Spotted Zebra has secured £1.4 million in seed funding to help solve the skills gap crisis.
The London company, which counts a number of FTSE100 companies amongst its growing list of clients, says it is powering the shift to skills-based organisations, a rapidly growing trend amongst the world’s largest employers.
For over a century, jobs have been the dominant paradigm through which workforces have been structured, often trapping people and value in job-related silos.
In the modern workforce we already see a tendency of employees to contribute value beyond the limits of their job description. A skills-based organisation is one that recognises and leans into this reality by making skills, rather than job titles and academic qualifications, the common operating currency of workforce management.
However, challenges arise for companies attempting the shift towards becoming skills-based organisations and this is where Spotted Zebra comes in. The company powers skills-based workforce management through its integrated skills cloud and suite of applications that sit across the talent lifecycle.
The skills cloud provides a common skills taxonomy that is contextualised to the organisation’s unique values and operating principles. The applications draw on this to put skills at the heart of all people-decisions, and currently include hiring, succession planning and employee reskilling.
The round was led by Playfair Capital, with participation from Entrepreneur First.
“The magnitude of the skills-gap crisis is astonishing. More than half of companies around the world cannot find the skills they are looking for,” said Ian Monk, CEO of Spotted Zebra.
“Many companies are responding by adopting a new operating model for workforces; one that sees skills as the fundamental building blocks of work. But up until now there was no coherent technology solution to support such a transition.
“Spotted Zebra changes that.”
Joe Thornton, partner at Playfair Capital, said: “We are excited to partner with a team that is defining a new SkillsTech category within the £30bn HR Tech space; one that puts skills at the heart of all people-decisions.”