Cornerstone Xplor to address skills shortage

Upskilling and reskilling have become essential to businesses as they deal with staff shortages amidst the proclaimed ‘Great Resignation‘.

As companies attempt to upskill and retain staff, there has been a wave of technologies that have fallen into favor.

Notably, the likes of Microsoft have invested in education platforms as the strategy has become increasingly popular.

Cornerstone, an AI-based HR platform, has now unveiled its latest addition that aims to leverage its established technology in a learning space.

The latest innovation is called Cornerstone Xplor, and it is intended to be a core component of the company’s vision for a new system of work.

However, many will wonder what this offering does differently from the other emerging tech in the learning sector.

Inside Cornerstone Xplor

Cornerstone describes Xplor as “a holistic people growth experience that delivers a fully integrated and hyper-personalized journey of learning, skill development, growth and career mobility for every person.”

In order to do this, the function uses the company’s skill graph, which monitors progress and existing levels of knowledge, alongside fresh and auto-curated content delivery and self-learning AI.

In terms of recommending content, employees can select which areas they would like to improve, where they are adept, and conversely where they do not wish to focus. This information is then used to automatically analyze learning opportunities, avenues for progression, and opportunities for mentorship.

The learning opportunities will be auto-generated personalized learning and skill paths that intend to deliver the most relevant learning content in the moment of need, and suggest new connections, mentors, and career journeys along the way.

To ensure multiple pathways for learning, Cornerstone Xplor creates a skills-forward development experience for people.

This experience enables people to match and connect skills to potential new career paths and access an auto-match “marketplace” of mentors, jobs, gigs, and projects.

Of course, whether the training offered suits an organization is dependent on the success of the adoption and the goals of the company.

Nonetheless, Cornerstone sees huge potential in this market and the additional functionality it has made available to customers.

The learning market

In publicizing the Xplor function, Cornerstone draws attention to a McKinsey report, which found the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated employee demands to meet physical and mental health needs and intensified concerns about a company’s societal impact.

This theory has been supported by the increased investment in HR technology this year.

In fact, Fosway and UNLEASH data found that learning and development would be a major investment for a number of HR leaders in the coming year.

Josh Bersin, global industry analyst, noted the state of the current market: “Companies are in a mad scramble to train, reskill, and redeploy workers around the world, yet they have to integrate dozens of systems to do this well. 

“Cornerstone Xplor has the potential to transform the HR tech market by combining the features of learning experience platforms, talent marketplace, career pathways, and advanced skills technology into one integrated system.”

Speaking about the new function offered by Cornerstone, Meredith Wellard, VP group learning talent and platforms at Deutsche Post DHL said: “At Deutsche Post DHL we want to make it easy for every employee to be in control of their career.

“We plan to do this by ensuring the experience linked to skills development is delightful, and by creating greater transparency of current and recommended skills aligned with each person’s career goals and unique career path.

“We have made great progress developing this with the help of the Cornerstone Skills Graph technology over the past year, and we look forward to implementing Cornerstone Xplor to make the experience even more seamless and easy for our people. We are excited about how aligned this solution is with our business goals.”