.
So, essentially, upskilling and reskilling your workforce impacts in terms of:
- Challenges outdated thinking
- Promotes agility
- Future-proofs organizations
- Drives inclusion
- Redefines HR’s role
- Encourages long-term thinking
5. How does focusing on skills over roles benefit both employers and employees in the long run?
Because it shifts the importance from static job titles to real and actionable capabilities. Since it’s not titles but skills that fuel business growth, the future of workforce and management revolves around it. It breaks the hierarchy by matching projects with expertise, closes gaps faster, drives more agility, and adds more proactivity to bottlenecks in operational efficiency.
A skill-focused attitude increases employees’ value in the long run. Because with more competition, lightning-fast innovation, and reckless upgrades of technology, more people will be hired to navigate the next-gen ops effortlessly. But with in-house talent trained in specific skills, internal project fulfilment will be a simpler task with skill-based talent movement.
An inclusive workspace is built only when you as HR professionals offer a fair opportunity to candidates coming from different socio-economic backgrounds, act to break pedigree and support bias-free hiring.
It’s your reminders HR professionals and employers, the workforce comprises a versatile employee profile with each one owning a unique talent, and often, their real strength doesn’t lie in their title but their skills. So, it’s on you to recognize it and upskill.
For employers, the benefits are:
- Workforce agility
- Faster project turnaround
- Lower training costs
- Reduced hiring cycles
- Resilient organizational design
For employees, the benefits may include:
- Diverse project exposure
- Personal brand building
- Leadership-readiness
- Strengthened decision making
- More learning opportunities
Stop Scrolling. Start Shaping.