So, you’ve identified your team’s skills and gaps. What’s next? Just knowing the skills data doesn’t instantly solve any challenges. The real benefit comes from using this knowledge wisely in your daily work and business processes.
This blog will talk about how to apply knowledge of your team’s skills to improve how your business operates. Let’s learn how to make the most of your team’s abilities.
The basic tools of employee skills management
Let’s start with the basics. Most often, you start skills management with simple steps. You create a skills inventory, mark the skill levels for each individual, and then calculate the skill gaps.
A skills inventory is a comprehensive map or database that details the skills and expertise available within your organization. It’s an in-depth look at what your employees are good at, ranging from technical proficiencies and certifications to soft skills like leadership and communication.
Creating a skills inventory involves collecting data through surveys, interviews, and performance reviews. And then organizing this information in a way that’s accessible and actionable. It’s a dynamic tool that should be updated regularly to reflect new skills acquired or personnel changes.
You usually add skill levels as part of your skill inventory. Understanding skill levels is about measuring the proficiency or expertise your employees have in specific areas. Skill levels help organizations differentiate between someone who has basic knowledge and another who is senior to drive results.
While a skills inventory highlights the capabilities within your company, identifying skill gaps is about pinpointing what’s missing. A skill gap emerges when there’s a discrepancy between the skills your organization currently possesses and the skills it needs to achieve its goals or stay competitive.
Read more: Skills management strategy: All you need to know
Transform the skills data to business advantage
Having a detailed understanding of your team’s skills isn’t just a nice to have—it’s becoming gradually a strategic necessity. However, the real challenge lies not in gathering this information but in using it effectively so that it creates business value for success rather than being a burdensome cost. The goal is to transform knowledge of skills into actionable insights that drive efficiency, innovation, and growth.
To turn skills information into a tangible benefit for your business, you must integrate this knowledge into your daily processes.
In this blog, we’ll explore a variety of business processes where you can put skills information to good use. These processes include:
- Sales process
- Process of an organization change
- Competence development process
- Recruitment process
- Processes for resourcing
- Production process
Utilizing skills information in business processes
By systematically mapping skills to business processes, you can gain a clear view of the skill levels required to operate efficiently.
Defining roles and managing skills
The first step in utilizing skills data is to precisely define the roles within your organization’s business processes. Each role should have a clear description that includes the specific skills, competencies, and levels of expertise required.
You should update regularly these role definitions to reflect business changes and therefore changes in the required skills.
When you map the skills to the processes you will also identify possible synergies between processes. Or roles that can step in temporarily. At the same time, you ensure that essential tasks are covered during absences or transitions.
Mapping skills to business processes
The integration of skills information with business processes provides a holistic view of operations and the human capabilities driving it.
By mapping out the skills required for each step of a business process, organizations can pinpoint exactly where and what level of skills are necessary for optimal performance.
It also highlights areas where skill gaps may be causing inefficiencies or bottlenecks. This allows for targeted interventions such as training, hiring, or process reengineering.
Understanding the current and future skills landscape aids in strategic planning. It helps leaders to make informed decisions about where to invest in talent development or acquisition. This, in turn, helps to meet the evolving demands of the market.
Enhancing the sales process through Skills management
In many B2B scenarios, especially in services and consulting, clients may have specific requests for the skills of the team members who will be working on their projects. This is where employee skills management becomes crucial in selecting and presenting the right team members.
CV creation
Maintain an up-to-date inventory of skills, experiences, and accomplishments for each employee. You can use this database to quickly generate tailored CVs. It also enables to highlight the most relevant qualifications for the project at hand.
Project allocation
By understanding the specific skills and expertise required for a project, sales teams and project managers can select team members whose backgrounds best match the client’s needs. This strategic selection not only demonstrates the company’s capability to handle the project but also builds confidence in the client.
