Acorn, the skills and development platform, today announced Acorn Altitude, bringing workforce data, capability frameworks, assessments, development plans and learning onto a single set of definitions, capturing evidence of what people do against the capabilities their roles require.
Bain’s recent CEO Agenda Survey found fewer than half of CEOs are confident they have the right people in the right roles, or a credible plan to close that gap. [1] Boards are also concerned: NACD’s 2026 governance research found 60% of directors rank strategy-execution oversight as their top priority, naming workforce skill shortages as a leading barrier. [2] Both point at the same question most organizations cannot answer: can their people execute the strategy they’ve committed to? Acorn Altitude is built to answer it with evidence.
“Whether one person grew is visible. Whether a whole team is building capability at the speed the strategy demands is the question nobody can answer,” said Blake Proberts, CEO and Co-Founder, Acorn. “Everyone else gives you a descriptor. Acorn Altitude shows you what someone actually did, against what their role requires. Leadership can then see how fast the organization is closing on what it committed to, and whether that’s fast enough.”
Beyond Workforce Readiness
HR and talent platforms have spent years competing to tell leaders who is ready with skills scores, readiness ratings and match percentages. Each one of them stops at whether a person could do the job.
The more important question is what it looked like when they did the job. That’s answered with Workforce Evidence: the work itself, captured against the capability it demonstrates, and confirmed by a manager. The capability comes from the organization’s own configured framework, so every piece of work is filed against a defined standard at a defined level. The company ends up with proof of what its people have done and what got them there, rather than an estimate of what they might be able to do.
The Cycle That Closes the Loop
Acorn Altitude connects an organization’s existing workforce data to a framework of thousands of capabilities and proficiency levels that defines what good performance looks like in a role. People capture the work they do against those capabilities, development plans turn the gaps into action, and learning builds the skills. The assessment is the checkpoint where a manager confirms what the work demonstrates, rather than the place the record is created.
Acorn Altitude grounds AI in the organization’s own configured framework. What worked feeds back into the company’s talent flywheel, so whether they can execute their strategy becomes a question they can answer with workforce evidence.
Acorn is examining this further with Mercer, a Marsh business, later this month. Blake Proberts will join Kate Bravery, Global Workforce Leader, and Tara Cooper, HR Technology Analyst & Advisor, to discuss how to connect practical, evidence-based capability assessments to development, performance, and workforce decisions. Register at acorn.works/rethinking-skills-webinar.
To learn more about Acorn Altitude, visit acorn.works/altitude.
About Acorn
Acorn is the skills and development platform that closes the gap between what your people need to be able to do, what they can do today, and what is working to close it. Acorn records the work people do against the capabilities their roles require, so a company holds workforce evidence: proof of what its people can achieve, drawn from the work itself. Powered by a framework of thousands of capabilities and proficiency levels, Acorn serves customers across HR, Talent Management and L&D teams globally.
Sources
[1] Bain & Company, The 2026 CEO Agenda: Where Ambition Outpaces Execution (published June 1, 2026; n=100 CEOs): “Fewer than half of the CEOs we surveyed are confident that they have the right people in the right roles or a credible plan to close the gap.”
bain.com/insights/the-2026-ceo-agenda-where-ambition-outpaces-execution
[2] NACD, 2026 Governance Outlook (published Dec. 10, 2025): “Sixty percent of respondents rank the board’s oversight of strategy execution as the top oversight improvement area for 2026”; workforce skill shortages named among top internal barriers to growth.
nacdonline.org/all-governance/governance-resources/governance-research/outlook-and-challenges/2026-governance-outlook/boards-shift-their-focus-to-execution
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260915536306/en/
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