The past 18 months have seen seismic shifts in the ways organizations approach talent. Technology has played a huge role in how companies responded to the pandemic and the HCM technology space has seen some large-scale changes of its own. Corporate learning powerhouse Cornerstone just produced its own shockwave in the employee experience space with their announcement of Xplor.
Organizations have been challenged by both their need to quickly upskill and reskill their workforce and the myriad technologies available to make that happen. Companies have been relying on combinations of an LMS for tracking learning and compliance, an LXP for a better user experience, tools for identifying and mapping skills, talent mobility platforms for getting people into the right place and a variety of ancillary platforms and apps. This creates headaches for IT, admins and learners as there is not a lot of cohesiveness and organizations are not receiving the results they want and need.
Cornerstone Xplor is here to pull these elements together in a single place to make it easier for companies to optimize the skills they already have and rapidly build the skills they need. Driven by artificial intelligence, Xplor takes the guesswork out of connecting the dots between skills, people and business needs.
As more LMS platforms incorporate LXP-type functionality and more LXPs add LMS features, Xplor represents the future state of that evolution, providing the critical characteristics of both. It then takes the LXP’s promise of content search and discoverability and supercharges it by identifying skills needs throughout the business. Powered by Cornerstone’s Skills Graph, Xplor delivers learners the content they want and require based on their profiles and the needs of the business.
Xplor launches at a time when Brandon Hall Group research finds only half of companies say their approach to learning well positions them to develop skills required for the future. Companies perennially struggle with identifying both their available skills and skills gaps. As a result, learning is often a guessing game; L&D teams produce programs they think and hope will solve the problem.
With Xplor, skills can be surfaced from any existing documentation within the company, providing a much clearer picture of the current state and giving learning a future target to aim their efforts. Another way Xplor helps plan for the future is by integrating with Cornerstone’s TalentLink platform, bringing job applicants and candidates into the mix and immediately getting them on the right path for skill-building.
Within the context of the HCM technology market, Cornerstone Xplor is a solution that solves for just the right chunk of the employee experience. It brings learning, skills planning and talent mobility together without getting bogged down in other core HR functionality. It takes the concept of the LXP and makes the next evolutionary step.
