Inside the bank where almost every employee is a gig worker

Its employees still have job titles and descriptions, but within the firm they are acting more like gig workers, taking on ad-hoc projects that may have little or nothing to do with the job for which they were hired.

The more flexible approach—mediated by an in-house ‘talent marketplace’—is critical to redeploying human capital that can be far more productive with AI tools, as well as speeding the pace of new AI deployments, said Tanuj Kapilashrami, the bank’s chief strategy and talent officer.

“The idea of a traditional job being a currency of work is going to become less and less relevant," she said. “You don’t have to think of an individual by the job title or the job description, but you think of an individual as a collection of skills."

Companies across the board are facing a misalignment between the way traditional corporate org charts stratify skills and getting the most out of AI. They are aware AI will change jobs—eradicating many while creating new ones—but they struggle to figure out how best to use the employees they have and reskill them for new roles. Companies like Moderna say they have been reworking teams not just around the capabilities of the people on staff, but also around what can be completed by AI tools.

The idea of internal skills marketplaces is gaining traction, according to Hatim Rahman, associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Typically, the main benefit is employee retention: Workers who can flex and upskill across an organization are less likely to leave for those opportunities, he said. The marketplaces have also been “incidentally helpful" in reassigning work as AI rushes in, he added.

The gig work on Standard Chartered’s marketplace, which was set up in 2020, has helped create more than $8.5 million in value by enabling projects that might have been sidelined in the past due to understaffing or a lengthy hiring process, said Kapilashrami.

On the talent marketplace, workers can post and apply for gigs in things like basic programming or communications. Currently 60% of the bank’s employees globally are active on the platform, nabbing gigs they can spend up to eight hours on within their regular workweek. While they don’t make extra money, staff see it as an opportunity to network and build new skills, especially important at a time the labor market is shifting, Kapilashrami said.

“As new pieces of work are coming up, as opposed to very quickly going, ‘How many new [full-time employees] do we need?’ We are having a very clear conversation on: Is it about building skills? Is it about buying skills? Is it about borrowing skills?" she said.

The talent marketplace is also allowing the company to move quickly on building and rolling out new uses for AI in areas like wealth management, advising clients and marketing.

To be sure, core AI engineering isn’t a skill most white-collar employees have. But Kapilashrami pointed out there are other skills they do have that can improve and speed the adoption of AI, among them expertise on regulation, compliance, ethics or particular industries.

Companies that want to move quickly on AI have to think holistically about the skills of the workforce they have before knowing where they need to hire—especially since landing top tech talent these days is no easy feat, she said.

“There is a massive skill shortage," she said. “And if businesses feel that they are just going to be able to buy their way into how business models are changing, it’s just not going to happen."

Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com