The Blueprint for a Skills-Based Organization (SAP’s Model)
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Gina Vargiu-Breuer, Chief People Officer and Labor Director at SAP, to explore how SAP is transforming into a truly skills-led, AI-powered organization. Gina shares how the company is reimagining its HR operating model by combining AI innovation with deep cultural roots, creating what she calls “human–AI power couples.”
She discusses how SAP’s transition from role-based to skills-based talent management is changing everything, from recruiting and learning to performance and mobility. Gina reveals how SAP defined a company-wide skills taxonomy of 800+ evolving capabilities, built adaptive learning journeys, and encourages employees to invest 15% of their time in continuous learning.
With her authentic energy, Gina explains how culture, curiosity, and speed are fueling SAP’s AI-first strategy, and why the future of HR depends on embracing technology without losing humanity.
🎓 In this episode, Gina discusses:
Building a human–AI partnership to power transformation
Embedding AI across recruiting, performance, and mobility
Encouraging employees to spend 15% of their time on learning
The company’s 800+ skill taxonomy and adaptive learning model
How SAP is moving from role-based to skills-based talent management
Discover how to Build Human-Centred Workplaces which Thrive!
Workhuman partnered with Gallup to decode why only 33% of U.S. employees feel engaged and what leaders can do about it.
The answer? Recognition done right.
When companies build flexible work, psychological safety, and authentic appreciation, engagement soars.
The research shows recognition:
✅ Boosts retention
✅ Fuels feedback cultures
✅ Elevates wellbeing
✅ Powers upskilling in the AI era
Engagement isn’t chance, it’s design.
The future belongs to organizations that make recognition their competitive edge.
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 0:13
Gina, how you doing excellent. Thank you for joining me. Amazing atmosphere. You just come off stage. How was it amazing? It was a very great interaction I had with Bruce. And we were elaborating on the impact of AI on the workforce and what it means also, you know, for strategies and skill sets of our employees. So it was a very, very good conversation. So
Chris Rainey 0:35
just a small, easy topic,
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 0:37
it is, yeah,
Chris Rainey 0:41
what was something that you're you took away from the rest of the panelists, from the conversation,
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 0:46
it was just him and myself. So I was giving the input. How we are transforming sap into a skill led organization, and how do we make the human and AI interface work? So this is how we spoke about it, but it's important to be adaptive and to respond to all the disruptions and all the technological advancements, so you have to find the right answers to them.
Chris Rainey 1:09
Yeah, speaking to all of your peers here, what's really top of mind? What's the what's the conversation right now happening around us?
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 1:16
Impact of AI on the workforce? That's the top, number one topic. And how do
Chris Rainey 1:21
we do number three, number four, it's all of them. Yeah, sure, and you
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 1:24
don't have all the answers. There are a lot of questions out. And I think we are all trying now to deal with it, you know, to make sure that we are preparing the environment our employees, that we are also adopting the our our own AI solutions and making sure that people are lowering their fear and the uncertainty around that. Yeah. How does it feel?
Chris Rainey 1:47
Because you're at the forefront of a lot of this technology transformation as a business? Yeah, that must be very exciting. It is
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 1:54
exciting, and it was also the reason why I joined ACP only last year, because the technology industry is so fast paced, and so it disrupted by technological advancements, that really creates great opportunities, from my point of view, but it also requires you know new answers to how we work, how we lead, how we educate, how we support talents in our organization, How to Design workspaces. So it's everything that was set and secure the past decades is completely now upside
Chris Rainey 2:26
down, yeah, which is exciting, right? That's why I'm in that environment, yeah. And I feel like HR is uniquely positioned, yeah, to lead the way. Would you agree with that?
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 2:37
It is uniquely positioned, and it also requires, of course, you know, challenging the status quo, challenging the roles we were playing in the past. And that means, on top of all the business transformation, you have to support and all the work transformation, role transformation, you have to transform yourself also as an HR function. But I think it's exciting, yeah, because you're really more shifting towards, you know, consulting, product manager, culture champion, AI champion, yeah, I think the questions you get and the strategic answers you have to provide, this is where I think will uplift also the HR
Chris Rainey 3:14
organization. Where are you looking at like, the like, there's so many places we can start if we talk about your own function for HR, where are the areas that you and the team are investing in? Because there's so many directions just looking around us here, right? Yes, every company, ai, ai, ai. But what is some of the use cases that you and the team right now are focusing on?
