If you missed this session, you missed a practical look at how Dow is turning a skills strategy into everyday talent practices. In this webinar, Jennifer Frame, Global HR Director of Talent and leader of Dow’s Talent Center of Expertise, walked through how Dow is building a more agile, engaged, and future-ready workforce by making skills central to hiring, workforce planning, development, and career growth.
One of the biggest takeaways was that Dow does not treat skills as a side project. Instead, skills are the “red thread” connecting people to jobs, growth opportunities, and business priorities. That idea came through clearly as Jennifer explained how Dow is cultivating a skills-valued, continuous learning culture designed to support both today’s business needs and tomorrow’s workforce demands.
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Dow has built a large-scale skills framework. The company has defined six enterprise competency categories and more than 3,500 job-specific skills, creating a shared language for understanding workforce capability.
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Skills are embedded across talent practices. The session showed how skills are being used in job postings, interview guides, job profiles, workforce planning, personalized learning, project or gig work, AI-powered career suggestions, and mentor matching.
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The approach is deeply tied to business strategy. Rather than focusing only on HR process improvement, Dow is using workforce data and skills insights to inform strategic decisions and support business growth.
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Inclusive hiring was a major theme. Jennifer highlighted ways to broaden access to talent by rethinking degree requirements, interview slates, and candidate pools.
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ERGs play a meaningful role in talent strategy. Dow shared how employee resource groups contribute to positive employee experiences and business growth, not just community building.
Dow provided a concrete example of how its framework works through the “Agile Organization” competency category. This included skills such as change management, continuous business improvement, project management, risk management, and strategic business development. The example made it clear that Dow is not only mapping technical abilities, but also emphasizing resilience, curiosity, and adaptability.
The webinar also gave useful insight into where skills connect to practice inside the company. On the hiring side, that means skills on job postings and skills-based interview processes. In workforce planning, it means mapping skills to job profiles and planning around current and future skill needs. In learning and career navigation, it means personalized development, gigs and project work, AI-driven career suggestions, and mentoring aligned to skill growth.