Pilots, KPIs, and ‘Unfreezing’ Old Habits: How to Make Skills-First Stick

Launch day is easy. Sustaining a transformation is hard.

A surge of organizations are committing to skills-based hiring, rewriting job descriptions and removing degree requirements with fanfare. Yet, as highlighted in our research snapshot, Change Management Best Practices for Workforce Transformation, there’s often a stark disconnect between intention and implementation. While 37% of companies have increased hiring of talent without four-year degrees, most (about 63%) see little progress or backsliding after initial efforts. Six months in, old hiring habits often resurface. Managers default back to degree filters, momentum slows, and early wins fade.

Why? It’s not a failure of ambition; it’s a failure of change management. True transformation requires more than policy updates; it takes leadership buy-in, organization-wide engagement, and a data-driven path.

Let’s break down how pilots, KPIs, and the “unfreeze → change → refreeze” model turn skills-first hiring from a fleeting initiative into permanent progress.

Phase 1: Unfreeze the System (The Power of the Pilot)

The hardest part of any transformation is breaking the existing mold. In large enterprises, the "degree default" is muscle memory. Hiring managers rely on it because it feels safe, fast, and familiar. You cannot thaw this ice across the entire organization at once. If you try to overhaul every department simultaneously, the shock to the system is often too great, and the resistance becomes unmanageable.

This is why you pilot. A pilot program is not just a test run; it is a strategic wedge. By selecting a specific department or role family to "go first," you create a controlled environment where it is safe to experiment, and safe to fail.

What works in practice: Cisco secured dedicated funding and brought leaders together for a company-wide roadshow to build buy-in before launching its pilots. This type of stakeholder engagement was critical to spark adoption and build trust. Cleveland Clinic, focusing on targeted roles and apprenticeships, created early wins that demonstrated the potential for scalability.

Pilots serve three critical functions in the "unfreezing" phase:

They Lower the Stakes: Managers are more willing to try a new hiring method if they know it is a limited trial rather than a permanent decree.
They Build Evidence: You stop arguing with opinions and start leading with data. When a pilot produces a high-performing candidate who lacks a degree but excels in the role, you have a tangible success story to show the rest of the company.
They Refine the Model: You will likely get things wrong in the beginning. A pilot allows you to fix process bugs like clunky ATS filters or misaligned interview rubrics, before they impact the broader organization.

Phase 2: The Change (Anticipating and Managing Resistance)

Once the ice is thawed, you move into the active change phase. This is the "messy middle" where the actual transition happens, and where resistance is most acute.Skills-Based Hiring: Change Management Best Practices highlights a core barrier: hiring managers often fear that removing degree requirements will create soft-skill gaps. In practice, many nontraditional candidates bring strong adaptability, problem-solving, and communication skills developed through real-world experience.

This hesitation is usually framed as a concern about maintaining quality. Questions like “Are we lowering the bar?” or “What about leadership and critical thinking?” surface frequently. That assumption that candidates without degrees lack durable skills is one of the biggest obstacles to skills-based adoption.

You must address this head-on.

The reality is often the opposite. Candidates who have navigated non-traditional career paths often possess superior adaptability, grit, and problem-solving abilities because they have had to forge their own way without the roadmap of a four-year institution. During this phase, support is non-negotiable. You cannot simply tell managers to "hire for skills" and walk away. You must equip them with:

Structured Interview Guides: Tools that help them assess durable skills objectively, rather than relying on "gut feeling" (which is often just bias).
Behavioral Assessments: Data-backed methods to verify capabilities that a resume cannot capture.
Success Stories: Circulate the wins from your pilot phase. Nothing silences a skeptic faster than seeing a peer succeed with the new method.

Phase 3: Refreeze (Locking in the New Normal with KPIs)

The final step is "refreezing." This doesn't mean becoming rigid again; it means solidifying the new, better way of working, so it becomes the default behavior. If you don't anchor the change, the organization will drift back to its original shape. The anchor is your data.

Continuous improvement keeps momentum from stalling. You must move beyond vanity metrics (like "number of job descriptions rewritten") and track the KPIs that prove business impact. When leadership sees that skills-first hiring drives better outcomes, the new habit becomes locked in.

Track and broadcast these three metrics to "refreeze" the behavior:

Retention Rates: Skills-first hires stay longer. OneTen coalition members frequently see higher retention among non-degree talent. Cisco’s skills-first approach resulted in a 96% retention rate for OneTen hires, preserving critical talent and reducing costs. This is a massive cost-saver that grabs the CFO’s attention.
Time-to-Productivity: Do skills-first hires get up to speed faster? Often, the answer is yes, because you hired for specific competencies rather than general knowledge.
Diversity of Pipeline: Are you actually seeing a broader range of backgrounds? If not, you may need to refreeze the process in a different shape by adjusting your sourcing partners. Cleveland Clinic’s success with community hiring and apprenticeship programs widened its pool and helped close wage gaps.

By rigorously tracking, celebrating wins, and troubleshooting where progress lags, data becomes the foundation of a sustainable new normal.

Actionable Takeaways for Talent Leaders

To make skills-first hiring stick, stop treating it like a project and start treating it like a behavioral shift—rooted in leadership, enabled by evidence, and guided by continuous improvement.

Start Small to Go Big: Don't launch enterprise-wide on day one. Pick a pilot group, prove the model, and use that momentum to unfreeze the next layer of the organization.
Debunk the "Soft Skills" Myth: Proactively train managers on how to assess durable skills, so they don't default to degrees as a proxy for professionalism.
Measure What Matters: Use retention and performance data to prove the business case. Data creates the "refreeze" that prevents backsliding.

The goal isn't just to hire differently. It is to build a workforce that is more agile and capable than the one you have today. That requires patience, strategy, and the courage to change old habits.

Ready to launch your pilot? Moving from theory to practice requires a clear roadmap. We have compiled the essential steps to guide your transformation.Get the full guide on change management best practices here.