SkyHive - Preparing the World for the Future of Work

Navigating the future of work is one of humanity’s grand challenges in decades to come. Rapid digital transformation, increased globalization and the digitization of the workplace and classroom will impact most people, companies, and governments on the planet.

To solve this critical challenge, SkyHive invented and commercialized a unique methodology called “quantum labor analysis”, which is the application of artificial intelligence to analyze a workforce or labor market at its most granular level through the extraction of technical & soft skills, tools, methodologies and technologies. By applying its core technology to a SaaS platform for large enterprises as well as a skills passport tool for individual workers and learners, SkyHive automates and digitizes large-scale workforce transformation projects while helping workers and learners find the most relevant learning and career pathways, supporting individuals and communities thrive in tomorrow’s world of work.

According to the World Economic Forum, more than half of all employees will require significant reskilling and upskilling by 2022. Equipping the workforce with the right skills is a global top priority, yet even the world’s leading companies like Amazon are failing at workforce reskilling.

As an example, along with manufacturing, oil & gas, transportation, energy & mining and many other global industries, the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector is among the most disrupted by the advent of digital transformation. The BFSI sector employs more than 6.5 million people in the US alone. A recent study reveals that 70% of front-office finance jobs will be completely displaced by automation. Yet, BFSI executives say only 1 in 4 of their employees has the right skill set to work with intelligent technologies. 

As such, executives across the globe identify urgent needs to forecast the changing requirements of the workforce and the changing labor market conditions in order to adjust quickly and ensure that the workforce has the right skills for today and tomorrow. The lack of visibility on the skills of the future result in ineffective strategic planning, inefficiencies in workforce development spending, and failure to meet business requirements.

On the enterprise side, SkyHive’s clients include global market leaders in oil & gas, manufacturing, transportation, banking & financial services, and education, as well as training institutions and governments. Although each industry/client has its unique challenges in relation to workforce reskilling and transformation (reorganisation and restructuring in M&A activity, internal mobility, adaptive learning management, succession planning, future skills analysis, RPA/automation strategies, project-based team assembly, diversity & inclusion, etc.), they share the common root cause of massive digital transformation and disruption. SkyHive helps its clients meet various strategic objectives and tackle challenges through its enterprise SaaS platform which provides solutions for Future Workforce Planning, Workforce Planning, Data and Analytics, Adaptive Learning and Development, Mentorship and Talent Acquisition. 

SkyHive also supports the rapid reskilling of individual workers and learners in the labor market at large. Its consumer platform acts as the roadmap to supporting workers and businesses better understand the skills they have today, the skills they will need tomorrow, and the pathway to remaining relevant and competitive in a time of rapid change and disruption.

SkyHive invented and commercialized a methodology called quantum labor analysis, which is the application of artificial intelligence to analyze a workforce or labor market at its most granular level. Its core technology applies natural language processing to process millions of supply, demand and training data points to determine real-time job-level labor market activity. It then uses proprietary machine learning methods to extract technical skills, soft skills, capabilities, methodologies, tools, and technologies from all job data. Data is then fed into a proprietary neural network that serves as the world’s first and only real-time, “live-streamed” job taxonomy and skills ontology, capturing labor market movements in real-time and at their most granular level. 

SkyHive applies its core AI to an enterprise SaaS platform to support large-scale and rapid reskilling and upskilling within organizations. These applications are presented in the form of modules that include Future Workforce Planning, Workforce Planning, Data and Analytics, Adaptive Learning and Development, Mentorship and Talent Acquisition. 

For individual workers and learners, SkyHive’s core AI technology is applied to a Skills Passport tool which helps people better understand the skills they have, the skills they will need, the most efficient learning pathways to remaining relevant in a time of rapid change, as well as job opportunities that match their skills profiles the best.

SkyHive is the world’s first and only dynamic job taxonomy and skills ontology that streams real-time changes in the workforce (internal) and labor market (external), capturing a new tool, methodology, skill or skill gap emerge as it happens and producing accurate future skills identification. This is achieved through the creation of a new method of labor market/workforce analysis called “quantum labor analysis”, which is the application of artificial intelligence to analyze a workforce at its most granular level. The impact of Quantum labor Analysis to the world’s ability to skill/reskill and connect to employment can be likened to the impact that quantum theory had on classical physics. 

By better understanding the behaviours and characteristics of the most granular elements of the supply and demand elements of a labor market or workforce (technical skills, soft skills, capabilities, methodologies, tools and technologies), in real-time, we can drive exponential knowledge and efficiency in how we acquire, develop and retain human capital. 

As such, SkyHive is the only technology that has digitized and automated the process of skills mapping, providing real-time insights into the changes in the labor market/workforce, purely based on skills. At the same time, SkyHive revolutionizes the depth of knowledge a person has about their own capabilities and how they relate to the labor market. It enables individuals to focus on both targeted career development and learning that adapts with the labor market to ensure career relevancy throughout periods of rapid change.

For its unique and robust capabilities, SkyHive has succeeded in establishing itself as a category pioneer in “Workforce Reskilling Technology”, becoming a rare company to be welcomed by the Global 2000 and large consultancies despite being early stage. Through various projects, SkyHive has been able to produce insights into workforces that have never before been available, allowing its clients to better understand the capabilities of their workforces, compare those to real-time labor market activity, assess future workforce requirements and efficiently reskill their workforce to that future state. 

