Building a Skills-Based Organization in the Public Sector
A strategic guide for senior public sector HR leaders
Public sector employers face persistent vacancies, ongoing retirements, and growing competition for talent. Hiring and advancement built around degrees and length of service overlook the capabilities agencies actually need. They also screen out many of the more than 70 million workers in the U.S. who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs).
Building a Skills-Based Organization in the Public Sector is a strategic guide from Opportunity@Work, developed with state HR leaders, for the executives shaping talent strategy in government. It gives chief human resource officers and senior HR leaders an executive-level roadmap to embed skills across every HR function, from workforce planning to hiring to development.
Inside the guide
Wherever your organization sits on the skills-based journey, this guide helps you set your strategy, find your starting point, and take focused action across the talent lifecycle.
See what the data shows
Find your starting point
Build on the core enablers
Embed skills across the talent lifecycle
Learn from states leading the way
A January 2025 the National Association of State Personnel Executives (NASPE) and Deloitte survey of HR leaders across 46 states shows where the public sector stands and where it can lead. Find the trends shaping skills-based adoption in government, including how states are modernizing job architecture, tracking the skills in their workforce, and weighing the role of AI in matching skills to jobs.
Use the Skills-Based Organization Maturity Model to assess where you are today across four stages: Exploring, Activating, Building, and Actualizing. The model works as a diagnostic, helping you identify your current state, spot gaps, and set priorities that match your capacity.
Understand the four enablers that make skills-based practices possible and sustainable: a shared talent philosophy, a common skills framework and language, the data and technology to track skills, and the governance to guide the work over time.
Apply skills to all nine talent practices, grouped into workforce planning, talent acquisition, and onboarding and development. Each practice shows what maturity looks like, practical steps to get started, and the value it creates for the organization, employees, and the public.
See how Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Utah are putting skills-based practices into action, from Louisiana's SHIFT campaign, to Pennsylvania's executive orders opening 92% of state jobs to skills-based hiring, to Utah's SOUL leadership certification.
Ready to set your skills-based strategy?
Download Building a Skills-Based Organization in the Public Sector
Get the executive roadmap, maturity model, and real-world examples to embed skills across your HR functions.