Organisations in Asia-Pacific prioritising skills over experience to build future-ready workforces

A growing number of organisations across Asia-Pacific are shifting from traditional experience-based hiring to skills-focused strategies, according to Aon’s latest 2025 Asia-Pacific Skills Impact Survey Report.

Based on insights from over 135 organisations across the region, the report highlighted a growing urgency among employers to embed future-ready skills into talent strategies, with nearly 40% of organisations now at a critical stage of aligning their talent programmes around emerging and future capabilities.

“As organisations face an increasingly dynamic environment, there is a strong need for relevant future-ready skills over traditional work experience to build a resilient and agile workforce,” said Puneet Swani, Head of Talent Solutions for Asia-Pacific at Aon. “Organisations must prioritise skills development and leverage people analytics to improve HR and business outcomes.”

The survey revealed that 68% of participating organisations have established a formal skills framework to guide workforce decision-making. These frameworks are being used to drive career development, talent mobility, recruitment and selection, succession planning, and workforce planning.

Despite this progress, many organisations still rely heavily on conventional tools: more than half (56%) continue to use traditional methods such as job descriptions and manager surveys to identify skills, even as 44% have begun to explore modern platforms, assessments, and external benchmarks.

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One notable trend is the use of skills data to support internal mobility and enhance employee experience. Nearly 40% of respondents reported that they already align employees’ skills with lateral role opportunities, a practice associated with higher candidate success rates. This figure is expected to rise to 45% within the next 12 to 24 months.

Still, the transition to a skills-first approach presents challenges. Limited budgets, resource constraints, difficulty measuring programme effectiveness, and identifying relevant skills were cited as top barriers to progress.

Maggie You, Head of People Advisory for Asia-Pacific at Aon, concluded, “To overcome these barriers, organisations must take small steps by starting with pilot programmes, using objective assessments and clear KPIs, engaging business stakeholders, and aligning skills framework with job architecture and external benchmarks.”