This is the fifth blog in the skills-based talent series, focusing on how to get started on a skills-based talent initiative. Be sure to check out part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 as well!
So, we are interested in pursuing a skills-based talent approach. Where do we begin?
St. Charles employs a maturity model to help assess the current state of our client’s enterprise skills-based talent efforts, map organizational gaps to their desired future business objectives, recommend steps to mitigate them and align on an enterprise roadmap for moving forward.
The model depicts 23 dimensions of a skills-based talent journey across five stages of increasing maturity. The 23 dimensions span areas from the strategic to the technical, covering all six of the strategic focus areas in our STREAM TM maturity model (Strategy, Transformation, Skills Recognition, Enablement, Alignment, and Management system)
Do we have to move every aspect of our organization to Level 5 to be successful?
Absolutely not. Some of our clients have expressed concern over making the broad organizational changes implied by becoming a “Skills-based Organization.” They wonder whether so much change is necessary or survivable. That’s a fair point. So, let’s start with the basics.
No one said you have to move every part of your organization to level 5 across every dimension of the maturity model.
And certainly, no one said you have to do it against the will of managers, employees or against common sense. Taken together, all the skill-based talent strategies we have enumerated in previous blogs could comprise a “skills-based organization.” However, not all organizations will get there, nor do they need to. Remember, the skills-based talent approach is not a one-size-fits-all solution. You can tailor it to your organization’s specific needs and goals. It’s not about reaching a perfect ‘Level 5’ maturity across every aspect but about making strategic, incremental changes that align with your business objectives.
Many companies will use skills-based talent strategies only for specific talent needs. Many others will use it more broadly but will take incremental steps that will never achieve “Level 5” maturity. This practical approach ensures that the strategies are feasible and can be implemented without overwhelming your organization. Still, others will pursue a more advanced solution, but only within critical business units, divisions, or product lines.
Ok, so where should we start?
Many clients ask us this, and the answer is there is no universal skills-based talent journey. This lack of a one-size-fits-all approach is actually advantageous, as it empowers you to tailor your skills-based talent journey to your unique business challenges and needs. The reality is most organizations begin their SBT journey in direct response to the business challenges they face.
For example,
- Some are being driven by new service delivery models focusing on upskilling and resource management.
- Others are at the opposite end of the spectrum and are being driven by recruitment challenges and labor market shortages.
- Still, others find themselves being led by a technology implementation pushing them to develop a skills taxonomy.
- Still others are responding to business disruption or a dramatic cycle of fluctuating demand and are looking to talent marketplaces to escape a painful cycle of layoffs and rehiring.
- And some of our clients are seeking to address retention challenges by offering more career flexibility and mobility to improve the employee experience.
Any of these is a fine place to start. In fact, many of our larger clients have several of these issues going on simultaneously in various parts of the organization. And that is fine, too. It just takes a bit of governance and coordination to ensure that when these separate efforts develop, they do so with a common language and set of guardrails to share information.
Skills-based Talent Journeys
The steps on a skills-based talent journey can be navigated in multiple ways. Depending on each organization’s unique business drivers, they can start in different places. Applying a skills strategy to a talent process tends to raise issues with the talent functions most adjacent to it.
That is, issues of new skills acquired via L&D tend to raise questions about where I can employ these new skills. Conversely, issues of skills-based staffing often highlight the need for upskilling to close gaps in near matches. Similarly, resource management issues also raise questions about how I can validate the skills listed in an employee profile. And so on down the chain.
Thus, the skills journey tends to proceed from its starting point, up or down the value chain from its point of origin. In general, more operationally focused skill needs tend to start on the left and work their way right. Talent-driven changes tend to start on the right and work their way left. Business disruption and talent marketplaces often affect resource management first and then proceed to adjacent processes left or right. The re-design of work due to new AI technologies usually involves job architecture and adaptable talent models first.
Many complex organizations are responding to different business drivers simultaneously – and, thus, have initiatives started in multiple places. Each would tend to proceed to the adjacent areas, eventually “meeting” somewhere between the two starting points.
This is where having a coordinated enterprise skill strategy and some centralized governance is critical. It is all too easy for these independent skills journeys to meet, having developed two entirely incompatible skills frameworks, job architectures, or talent systems. Each group must align on some shared assumptions, framework, and communications to respond to their skill needs while having compatible or aligned frameworks when they meet in the middle.
This is why creating a shared skills inventory or taxonomy is a common element of all journeys. If you want your talent systems to effectively communicate skills data across the talent value chain, a shared skills language and database are essential. These tools can align relevant upskilling activities, update employee skill profiles, inform resource management decisions, facilitate workforce planning analyses, and underpin career and job architectures to support career mobility.
About The Author:
Craig Friedman has been a Human Capital and Talent advisor, executive, and entrepreneur for over 30 years. He is currently a Senior Talent Strategist with the St. Charles Consulting Group. He was formerly a Talent Development leader at Deloitte for nine years. Before that, he was a Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte Consulting for six years and a Human Performance consultant at Accenture for eight years. Craig led the development of two eLearning startups in the early 2000s and has served on the board of advisors for several learning-related non-profits. Craig holds an M.A. from Northwestern University’s School of Education & Social Policy and a BA/BS from Tufts University. Write to Craig at cfriedman@stccg.com. ©2024