AGL's Melissa Dorey shares how looking beyond job titles to a skills-based model uncovers hidden talent, boosts internal mobility, and helps teams leverage AI.
Jo-Anne Ruhl
Vice President and Managing Director
Workday ANZ
Audio also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
For many Australian organisations, speed is often mistaken for progress. How quickly can skills gaps be closed? How soon will productivity gains be realised? How fast can AI tools be deployed?
But what if moving faster isn't the answer? It’s a question Melissa Dorey, AGL’s Head of People Experience, recently tackled on the Future of Work: Australia podcast.
As a leader of Australia’s transition to renewable energy, AGL knew it needed to do more than build new infrastructure. It needed new skills. But Dorey says that shifting how people thought about jobs, skills, and career paths didn't happen overnight.
"We knew that becoming a skills-based organisation was going to be a long-term journey," Dorey recalls. Which is why, rather than rushing a top-down transformation, AGL started with building trust and confidence among its employees.
AGL's experience reinforces the need for leaders to show people they have a positive future in a skills-based, AI-powered workforce.
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AGL’s approach to change management is built around human pacing, relevance and demonstrating progress. "It's about sharing small wins along the way wherever we have them," says Dorey.
Importantly, that doesn't mean over-communicating. Instead, AGL is careful to only share meaningful updates, explain decisions and give people time to adjust without creating unnecessary uncertainty.
As organisations ramp up enterprise AI adoption, this is a valuable lesson. Our latest Global Workforce Report, The Adaptability Advantage, finds that Australian employees are more optimistic about their working future and more confident in their skills than their global peers.
Asked about their career prospects within their current organisation, 40% feel optimistic, compared with 35% globally. That's a promising foundation for change.
But confidence can be fragile, particularly when employees are uncertain about what new technology means for their roles. AGL's experience reinforces the need for leaders to show people they have a positive future in a skills-based, AI-powered workforce.
One quick win for the organisation, was the way the skills-based model surfaced new opportunities for employees.
When the People & Culture team needed a business analyst to prepare HR processes for AI, the traditional choice would have been someone with HR expertise. But Dorey realised what they really needed was someone with strong experience in process automation.
Using the skills profile set up for each employee, the team quickly identified a finance employee who at the time was focused on credit assurance processes, but had all the capabilities the People & Culture team needed.
More than a year later, Dorey says that employee has become an invaluable member of the team, bringing a fresh perspective and capabilities that might otherwise have been overlooked.
"Let go of someone’s history and background and just think, okay, what skills do we really need?" Dorey advises.
It's a question with significant implications for workforce planning. Traditionally, we've organised talent around roles, qualifications, business lines and career histories. A skills-based approach allows us to look beyond those boundaries and recognise capabilities in completely different parts of an organisation.
Dorey says organisations will get the best out of their skills base if they allow people to nominate the skills and capabilities they want to be known for. She cautions against over-engineering skills assessments or demanding excessive evidence. “You have to trust people,” she says.
AGL is focusing on developing a growth mindset, resilience and adaptability throughout its workforce.
Dorey says AI is changing not just what we do, but how frequently we need to rethink the way we do it. “Employees may invest time in developing a new process or solution, only to discover that something better has already emerged,” she explains.
Accepting this and adopting the better solution requires resilience: the ability to embrace new approaches without feeling threatened by the pace of change. This is why AGL is focusing on developing a growth mindset, resilience and adaptability throughout its workforce.
Dorey sees adaptability as a collective responsibility – not an individual trait. "Leaders have a duty to make sure everybody is coming along on the journey with us and we’re not leaving anyone behind," she says.
For AGL, that means being deliberate about how AI is introduced. Rather than pursuing technology for the sake of being first, the organisation wants to be a ‘fast follower’, with a clear principle that AI should empower people.
It's an approach that shifts the conversation away from efficiency and towards how AI can help people do more meaningful work.
AGL’s workforce includes long-serving employees with decades of energy experience in the field, working alongside new graduates beginning their careers in what is now a rapidly changing industry.
Different roles, experiences and working environments can create very different needs when it comes to learning and development. But Dorey is careful not to confuse those differences with generational stereotypes.
"It's important to take a whole-of-person approach and not make assumptions about people based on demographic and other identifiers," she says.
It’s a point echoed in Workday's Asia Pacific Multigenerational Workplace Report. The research found 88% of respondents agreeing that each generation has something to teach the others. But no generation emerged as clearly stronger or weaker when it came to adaptability.
The ability to embrace change isn't determined by age or work type. This is something Dorey sees firsthand at AGL's operational sites. People who don't sit in front of a computer all day are still embracing digital tools and experimenting with AI – sharing innovative applications of AI through AGL's data and AI academy.
"Every time I go out there, someone teaches me something I didn't know," she says.
Our research found real generational anxiety (54% of Gen Z versus 41% of Gen X) that AI may render their skills redundant – an important reminder for businesses to reassure their younger employees that they do have a future in the organisation.
Looking five years ahead, Dorey is optimistic about that future. She believes it’s possible to build an AI-embedded workforce where humans have greater autonomy, more career choice and better access to meaningful employment.
In fact, she wants employees to see the shift to a skills-based model as "doors opening and not closing”.
As far as Dorey is concerned, whether or not AI will open doors or close them is a choice for leaders. It depends on how we choose to employ AI, the trust we build and the opportunities we create for people to participate.
Work gives people a sense of purpose – and AI has the potential to make that work more interesting and productive. But only if we create an environment where employees can continue to add value. Where they can learn, apply their capabilities in new ways and pursue career paths they might never previously have considered.
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