As markets, technologies, and expectations rapidly evolve, having the right talent and skills becomes even more essential. By taking a comprehensive approach, from strategic workforce planning to people development, we help companies build competitive advantage and position them for success.
Talent is the most important resource a business possesses, fueling the ideas that propel growth. But like many resources, talent is often in short supply and can be challenging to find and cultivate, especially as the economy shifts. We help companies develop a holistic talent and skills strategy that aligns with business goals and growth ambitions, such as tech and digital transformation or post-merger integration. When employees reach their potential, organizations are better positioned to reach theirs.
Talent advantage sparks competitive advantage. It boosts innovation and creates a meaningful improvement in business outcomes, ensuring that companies have the right skills when they need them. It also helps companies continually develop their expertise while improving time to hire, internal mobility, and talent productivity. We take an integrated, end-to-end approach to talent development because there are many facets to creating—and unleashing—a talent advantage.
Top-performing companies make attracting, developing, and retaining talent a key priority, proactively addressing workplace changes and the fierce competition for skills and know-how. But they also understand that to nurture growth, they need to nurture talent. Mastering talent strategy and solving the complex talent equation in a skill-based world means mastering four key dimensions:
Anticipate. BCG is a pioneer in translating business and technology objectives into talent strategies. We leverage AI-enabled tools such as TalentBuilder by BCG X to help clients create skills-based workforce planning capabilities to better forecast their talent needs, understand the skills they have today, and how to address the gaps. We work with our clients to design sustainable talent and skills ecosystems with a strong foundation in modern skills architecture and job-matching algorithms. This prepares organizations to keep pace with generative AI, climate and sustainability, and other trends influencing skills-based workforce planning.
Attract. How do you attract the best talent in a hypercompetitive market? Our innovative approach to talent and skills views the process through the employee lens, creating a candidate-centric journey enabled by digital and AI. These journeys drive better effectiveness and efficiency with responsive HR practices that accelerate talent acquisition, enabling the company and candidate get to work quickly. We deliver cutting-edge talent sourcing strategies, such as multifaceted employer value proposition programs and “hire-train-deploy” models, deaveraged by role, that unlock hidden talent pools both externally and internally.
Develop. Whether it’s the evolution of digital and AI or the need to address climate and sustainability issues, we believe people development programs must prepare a workforce for the rapidly changing future. BCG U combines the expertise of world-class faculty with technology to provide the necessary organizational learning programs and comprehensive upskilling solutions to ensure clear return on investments. We design contextualized programs with a strong focus on always-on learning to provide instruction in real-world, on-the-job scenarios. Our digitally enabled programs follow a build–operate–transfer principle to activate impact-driving groups at scale, refreshed and equipped to thrive as the business evolves.
Engage. To truly flourish, companies need to inspire and empower talent. We help clients do this by creating an employee value proposition grounded in the company’s purpose, culture, and overall talent and skills strategy. Our experts enhance employee career journeys while cultivating an employee-centric next-generation HR function and building diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Crucial to it all: we help develop “generative” leaders who craft an inspiring and enriching experience for their people and advance the company’s values.
For many organizations, significant upskilling is necessary to deploy next-generation capabilities and new technologies such as Generative AI. Talent, organizational processes, and culture enable effective, lasting results from tech transformation and other large-scale change programs. We know, too, that some companies have more targeted needs requiring tailored talent and skills programs in areas of talent sourcing strategy or employee retention strategy, for instance. Others require innovative workforce planning strategies to develop sustained cost management advantage.
Whether transforming for sustained results in digitization, climate, efficiency, or the future of work, our talent and skills consulting teams embed the end-to-end approach that defines our work—and helps perfect yours.
We’ve worked with companies across the globe, helping them perfect their employee value proposition, talent sourcing strategy, employee retention strategy, and other talent initiatives.
Peter Barfuss, head of sales operation and sales transformation at Siemens Digital Industries, shares how the company worked with BCG to reimagine its inside sales operations, including the talent and skills required to support this transformation.
How BCG used a cascaded and holistic organization-design approach to help a global biotech firm reduce its gross labor and non-labor costs by 20%.
Creating a national upskilling program. Through an innovative people development initiative, we helped an Asia-Pacific country better meet the demand for critical talent and become a competitive tech hub. The program leveraged a novel end-to-end skilling stack—integrating more than 1,000 hours of unique content with enabling technology, partnerships, and processes—to upskill digital, marketing, and sales talent at speed and scale. Over six months, the initiative upskilled some 1,500 job seekers, supporting more than 100 companies that previously struggled to source digital talent.
Upskilling for a data and digital edge. We helped a global cosmetics company upskill its 3,500-strong R&D department on emerging data, digital, technology, and agile topics. The idea: to help the business leverage skills and approaches that are increasingly fueling innovation—and competitive advantage. In collaboration with our client, we upskilled more than 100 R&D leaders, onboarded and trained 50-plus data stewards, and created a program to upskill 25 product teams, ensuring an at-scale rollout over multiple locations.
Future-proofing a talent sourcing strategy. Our client, a global financial services company, sought a tech-talent architecture that aligned with its 10-year plan but could evolve as conditions changed. Simultaneously, the company wanted to foster growth and retention of key talent. To meet these goals, BCG experts simplified the company’s job architecture and career framework, reframing titles to take the mystery out of what roles entailed and creating transparency around career paths. At the same time, we developed a talent map centered around long-term goals but flexible enough to adjust as markets and priorities evolved.
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Leveraging BCG’s expertise in data science, learning programs, and people development, we’ve created unique tools to support companies as they attract, retain, and develop top-flight talent. Once implemented, our Build–Operate–Transfer model helps clients rapidly scale these new capabilities.
Here are two examples within our portfolio of tools to support talent and skills strategy:
TalentBuilder by BCG X. An AI-powered platform designed to support clients in their most critical talent strategy decisions, from demand forecasting to fulfillment strategies. TalentBuilder by BCG X leverages our deep expertise in data science and talent and skills consulting. Its six modules enhance workforce planning and talent acquisition strategy, helping companies define roles and tailor learning journeys and providing insight for optimal build–buy–borrow decisions.
BCG U. BCG U partners with organizations to develop learning journeys and innovative approaches to people development that enable their full transformation on key topics like AI and generative AI, agile ways of working, and climate and sustainability. By offering unique upskilling solutions that are customized to align with outcome-focused priorities, our scalable approach spans senior leadership and the entire workforce to accelerate business impact. The result? An organization that is empowered to bring its transformational vision to life with a measurable return on learning investment.
Process companies need more talent even as the supply is falling. In addition to rethinking their talent strategies, leaders must revisit their operating models to grow.
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BCG’s talent development consulting team draws from a global network of thought leaders—experts across the spectrum of industry, technical, and functional areas, including workforce planning, people development, and digital transformation.
