A Quick Review of Skills-based Talent Journeys
This is the fourth blog in a five-part series on skills-based talent journeys. This one focuses on ‘Skills + People’ first journeys. These may be the most intuitive kinds of skills journeys because they are the ones that start with skills profiles, taxonomies, assessments, and upskilling. But before we jump in, let’s quickly reiterate our point of view on skills-based talent journeys and where ‘Skills + People’ first journeys fit in.
Remember, skills are, first and foremost, a special kind of HR data strategically linked to People, Jobs, Work Tasks, and Workforce Planning.
- Skills + People link to Employee Profiles, Skill Assessments, and L&D Upskilling programs
- Skills + Jobs links to Job Architecture, Org Design, Career Mobility, and Leader Development
- Skills + Work Tasks links to Resource Management, Work Design and Talent Marketplaces
- Skills + Workforce Planning links to Recruiting, Compensation, and Business Capability
As we’ve said before, a skills-based talent journey starts with your business drivers and tends to proceed from your starting point up or down the talent value chain.
St. Charles Skills-based Talent Value Chain
If you are redesigning your work tasks due to AI-enablement or talent scarcity, you will probably start your journey with skills-based work design. If you are using a talent marketplace to manage business disruption or improve staffing, you will probably begin with skills-based resource management. If you face recruitment challenges and labor market shortages, you will probably start with skills-based recruitment. If you need to develop new business capabilities to enter or quickly capture a new market opportunity, you will probably start with skills-based workforce planning. You may begin with skills-based job design if you need to update your job architecture, standardize job requirements, map similar job descriptions due to a recent merger, etc. If you want to inventory or validate the skills of your people or upskill your employees more efficiently, you will probably start with a skills taxonomy.
Any of these is a fine place to start. Remember, there is nothing wrong with employing skills-based talent solutions that are localized, pragmatic, and limited and still achieve real business value.
Now, let’s talk about ‘Skills + People’ first Journeys
Many ‘Skills + People’ journeys start because of an L&D goal, like improving upskilling, documenting employee skills, or validating skill levels. Also, many journeys begin with a skills taxonomy effort to support multi-pronged skills journeys. We will highlight some of these below and in our next blog. Skills-based people journeys are near the left end of our Skills-based Value Chain, making it a topic often driven by operational concerns. However, upskilling can be tied to various business objectives – making it one of the most common starting points. It links skills data directly to people, usually with employee skills profiles, which can be connected to training and development options. Today, we will focus on more stand-alone skills + people journeys.
‘Skills + People’ First Journeys – Upskilling/Reskilling
1. Business Agility – To Support Ongoing Skill Development Amidst Constant Change. A company wishes to push just-in-time or support OnDemand training as part of a continuous learning culture to keep employees up to date on the latest skills. This would leverage training recommendations from an LXP or similar system tied to employees’ skills gaps or interests documented in their skills profile.
2. Operational Efficiency – To Support New Service Delivery Models. A company wishes to open an offshore Center of Excellence to process transactional work and upskill its onshore workforce to be more analytical and strategic. Part of this journey will require defining target skills for the greenfield offshore and legacy onshore resources and tracking employees as the target skills are acquired. This can be facilitated with up-to-date employee skills profiles.
3. Operational Efficiency – To Support a Change Management Initiative. A company wishes to roll out a new process, policy, or technology that will require the training of the entire target group. Such journeys are commonly associated with Change Management programs. The journey will require impacted employees to be targeted with the correct training (usually role-based) and have their employee profiles updated once complete. New Compliance training could also be included in this category. An updated skills profile would be used to determine if employees are approved or ‘credentialed’ to begin using the new process/technology.
4. Talent Outcomes – To Support a Strategic Curriculum Review or Audit. A company wishes to review its training curriculum strategically to determine if training offerings align with strategically identified future skills. This is primarily an L&D-owned journey but will ultimately require learning offerings to be tagged with appropriate skills.
‘Skills + People’ First Journeys – Assessment/Credentialing
5. Operational Performance – Standardize and Validate Performance Levels A company wishes to implement a standard process to assess and validate employees’ skills, whether they have gained them through training, experience, mentoring, communities, external education, or some combination thereof. This could facilitate cross-staffing or quality control across a large or diverse group of employees. This could also be part of implementing a credentialing program.
‘Skills + People’ First Journeys – Leadership Development
6. Talent Outcomes – Leadership Development. A company wishes to leverage the power of an integrated skills-based talent solution to facilitate the long-term development of its employees. Traditionally, career paths would be mapped with target skills and leadership experiences aligned to development plans to move people up the career ladder. Skills profiles would track progress against the required skills and experiences.
A more skills-based approach would allow the system to push development recommendations to employees based on their performance gaps and career aspirations. Recommendations can include trainings, gigs, mentors, communities of Interest, or anything else tagged with skills – allowing for the kind of multi-modal development previously reserved for bespoke leadership development programs. Both solutions would require skill profiles to be updated regularly.
‘Skills + People’ First Journeys – Skills Taxonomies
7. IT Efficiency – Implementing a Skills Taxonomy. A company wishes to implement a skills taxonomy or ontology to support skills-based talent solutions efficiently. Skills taxonomies provide a common language to share skills information across the talent value chain. The relationships defined in skills taxonomies also facilitate machine learning algorithms finding near matches that can assist with talent marketplace recommendations, skills inference, and skills sensing applications. While developing the taxonomy does not yet link skills data to people, it is generally the first step attempted after creating the taxonomy. Some clients will leverage a 3rd party skills cloud and quickly assign skills to people.
Some Advice on ‘Skills + People’ first Journeys
Linking skills to people without jobs, tasks, or workforce plans can be challenging because you are missing your anchor to provide context to your skills taxonomy. However, one can still develop user stories and business objectives, define functional requirements, and provide scope for the effort. One of the biggest challenges is defining a maintenance process to keep skills profiles and skills taxonomies current once created.
Why Did We Write This Blog?
So, we’ve highlighted several skills-based talent journeys where tying skills to people will happen first or very early in the process. This is not an exhaustive list, but it highlights some specific examples where this process is critical. We’ll highlight some multi-pronged skills journeys in our next blog post. Remember, there is no right way to pursue a skills-based talent journey. Let your business drivers be your guide. Stay focused on what adds the most value. Keep it simple, pragmatic, and focused on tangible outcomes.