Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #318

AI in the workplace (5 articles), internal talent marketplace, succession planning, delivering value through agentic AI and LLMs, and performance management.

Author

Brian Heger
October 12, 2025

SPONSORED BY

Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly!

A shout-out to Melissa Carducci, Sr. Director, HR Business Partner at Dayforce, for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Melissa, for your support of this newsletter!

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PRESENTED BY SuccessionHR

Are you tired of preparing succession plans manually or in messy spreadsheets?

Join SuccessionHR for a 30-min webinar, October 22 at 1PM EST, where you’ll:

  • Get an in-depth look of the SuccessionHR software

  • Identify key risks in succession planning

  • Explore proven succession planning best practices

If you’re looking to make succession planning more strategic, data-driven, and impactful, this session is for you.

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

Below are links and descriptions of the topics covered in this issue. If you're interested in my deep dive, you can read the full newsletter.

Also, check out my job cuts tracker & Chief HR Officer move of the week.

Let’s dive in! ⬇️

THIS WEEK'S EDGE 

AI IN THE WORKPLACE

A 25-page special issue with a collection of five articles on AI in the workplace, including using AI to identify and close skills gaps.

This special 25-page issue from MIT Sloan School of Management compiles five previously published articles exploring how AI is transforming work and workforce strategy. The pieces cover: 1) the human capabilities that complement AI’s shortcomings, 2) five factors to consider as AI reshapes work, 3) how to use generative AI to augment your workforce, 4) the risks of letting junior professionals teach AI to senior colleagues, and 5) how companies can use AI to identify and close skills gaps. While each article offers useful insights, I want to draw attention to the one that begins on page 21. It highlights how Johnson & Johnson (J&J) used AI-driven skills inference to gain a precise, forward-looking view of workforce capabilities through a three-step process: creating a skills taxonomy to define 41 future-ready skills, gathering skills evidence from multiple systems (HRIS, recruiting, learning, and project management platforms), and conducting a skills assessment using a large language model to measure proficiency and compare results with self-ratings. This approach provided both individual and organizational insights—helping employees identify development priorities and enabling leaders to make targeted investments in upskilling and workforce planning. For a deeper dive into the J&J case study, I’m sharing an additional 12-page open-access article published in the Information Systems Journal, The Deployment of AI to Infer Employee Skills: Insights from Johnson & Johnson’s Digital-First Workforce Initiative.

INTERNAL TALENT MARKETPLACE

Covers how Standard Chartered uses its internal talent marketplace to boost skills, agility, and business value. Bonus resources.

As work becomes increasingly unpredictable, organizations are turning to flexible work models to deploy internal talent where and when needed. Many are using internal talent marketplace technology—a topic I wrote about in my book chapter, Enabling Strategic Workforce Planning Through Skills, Artificial Intelligence, and Internal Talent Marketplaces, in Strategic Workforce Planning: Best Practices and Emerging Directions (The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Professional Practice Series, March 29, 2024)—to enable this capability. A new article in The Wall Street Journal highlights how Standard Chartered—where 60% of employees use an internal marketplace to take on short-term “gigs” beyond their job descriptions—has generated over $8.5 million in value since launching its platform in 2020. These projects, which might otherwise have stalled due to hiring delays or resource gaps, allow employees to spend up to eight hours a week building new skills and networks. As Tanuj Kapilashrami, Chief Strategy and Talent Officer, explains, the goal is to view employees “as a collection of skills,” not fixed roles—a mindset that supports faster AI adoption, agile deployment, and stronger retention. To help enable greater internal mobility, I’m resharing my one-page sheet on nine internal mobility barriers to overcome, along with my one-page diagnostic with 10 reflection statements to assess a talent-sharing mindset.

SUCCESSION PLANNING

My excerpt slide with eight succession scenarios—each requiring distinct talent actions to keep plans current, relevant, and actionable.

One challenge with succession planning is that after initial successors are identified, different situations often emerge that require adjustments to the original plan. Without ongoing attention, succession plans risk becoming little more than “names on a page” that don't reflect the current reality. What’s needed instead is continuous succession management—where successors are actively developed, reassessed, and supported as circumstances evolve. This can be complex, as multiple succession scenarios can arise. This editable slide—an excerpt from a broader deck in my private Talent Edge Circle community—helps you think through eight succession scenarios that may exist in an organization at any given time. Each scenario is unique and may call for different talent actions informed by the right questions. For a Ready-Now Successor in Waiting (fully ready but the incumbent shows no near-term intent to leave), a question to consider is: What is the retention risk if advancement remains delayed? If high, what can be done to reduce it? For Declining Successor Readiness (readiness has plateaued or regressed due to performance, engagement, or context changes), ask: What factors contributed to the decline—skill gaps, motivation, or external shifts? Is the role still the right fit, or should we redirect to another opportunity? If you are a Talent Edge Circle member, you can access the full slide deck and set of guiding questions in our resource library. As a bonus, I am resharing my one-page cheat sheet with nine sample trigger events that may warrant more immediate review and adjustment to succession plans.

AI AGENTS AND LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS

A 27-page report on turning AI tech investments into measurable impact, highlighting how capabilities—like agentic AI and LLMs—are redefining roles, workflows, and the skills needed for success.