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 3:37
Yeah, I mean, SAP runs SAP, so for me, it's bit easier, maybe because the HCM solutions in house, so to speak, for sure, we are trying to adapt and implement our own success factors roadmap. So we have just announced 12 agents last week, subconnect in Las Vegas, which is exciting. One main area of application is for sure, recruitment. So this is to say, okay, how can we automate? How can we do AI driven recommendations, right? How can we do more data analysis in the whole applicant pool? How can we address workforce planning questions? How can we address also talent pool bottlenecks, so this is an important area to apply. Yes, there's a lot of administrative tasks also, so that can also free up recruiters to really invest quality time with leaders and applicants. But I'm you know you can also apply it more in the shared service center area. So we also have the enterprise service management solutions, but we also have a lot of agents around AI coaching, performance management, succession planning, so I also love to use and drive it, also in the whole talent management and leadership development space,
Chris Rainey 4:55
and also the exciting announcement with smart recruiters. How are you thinking about that? You excited about that?
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 4:59
Very exciting. I just met, also Rebecca Carr, the CEO of SmartLink, yesterday during dinner, we had great exchanges, great conversations, because it addresses also, you know, the topic that was driving us a lot. And so how can you deal with high volume recruiting, and also the topics I just touched on, right? Yeah, exactly, automation in recruiting, but also to have an AI experience, also for managers, for applicants, for employees. So I think smart recruiters is bringing us just to the next level of recruiting.
Chris Rainey 5:31
Yeah. One thing I would say about smart recruiters as well is, I was in Vegas for the announcement at HR tech, yes. And we went to the party, the announcement party. What an incredible culture they have, yeah, as a team, right? Like, amazing, really. Like, was that also part of the decision making of like, ensuring that not only have you got a great technology, but you are an incredible team and culture,
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 5:53
for sure, for sure, this is part of the top two topics. You have to look at, who's the leadership team, right? And what is also the culture. And it's, it's very important that, on the one hand, of course, compatible with the culture of SAP, but on the other hand, I think it's important to give space so that you are keeping exactly why you have, you know, also acquired that company and how to learn. It's for me, always a two way street on a one way street that you say, Okay, you have now to be like SAP, no, you're losing. And it's important that we learn from each other, that we rotating. So I'm very impressed by the dynamic, the speed and the creativity and the innovation power of
Chris Rainey 6:29
yeah, I've known him for a long time, like I interviewed their founder, Jerome. He had the idea before it existed. Yeah, it's been incredible to see the journey there on and when I heard the announcement, I was really happy with that for like, such a great team, such a great organization, and now combined, yeah, it's very exciting. Yeah, as well. From the learning side, though, I want to talk about in terms of how you're building an adaptive culture that encourages learning velocity without creating change fatigue. Let's just say that,
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 7:01
yeah. Now this is a great question. I think SAP is greatly positioned because we only exist since 52 years, and we had five great founders, and you can see that founder spirit, so it's, of course, not like smart recruiters anymore after 52 years, but you still see that SAP is a startup at heart, and that also, and that company is used to adapt and shift all the time. So we've been doing that for decades. So we have that DNA in the culture. However, I mean, the disruption is so big at the moment that we also had a look at and say, Hey, how can we keep the culture strong? How can we preserve what we have? But what do we also have to maybe adjust or maybe add right in order to stay that adaptive? And this is why we are driving now our growth Culture Program, our growth culture activation, because we say that's the execution foundation for everything we do, yeah, and we have very clear but only few gross behaviors that we are now sharing with employees, involving our employees and conversations, but also linking it to the day to day routine, because it's important that you're building that into everything, what you do every day. Otherwise, it stays a PowerPoint, right? And we also have easily embedded in the work, right? Absolutely embedded in the work. That's why we are combining the transformation challenges we have together with our cultural framework and the conversations we have, yeah, so we have, for example, growth summits. Those are formats at our 25 biggest locations at SAP we will touch around on 12,000 people at the end of the year. And we are also enforcing so called transformation journeys with our leaders. So more than 2000 leaders will also participate with with their teams as well, where you can then discuss us. Okay, what? How do we drive the transformation SAP? What is the challenge every day so that we make sure that we are accelerating, also the implementation of the AI first suite, first strategy, because it's all about acceleration, speed and making sure you're getting everybody along and not losing anybody, right? So the why is so important. So this is how we try that. And then we also set out a target to say that 15% or up to 15% of your working time shall be also invested in learning solution. 15%
Chris Rainey 9:18
very Yeah, that's good. I love it.