Building cross-functional teams
Utilizing the skills inventory, you can search for the individuals within the organization whose expertise aligns with the project’s needs. If your own expertise lies in engineering but the client needs a cross-functional team of engineers and software developers, you are still able to search for the right candidates for the area you are not an expert in. You can create larger offers easier as your own knowledge and expertise do not limit you.
Navigating organizational change
Starting a new business unit
The creation of a new business unit is a significant step for any organization. It also brings about the challenge of staffing this new unit with the right mix of skills and expertise. It requires a deep understanding of your existing employees’ capabilities.
With the skills inventory, you can identify employees who already possess the skills necessary for the new unit. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities within this unit and match them with the skill sets of your current workforce.
This strategy not only speeds up the staffing process but also boosts morale among existing employees by offering them new growth opportunities. However, you should also utilize the knowledge of skill gaps. Once these gaps are recognized, you can address them by providing specialized training to upskill your current team. Or you can start the recruitment if necessary.
Navigating a merger
Mergers and acquisitions bring together distinct organizational cultures, processes, and, most importantly, people with diverse skills. The key to a successful merger lies in unifying these elements. A complete skills inventory and skill gaps will help you understand the strengths, redundancies, and gaps in your newly combined workforce.
Align employee skills with the goals of the merged entity. This may involve creating new roles that leverage unique competencies or redefining existing roles to better serve the organization’s objectives. Additionally, fostering a culture of learning and development can help employees from both original entities acquire any new skills needed to thrive in the merged organization.
Managing downsizing or restructuring
Downsizing or restructuring is often a response to economic pressures, shifts in market demand, or the need for operational efficiency. Despite being challenging, these changes offer an opportunity to realign your workforce according to strategic objectives. A skills-based approach can make this process more effective.
Utilize the knowledge of skills by identifying the core skills that are essential for your organization’s future direction. This involves making tough decisions about which positions are critical and which ones can be consolidated or eliminated.
The goal is to retain employees whose skills are vital to the organization’s success and future growth. For those whose roles are affected, consider reskilling or redeployment within the organization where possible. This not only mitigates the impact of downsizing but also helps maintain a skilled and engaged workforce.
Skill insights for strategic competence development
Employee skills management opens the possibility for companies to align development efforts with what is strategically important, ensuring that investments in human capital directly contribute to organizational goals.
Blindly developing competencies across the company is not just inefficient; it can dilute efforts that should be concentrated on strategic areas. Understanding the specific competencies that will drive the company forward is crucial.
Personalized development plans
One size does not fit all when it comes to competence development. With detailed information about individual skills and competencies, managers and HR professionals can create personalized development plans for each employee.
These plans not only address current role requirements but also consider future career aspirations and the strategic needs of the organization. For instance, an employee in a technical role with potential for leadership could be offered opportunities to develop those leadership skills in preparation for future roles.
Mentorship and coaching programs
Skills information allows organizations to design mentorship and coaching programs that are both impactful and meaningful. Match the right employees with the right mentors who possess the skills they aspire to develop, and you can facilitate a more effective learning and development process. This approach not only accelerates the development of specific competencies but also enhances knowledge sharing across the organization.
Succession planning
Succession planning is critical for ensuring the long-term stability and growth of the organization. Utilize the skills information to get a clear overview of the talent pool, and identify potential leaders and critical role successors early in their career journey. By understanding the skills and competencies of employees, organizations can proactively develop these individuals through targeted training, stretch assignments, and leadership development programs, ensuring a ready pipeline of capable leaders.
Use the skills knowledge for smarter recruitment
Having a clear picture of your company-wide skills inventory and skills gaps in different business processes before starting new recruitment is essential.
Know what you have before looking for what you need
Having the company-wide skills data at your use ensures that you’re not overlooking internal talent that could be perfect for the role with a little shuffle. It’s about optimizing what you have before looking elsewhere. This approach doesn’t just save time and resources; it boosts morale by showing your team that internal growth and mobility are genuinely valued.