This 27-page report by KPMG explores key lessons from the past year on AI integration in the workplace. One of the most important: technology alone doesn’t drive transformation—it’s how people adopt, adapt, and reimagine how work gets done. While the report offers too many insights to summarize fully, a section beginning on page 14 highlights two defining innovations reshaping how we work: 1) the emergence of agentic AI, digital collaborators capable of planning, acting, and adjusting with limited human input; and 2) the advancement of large language models (LLMs), which now integrate memory, personalization, and visual reasoning to drive smarter insights and outcomes. Newer generations of these systems can retain prior interactions, adapt to individual user preferences, and sustain greater consistency across tasks. As the report notes, “your AI collaborator isn’t just answering the question in front of it—it’s increasingly able to recognize your style, goals, and needs over time.” This evolution means users can shape LLM behavior by defining what “good” looks like, helping models better align outputs with expectations and context. In this new environment, feedback becomes a critical skill, where employees must learn to coach their LLMs, just as managers develop their teams. More ideas are discussed in the report, and as a bonus, I’m re-sharing five resources on AI agents in the workplace.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

My cheat sheet helps managers to identify whether six risk factors may jeopardize team goals, enabling faster course adjustments.

As we approach mid-October—with just two and a half months left in 2025—leaders are working hard to keep their teams focused on top goals and ensure they have the resources needed to deliver on critical priorities. I recently shared one of my cheat sheets to help identify opportunities for redeploying talent and financial resources toward those priorities. To support managers further, here’s another one of my resources to help determine whether six risk factors may jeopardize performance goals and to make faster course adjustments. For each risk, I’ve included two questions and two indicators that signal the risk’s presence. For example, under Goal Misalignment, managers can ask: Are team members often seeking clarification on year-end priorities? Are there inconsistencies between individual actions and stated objectives? Indicators include employees working on tasks unrelated to key goals and confusion about priorities. Another risk, Progress Stagnation, includes questions like: Has there been little measurable progress in the past month? Are deadlines increasingly being missed? Indicators include frequent extension requests and progress status updates that are less meaningful relative to the goal. While these may seem like fundamental tactics, they’re not always applied consistently—and that consistency can be the difference between achieving and falling short of year-end goals.

My one-page slide can be used to think through the right level of succession transparency for an organization.

How transparent should organizations be with employees about their succession planning status? This is one of the most debated questions in succession planning. To help you think through these factors for your organization, I’ve included one of my slides from a larger slide deck in the Talent Edge Circle—my private community for internal HR practitioners.

JOB CUTS AND LAYOFF TRACKER

Check out my tracker of announcements from a segment of organizations that have conducted job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023.

A few job cuts announced this past week:

  • Ferring Pharmaceuticals. The Swiss drugmaker announced plans to lay off 500 employees, or about 7% of its workforce, as part of a streamlining effort tied to its new Enterprise Model.

  • Kaiser Permanente. The Oakland-based healthcare provider announced layoffs affecting more than 200 employees across 15 hospitals and clinics in California, according to state filings.

  • Telefonica (NYSE: TEF). The Spanish multinational telecommunications company plans to lay off at least 6,000 employees across several units before the end of the year. The total number of workers initially affected could reach 7,000, out of a global workforce of around 100,000.

Click here to access my tracker with all announcements.

Also, here is Challenger, Gray, & Christmas’s most recent job cuts report.

CHIEF HR OFFICER MOVE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 11 new Chief HR Officer announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go, my subscription-based platform tracking movement in and out of the CHRO role. Both monthly and yearly subscriptions are available.

This week’s CHRO move of the week is:

  • Vestis Corporation ​(ATLANTA, GEORGIA) [NYSE: VSTS]—a leading provider of uniforms and workplace supplies—announced the appointment of ​Rod Wedemeier​ as EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer, effective October 27, 2025. Mr. Wedemeier joins Vestis from Mohawk Industries, a global flooring leader with 45k employees and approximately $11B in revenue, where he most recently served as Chief HR Officer. ​

👉️ To join a monthly or yearly subscription, click here.

CHROs on the Go has over 4,500 archived announcements in its online platform, with new announcements added daily!

If you are already a subscriber to CHROs on the Go, log in here.

FROM ME ON LINKEDIN

Catch up on what you may have missed from me on LinkedIn:

THE BEST OF SEPTEMBER 2025

SPONSORED BY

Did you miss the “Best of September ” issue of Talent Edge Weekly? If so, check out issue #316, which includes the most popular resources from the month.

Thank you to SuccessionHR, who sponsored the Best of September.

👉️ Join SuccessionHR for a 30-min webinar, October 22 at 1PM EST, where you’ll:

  • Get an in-depth look of the SuccessionHR software

  • Identify key risks in succession planning

  • Explore proven succession planning best practices

Want to get your brand, product, or service in front of our active 55,000+ Talent Edge Weekly subscribers? Learn how to become a potential sponsor.

Talent Edge Weekly is written by Brian Heger, a human resources practitioner. You can connect with Brian on LinkedIn and brianheger.com

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