How Johnson & Johnson Fast-Tracked Upskilling (Hint: They Weren’t Perfect, by Design)

Eduardo Kist, an HR digital learning solutions lead at Johnson & Johnson, recently wanted to upgrade his skills. He had already spearheaded several projects using people analytics, talent, and strategic skills, and was looking for new challenges. “I wanted to transition within my role,” Eduardo says. “I was looking for a mentor — specifically, someone who had more experience than me in areas like digital, change management, and data and transformation.” 

So he tapped into J&J Learn, the company’s skills-focused, AI-powered talent marketplace. Eduardo, who is based in São Paolo, Brazil, filled out a self-assessment and clicked on the site’s “Match with a Mentor” program, which generated recommendations based on his profile. Geralyn Giorgio, director of change management and communications, appeared at the top. She quickly became his mentor, and their relationship is now helping Eduardo grow. 

Eduardo navigated this with ease in part because of the systematic approach J&J has taken to skills. While many companies are grappling with how to approach skills, J&J broke it down into simple components: by looking at skills, first, as they relate to people and, second, as they relate to the organization. 

“It required really good organizational support,” says Michael Ehret, the head of global talent management at Johnson & Johnson, “starting from the CEO down.” But, in a lot of ways, it was also pretty simple. “At the end of the day, this is matchmaking,” he adds. “It’s not more complex than that.” 

Let’s look at how Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest healthcare company, is taking a systematic approach to skills. 

1. J&J created a talent marketplace quickly and launched a “minimally viable product” 

According to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report, most L&D pros feel that momentum on upskilling and reskilling initiatives is slow, but Michael and his team created J&J Learn very quickly. They started working on their talent marketplace at the beginning of 2022 and launched it in September. 

Michael credits new technology for this agility. But his team also moved quickly because they felt comfortable offering a minimally viable product, or MVP. In other words, it’s not fully baked. 

While J&J Learn currently allows employees to list their skills and be matched with personalized learning, gigs, and mentorships, it doesn’t yet have the capacity to pair them with jobs. “We don’t have everything done yet and it isn’t perfect,” Michael says. “But we decided that we wanted to get something of value to our employees right away.”

2. They invited employees to list their skills and aspirations

Once J&J launched its talent marketplace, Michael and his team — which includes chief learning officer Sandra Humbles — invited employees to fill out the system’s 10-minute assessment. After employees listed their values, purpose, and motivators, the system automatically filled in their skills, based on information from job descriptions, performance reviews, and other data. 

Employees were then given a chance to describe their skills themselves. They could list their proficiency levels, gaps they may have, and skills they hope to acquire. Together, these created a comprehensive view of each worker’s skills. 

So far, employees have responded enthusiastically. The talent marketplace has grown by a few thousand employees every month as new learning content is added and made available to J&J’s 150,000-person workforce.

3. They’re modernizing their job architecture with an eye toward skills

Meanwhile, J&J is also looking at skills from an organizational perspective. “We’re looking at what the value and growth drivers of the business are,” Michael says, “and where we have the biggest gaps.” 

To do this, J&J is refreshing and modernizing its job architecture — a massive undertaking that requires speaking with employees and managers about the skills and experiences needed for each role. Michael’s team licensed an outside organization’s skills library, so that they’d have clear and consistent definitions to work with. 

Using the information they’ve gathered, plus data from the outside, they have a clearer idea of J&J’s hottest and most in-demand skills. The top skills employees want to learn? Data-driven decision making, agile project management, and AI. 

4. They’re offering employees personalized, multichannel learning opportunities

Now that the company has a better handle on the skills it needs and the skills employees have (or want), Michael says, “then we marry that up.” J&J does this with personalized learning content. 

J&J has 126 different learning groups, each tailored to a specific sector or function. Legal’s channel, for example, looks quite a bit different from engineering’s. The system then goes even further, creating personalized learning for each employee, which can include everything from short videos to magazine articles to certifications and instructor-led learning.

HR is a perfect example of what this looks like. This year, HR decided that it wanted to improve everyone’s digital proficiency by one level. Because team members were at different levels, the more digitally savvy employees were offered the “Tech Plus” program, while newbies dove into “Digital Basecamp.” To demonstrate what this looks like, Michael shared his own learning channel, which included a 17-minute video The Age of AI and Our Human Future and a Harvard Business Review article How AI Is Helping Companies Redesign Processes.

5. They’re fostering conversations with managers

J&J’s talent marketplace isn’t just about AI-generated learning pathways, though. “All the technology in the world, and all the data in the world,” Michael says, “is really set up to help start meaningful conversations, particularly between a manager and their employee.” 

J&J Learn includes prompts that encourage employees to take what they’ve learned and share it with their managers. If they want to, employees can also give managers permission to access their account, Michael says, “to provide some really good career discussions.” The employee-manager relationship — and the human touch in general — is critical to the talent marketplace. 

By the end of the year, J&J also plans to list open roles in the talent marketplace, matching skills to jobs. 

Final thoughts: It’s OK to start small

At many companies, leaders often feel daunted when it comes to skills, thinking they don’t have the right budget or HR resources. But, Michael stresses, “you don’t have to be a J&J or a big company to begin this journey.” It’s not just OK to start small, it’s advisable.

Michael thinks that no company is completely satisfied with where they are right now on skills. “But the notion we’ve embraced,” he says, “is think big, start small, and move fast.”