How Arcadis is Building a Skills Powered Organisation (an Interview with Amy Baxendale)

If you're looking for honest lessons from the frontline of skills transformation, this episode is for you. 

Picking up from last week’s strategic deep-dive with Ravin Jesuthasan and Brian Fisher at Mercer, this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast takes a practical turn, exploring what it really looks like to bring a skills-powered strategy to life inside a global organisation. 

Joining host David Green is Amy Baxendale, Global Future of Workforce Director at Arcadis, who has spent the past three years leading a bold transformation to embed skills-based thinking across the company. 

From reimagining workforce planning to enabling talent mobility and cultural change, Amy shares a rare, unfiltered view into the challenges and breakthroughs that define real progress. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

• What triggered Arcadis' shift to a skills-first model, and how they got started 

• How to navigate early implementation hurdles and complex change dynamics 

• Approaches to gaining executive buy-in and aligning with business strategy 

• Why governance and structure are key to sustainable transformation 

• Ways to track progress - beyond ROI - to include engagement and agility 

• Unexpected lessons and eye-opening moments from the journey 

• What the future holds as skill demands continue to evolve rapidly 

Whether you’re planning, piloting, or scaling a skills-based approach, this episode is packed with insight, inspiration, and grounded advice from someone who’s done the work. 

This episode is sponsored by Mercer. 

To thrive in an AI-augmented world, organisations must rethink how work gets done. Mercer’s Work Design solution uses AI to deconstruct jobs, redeploy tasks, and redesign work for greater agility, productivity, and impact. 

Unlock your team’s full potential. Learn more at mercer.com/wfdemo 

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