Crafting precise job descriptions
Ever stumbled upon a job ad so vague it could fit any company, anywhere? We’ve all been there. But when you know precisely what skills are missing from your team, you can craft job descriptions that hit the nail on the head. This clarity helps in attracting the right candidates—those who read the description and think, “Hey, that’s me!” It sets the stage for a recruitment process that funnels in applicants who are more likely to be a perfect fit.
Evaluating candidates
With a clear understanding of the skills you’re after, evaluating candidates becomes a whole lot smoother. It’s about asking the right questions and setting up scenarios that directly test the competencies you’re looking for. This targeted approach enables you to pose more insightful questions and ensures the person you hire isn’t just good on paper but is the right fit for your team’s specific needs.
Embracing internal mobility and job rotation
When you’re intimately familiar with the skills within your organization, you can identify potential internal candidates who could rise to the occasion with a new challenge or a change of position. This not only fills your vacancy with a trusted, proven performer but also reinforces a culture of growth and opportunity within your team.
Smart resourcing
In the world of work, whether it’s line work or projects, the business process of resourcing has the same goal: having the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time.
Project resourcing
When it comes to projects, assembling your team is crucial. Each project comes with its unique demands—perhaps you need a creative thinker to devise a marketing strategy, a tech whiz to optimize processes, or a detail-oriented analyst for data analysis. Utilizing a skills inventory enables you to find the right people for the project, matching tasks with team members best equipped to tackle them based on their specific skill sets.
Moreover, understanding skill levels within your team is instrumental in evaluating and pairing junior and senior team members. This mix of seniority levels is beneficial for projects as it ensures a balance between expertise and fresh perspectives, while also facilitating the growth and development of newer team members into more advanced positions.
Additionally, identifying skill gaps through this process is crucial for project success. It highlights if you are missing any important skills essential for project completion and should prompt you to find ways to mitigate this, either through training or by bringing in external expertise if a suitable internal person is not available. This strategic approach ensures that your project team is not only well-equipped but also poised for continuous learning and development.
Read more: The simplest skill-based project resourcing
Planning production line work
Production line management, optimizing the production process, adhering to safety guidelines, and ensuring the effective use of production equipment are foundational elements of manufacturing. Strategically managing these elements through a focused understanding of employee skills can lead to significantly improved efficiency and safety.
Optimizing the production process with skills inventory
Utilize a skills inventory for a nuanced understanding of your team’s capabilities. It enables you to allocate tasks in a way that maximizes efficiency. Knowing who excels in what areas ensures that each stage of the production process is overseen by employees with the optimal skill set, leading to an increase in productivity and quality.
Safety guidelines
Safety is paramount in any manufacturing production environment. Knowledge of who possesses specific safety-related skills or certifications is important. This not only helps in assigning responsibilities for safety oversight but also ensures that all safety protocols are observed.
You can position employees trained in safety procedures or emergency response strategically across shifts and enhance the overall safety of the production line.
Filling temporary gaps
Whether it’s covering for someone on leave in line work or bridging a skill gap in a project, temporary needs are a fact of life in any organization. With up-to-date skills, you can plan the shift of the project team to find a solution without suffering from inefficiency.
Whether it’s a last-minute project pivot or an unexpected staff shortage, being able to quickly reallocate resources is key. This agility comes from knowing your team’s skills inside and out.
Production equipment usage and maintenance skills
Effective usage and maintenance of production equipment directly influence the line’s efficiency and lifespan. By identifying employees with specialized skills in operating or maintaining certain machinery, you can ensure that equipment is used optimally and maintained regularly, preventing downtime and prolonging equipment life.
When you identify the skills, you also identify people who have knowledge of certain equipment but just from different viewpoints, either usage or maintenance of the equipment. Sometimes, it would be beneficial of these people to work together to ensure optimization of the use of the production line equipment.
Conclusion
As we saw, skills data can be very useful in many business processes. In addition to creating a skills base, the real value to the business comes when you utilize the knowledge and gain benefits. Cooperation and collaboration across business units can create synergies that boost the business to the next level.