Skills First
This month David Morgan and Allison Walters are talking about focusing on employee skills for hiring and deploying talent.
David Morgan walked into the reception area with a big smile on his face. “Allison, it’s good to see you again.”
Allison greeted him with her hand extended. “David, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me. I’m glad Maryanne suggested it.”
Once they settled at the table in David’s office, he asked Allison how he could help.
“Well, I’ve got this client—a small government contractor—that needs to devise a system to track employee’s skills so they can bid the right individuals on contracts, except they don’t know it. The problem is, they are so focused thinking in terms of jobs, you know, fitting people into a fixed job or job title, rather than identifying what skills are needed, you know, to get the work done. When I talk about skills first, they just roll their eyes.”
“I hear your frustration Allison. Unfortunately, many firms are stuck in the past practice of looking at job titles or static job descriptions. They lose site of the fact that people bring other skills with them that are outside the scope of the ones they use in their current role.”
“Exactly David,” she said with a sigh of relief. “And to make it worse, they don’t see focusing on skills will give them more flexibility in placing staff on current and future contracts. They talk a lot about being agile, but then they run themselves right into a brick wall.”
“Allison, how do they identify individuals to bid on contracts, or to replace vacancies for that matter?”
“With the exception of management or special high-level technical requirements, they look at job titles and descriptions and compare them to government labor categories—not very precise and very labor intensive.”
David paused for a moment and took a sip of water. “Allison, I’ve experienced this before—firms stuck in their ways and resistance to change. Rather than trying to convince them to disregard their current system, have you thought of showing how a skills first approach can help in other areas, like workforce planning and employee development, and how it can positively impact their bottom line?
Allison looked puzzled.
“When firms have a good handle on the skills their employees possess and the ones they don’t, it helps to better prepare them to obtain those skills that are lacking—skills needed for current or emerging jobs. They can target employees for training and further development which employees crave. This has a positive impact on engagement and retention,” David explained.
Allison’s eyes lit up. “Yes, they can lower turnover costs and increase productivity along with profitability. And fill vacancies through promotion rather than solely recruiting from outside as they usually do. All of this can be quantified. Now I’m following you.”
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and David couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Exactly Allison. And it sounds like you have a handle on how to present that data to them.”
“I do,” she said. “And if I understand what you’re telling me, once they get comfortable with using a skills inventory or taxonomy, they’ll see its value in other areas, like staff selection for proposals.”
“Exactly Allison. There are many models and tools available for building a skills taxonomy. But to get the client on board, you have to convince them to conduct a gap analysis first to determine what skills the workforce possesses, what skills the firm needs, and what skills are missing. And they need to think of soft skills as well as technical skills. And the employees need to be involved because as I mentioned earlier, people have skills from previous roles, from other life experiences, and ‘adjacent skills’ that they could—with the right training—easily acquire.”
“David, I hadn’t thought about that last point—other skills from other jobs. But having all this information makes identifying further development so much easier.”
“The final piece,” David said as he was looking at the time, “is to link the taxonomy to other platforms and systems, learning management, customer relationship management, even applicant tracking. Allison, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry. Would you like to grab a bite to eat? We can talk further about getting started on all this.”
“Yes, thanks David. That would be great,” she said as she gathered up her things.
Learn more about David and Allison, their colleagues, and the challenges HR leaders face by picking up a copy of They Did What?
Learn more about upskilling and employee development from The Decisive Manager and The Big Book of HR.