In most organizations, three groups work on the same underlying question and rarely sit in the same meeting. Talent acquisition finds people. Learning and development builds their skills. Workforce planning forecasts how many of them the business will need. Each has its own budget, its own measures and often its own reporting line.
A new global survey from Korn Ferry suggests that arrangement is under pressure. In its Talent Trends 2027 report, published October 22 and based on responses from more than 1,300 talent and senior leaders in over 75 countries, 69 per cent expect hiring, learning and development, and workforce planning teams to work more closely together. A large majority, 77 per cent, say capability gaps will be a greater challenge than talent shortages.
Those two numbers are linked. If the main constraint is that people lack the skills the work now requires, then finding more people is only one answer. The others are developing the people already on the payroll and planning around what the business will need next. Those answers belong to different teams, and leaders are now saying the teams should operate as something closer to one.
What the survey says
Korn Ferry's findings centre on a shift from jobs to skills. Among respondents:
77 per cent say capability gaps will be a greater challenge than talent shortages
78 per cent say too few people are prepared for how work will be done in the future
65 per cent say work will be organized around skills, and 67 per cent expect people to move across projects
66 per cent plan to invest heavily in reskilling
87 per cent say lateral moves will become as important as promotions
91 per cent expect employees to take greater ownership of their own development, and the same share say coaching and people skills will become more important
63 per cent expect AI agents to take over routine tasks, and 40 per cent plan to maintain entry-level hiring with a greater focus on higher-value work
65 per cent anticipate shortages of skilled manual and technical labour, while 64 per cent expect AI to cause more disruption in knowledge work than in frontline work
Adaptability ranks first among the skills leaders say matter most, with critical thinking and collaboration second and third. The report also names three roles it expects to emerge: head of skills, head of work design and head of human-AI. In coverage by HR publication HCAmag, 47 per cent of respondents agreed that specialist leadership roles of this kind will become more common.
A note on the source
Korn Ferry sells talent services, including recruitment process outsourcing, and the head of that business is among those quoted in its release. The survey is large and global, but it reflects the views of leaders in the talent industry and their clients, and the predictions are expectations rather than measured outcomes. The value is in the direction of travel, not in treating any figure as a forecast. Read in that spirit, the findings fit with other evidence in this edition: employers are redefining tasks within jobs, hiring more cautiously, and looking harder at what their existing people can do.
Why the three functions are converging
The logic is straightforward once the problem is described as a capability gap.
Build
A traditional hiring process starts with a requisition. A role is open, so someone finds a person. If the real issue is that the organization lacks a particular skill, the better first question is whether anyone inside the company can build it, whether a contractor can supply it for a project, or whether it needs a permanent hire at all.
Borrow or buy
Answering that requires information that sits in three places: what skills the company has (learning and development), what it will need (workforce planning) and what the external market can supply (talent acquisition).
When those groups work separately, each answers only part of the question. Recruiters fill the roles they are given. Learning teams train for the competencies someone has listed. Planners produce forecasts that arrive after the hiring decisions. The result is familiar: external hiring for skills that existed internally, training for roles the business is about to eliminate, and plans that nobody revisits.
What changes in practice
For employers considering how to respond, a few areas deserve attention.
A shared skills picture.
Treating work as a collection of skills depends on knowing which ones the organization has. That requires a consistent way of describing roles and capabilities across HR, recruiting and learning, which many organizations do not yet have. Start with the roles that are hardest to fill or most affected by AI, rather than attempting a company-wide inventory.
Decisions made upstream.
Before a requisition is approved, ask three questions together: can we build it, can we borrow it, or do we need to buy it? Put the people who own each answer in the same conversation.
Lateral movement as a design feature.
With 87 per cent of respondents saying lateral moves will matter as much as promotions, internal mobility needs to be a managed process. Without one, internal talent is invisible to recruiters, and the company hires externally for roles internal candidates could grow into.
Titles need authority.
The HCAmag coverage notes the report's warning that a senior role without real decision-making authority is only a title. Creating a head of skills or head of human-AI without budget and mandate will produce a job announcement, not a change.
Managers as the delivery layer.
Sixty-six per cent of respondents expect managers to spend more time guiding teams through change than managing day-to-day work. That is a different job from the one most managers were hired to do, and it needs training and time.
Where outside support fits
A merged talent function does not mean doing everything in-house. For many mid-sized Canadian organizations, building a skills framework, a mobility programme and a workforce plan at the same time is more than an internal HR team can do alongside its day-to-day work.
This is where specialist partners are used. HR shared services can take on administrative and transactional work so the internal team can concentrate on design and decisions. Contract and project talent can cover capability gaps while internal development catches up. Staffing and consulting firms such as SRA Group work with clients on this mix, combining permanent placement, contract talent and HR support, so that the make-or-buy decision for a given skill can be taken case by case.
The bigger picture
The talent function is being asked to answer a more demanding question than it was a few years ago. The question used to be how quickly a role could be filled. It is increasingly how an organization keeps its skills in step with work that is changing underneath it. According to the leaders Korn Ferry surveyed, that question cannot be answered well by three teams working in sequence.