This session focuses on one foundational element of accelerating workforce readiness: developing, maintaining, and leveraging a skills database. As you will see, the benefits of such a platform and its data are many; there are also considerations and best practices to follow along the way. To start, embarking on a skills-centric journey takes planning. Both the current and future state of skills in the organization should be assessed. The value proposition for employees needs to be established and kept front and center, even while the needs of managers, leaders, and the organization are also pursued. There will be a lot of mindset shifts as processes and people evolve to leverage skills and information more than they may ever have before.