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 9:21
It is good. It's ambitious. It's ambitious. But I think we was also want to set the tone. We would also like to encourage our employees to say, look, it's important to stay current, to up and re skill, yeah. And of course, using our own technology, like the growth portfolio or AI assisted learning journeys, sure, because with that, we are able to personalize learning, right? It's not enforced, and you have to do everything is mandatory, or you have a training catalog. So with that, when I have the skill insights, then our AI assistants can also help to really bring up what is relevant. People are more motivated.
Chris Rainey 9:57
I think that's the thing, right. Now, we finally have to talk. Technology that learning, I don't I think we already gone beyond learning showing up in the flow of work. It needs to show up in the work itself. Exactly, right? It's like we've always spoke about learning in a flow of learning, but a lot of times you didn't have these tools, right? Yeah, the ability to create a customized learning pathway that meets me where I am at, and learning should come to me. I shouldn't have to go to it exactly. Shouldn't be separate from work. So when we say people to people, Hey, we need your 15% of your time, well, where do I go for this 15% and if it's just going for a content library? Yeah, no, you've already lost already. I love that. And yeah, leverage, and the fact that you can embed that right directly into, you know, your communication tools, your agents, yes, so it's surfacing where they already are. Yes, it's super exciting.
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 10:51
Yeah. And it's also the trend, what you see in your private life as a consumer, right? You also get the hints, it's all personalized, or the advertisement you see around it's the same logic, and I think we have to enhance employee experience also in the same way
Chris Rainey 11:04
we've had that for so long, right? For our customers, we do such a good job for our customers in most organizations, it's like, Finally, we're bringing it that experience internally, which you would expect to be the difficult before, like, we know it was just hard to do a scale, yeah, and personalize, yeah. Now with a gentle we have it with a genetic AI, it has the context was missing, yeah? So we had chatbots for a long time, but it didn't have the individual context. And connecting that with the organizational, content, culture, values, mission, purpose, goals, exactly in one Yeah, yeah. I think that's really exciting.
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 11:41
It's all interlinked, and this is how we also build that adaptive culture at sa part of this
Chris Rainey 11:45
as well, which we speak about, is them shifting from role based to skills based operating models. So in order to give us that agility, we also have to go on that journey. How far? How are you going on that journey right now? Oh,
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 11:58
we have been driving that since two and a half years now to do you know what you have to do the foundation work first. And that took now a while, but we are now really we have defined a skill taxonomy for SAP. We have more than 800 skills at the moment, and these skills are changing because the shelf life of skills are only 18 to 36 months. So that means we have to constantly benchmark. That's what we do. We're benchmarking the skill taxonomy with the outside and say, Okay, what skills are upcoming, what skills are declining in the importance and with having now you know the skill profiles and our growth portfolio for success factors linked to our employees. We can even swap in and out real time skills that are important or not so important. And with that, you can also see again, the learning journey linking us back to learning as well. So we have the skill sets on redefined. We will have it implemented by mid of next year at the latest, we have the growth portfolio up and running. Yeah, and it doesn't stop with learning, because I'm infusing skills across the empty life cycle. So it's the way we recruit, right? It's you have a larger talent pool in the outside, but you also get a great insight in your own internal talent pool, yeah. And with that, you can also enhance, for example, internal talent mobility, yeah, because we can also suggest automatically, okay, hey, that's your skill set. And we have that open job, and we have a lot of open jobs internally at SAP, you can imagine, but it also changes the way we do talent development. I was thinking about it performance, yeah, yes. So this is really a game changer, and it's a huge paradigm shift to go from role based, title based, to skill based, yeah,
Chris Rainey 13:38
listen for I'll let you go, because I know you gotta eat lunch as you look ahead. What are you most excited about as you look forward?
Gina Vargiu-Breuer 13:46
I'm super excited about the dynamics we're in. I'm super excited to design more, you know, the human AI, human AI interface to create fantastic power couples, how I call it, and to really also drive the hybrid team thought and so and keep changing and adapting. So that's an exciting time.
Chris Rainey 14:05
It's a lot to be excited about right now. Listen, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much. Have a good lunch. Enjoy the rest of the event, and I'll see you soon. All right, thank you. Bye.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Gina Vargiu-Breuer, CPO and Labor Director at SAP.