SkyHive is vertical-agnostic; it’s been meeting various strategic objectives and setting new standards for different industries:

● Helping the Canadian Military increase the acquisition and retention of women;

● Helping the transportation sector address the widening skills gaps;

● Helping the rapidly transforming oil & gas industry understand how the job families are evolving and how to respond with upskilling and reskilling;

● Helping transform Financial Services companies through rapid workforce integration in M&A activities;

● Helping banking and insurance companies retain and repurpose displaced workers by identifying the most efficient upskilling and career pathways;

● Helping manufacturing enterprises transition the workforce from conventional manufacturing to the digital manufacturing landscape; 

● Helping the largest nonprofit credentialing organization recognize the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of international talent and assess the potential to advance 8 global mobility and integration of people into learning and employment opportunities in Canada.

SkyHive is now serving over 7,000 workers and learners on its consumer B2C platform, and over a dozen of Global 2000 enterprise clients spanning manufacturing, banking and financial services, oil & gas, transportation, consultancies, education, nonprofit, and the government; each enterprise clients represents tens of thousands of individual employees.  

In the next five years, SkyHive aims to distribute its skills passport cool to learners and workers, which will see it potentially supporting the rapid reskilling of millions of individuals across the globe. 

SkyHive’s goals within the next year will see it continue to serve as the world’s most powerful skills engine. With its core AI engine providing robust data, insights and applications, workers, learners, employers and educators can be supported and empowered to respond rapidly to shifts in the labor market and emerging requirements. Workforces can rapidly reskill; educators can develop curriculum more responsively; communities across the world can be positioned to fully participate in the economy; and, governments and economic development agencies can examine real-time changes in labor markets and position policies and programs to proactively respond to them.

The next phase of the journey is to harness new technologies to facilitate individuals’ and companies' access to skills across all labor markets. Today, roughly 4 billion people are connected to the internet. In 2022, more than 8 billion people will be. Today, the digital labor market represents approximately $80 billion, by 2025 it will represent $2.6 trillion. Advancements in cloud and distributed computing will provide people with a multitude of ways to access better livelihoods, and SkyHive will ensure that its technology is available to support the exchange of skills and access to learning during this second phase.

Through facilitating labor market development and providing access to employment and training, SkyHive strives to align the promise of leading-edge technology with the future of inclusive work. 

SkyHive is currently serving clients in North America, the UK, and Saudi Arabia.

To maintain category leadership with the Global 2000 and technology defensibility, SkyHive plan on establishing a sales presence in the US, Europe and Asia. 

24 full-time staff, 7 contractors.

Sean Hinton is the Founder and CEO of SkyHive and the Co-Chair of the Entrepreneurs Circle of the Canadian American Business Council (CABC). With a career spanning two decades, Sean is an experienced corporate executive and an expert in labor economics and global business.

As a result of the break-through knowledge SkyHive is gaining on labor markets and the changing nature of work, Sean has quickly become a thought leader on the future of work. He is regularly invited to speak at conferences across the world and is interviewed regularly by the Canadian Press, global consultancies, and other media.

Prior to founding SkyHive, Sean was CEO of a $250 million global company with 500 employees and 23 global offices. He has lived and worked around the world, having lived on four continents and done business in more than 70 countries.

SkyHive's CTO, Sergiy Osypchuk, has over 20 years of software development and leadership experience in both entrepreneurial and corporate settings. In July 2019, Sergiy was named “Visionary of the Year” by Business in Vancouver's BC CTO Awards. Sergiy holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the National University of Kyiv. Prior to joining SkyHive, Sergiy was a senior software engineer and team lead at Amazon, where he led large teams of up to 40 people. 

SkyHive’s Director of Data Science, Zhiying Li, is an experienced data science leader. She is an Insight Fellow (Palo Alto) from the 2012 inaugural cohort and was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Physics.

SkyHive is partnering with large consultancies to support the rapid workforce transformation of their clients; SkyHive is also partnering with government organizations (especially economics development agencies) to strengthen economic growth and industry competitiveness. 

Enterprise monthly subscription model. 

SkyHive launched its consumer platform in June 2018, and saw a 1,167% increase in 2019 revenue with the introduction of its enterprise product in early 2019.

From the moment SkyHive was conceived, its goal as a for-profit social enterprise is to become a wildly successful venture while driving substantial positive social impact in tandem. In July 2019, SkyHive became the first AI technology company in British Columbia, Canada to become a Certified B Corporation®. SkyHive strives to set a positive example for other entrepreneurs and young startups that an exponential, successful company can be built and designed in a way that truly helps people.

Today, SkyHive has a massive inbound sales pipeline formed of more than 150 enterprise opportunities, most of them Global 2000 companies. Its global partnerships with large consultancies also introduce SkyHive as the solution to many of their Fortune 500 clients undergoing digital transformation, M&A, rapid growth, and other organizational changes that require companies to reskill and transform their workforces. SkyHive can continue to grow the business organically and achieve profitability with the current momentum.

SkyHive hopes to explore potential partnership opportunities with ServiceNow as well as to gain media exposure and explore distribution channels. Through the Digital Workforce Challenge, SkyHive hopes to expedite its mission of creating a future of inclusive work and learning.

• Product localization and translation;
• Market expansion and penetration.