Skills Databases and Future Skills - Workforce Planning Exchange

At our April 7th meeting we focused on the topic of creating and maintaining a skills database, and identifying the future skills needs of the organization. I4cp Senior Research Analyst and WPE lead Tom Stone set context by sharing some of the relevant data from our Workforce Readiness study, and facilitated six exercises where WPE participants on the call used the annotation tools in Zoom to provide input on six aspects of organizational skills databases. Here are the highlights from the meeting:

• From i4cp's Workforce Readiness study, data from the June 2021 survey:
  • Only 30% believe that their organizations’ workforce currently has the skills necessary to advance strategy over the next 1-3 years. This belief was over 2X higher among those from high-performance organizations (47%) than low-performers (21%).
  • Two of three top barriers to workforce readiness were insufficient data about the current skills and capabilities of the workforce (53% of survey participants) and lack of clarity about the skills and capabilities that will be most important going forward (47%).
  • 27% of survey participants agreed that LinkedIn knows more about their workforce than their organization does.
  • Only 13% said that their organization is cataloging the skills and capabilities of their current workforce, and only 16% said they are effective at forecasting the skills and capabilities the organization will need in the next 1-3 years.
• We asked the following poll of meeting participants: Which best describes your organization’s current status in building an internal skills database?
  • 1 participant = We have a skills database that includes thorough skill profiles of all employees
  • 1 participant = We have a skills database that includes thorough skill profiles for employees in critical roles only
  • 12 participants = We are currently building a skills database
  • 11 participants = We are currently considering building a skills database
  • 1 participant = We have no current plans to build a skills database
  • 1 participant = Don't know

• Why a create and maintain a skills database? What are the benefits?
  • Talent mobility. Skills profiles enable you to match employees with internal job, gig, and project opportunities.
  • Employee development and career paths. Clearly identified skills and skill gaps clarifies for employees and their managers where to dedicate scarce development time and money.
  • Supporting a learning culture. Having employees who focus on and maintain their skills profiles is one element of a thriving learning culture.
  • Leverage hidden talents. Knowing employees' skills means the organization can tap otherwise hidden capabilities.
  • Strategic planning. When considering new projects or directions, it is valuable to know what skills already exist in the organization and where there are gaps.
  • Increase business agility. By knowing where skills exist in the employee population, the organization can be more agile when needs arise.
  • Support DEI goals by shifting to skills-centric hiring and promotion. By focusing on skills, organizations can lessen the reliance on degrees and other proxies for performance and capability.
  • Identify skill gaps. You can't identify a skill gap in the organization if you don't know the current skills of the workforce. This in turn informs talent build vs. buy decisions.
  • Gain consistency in skills information. Managers or de-centralized HR functions often have some skills data on a subset of employees. Having a centralized skills database provides a common language, a common unit of measurement and currency across business unit and across L&D, recruiting, compensation, etc.
  • Enable sound automation decisions. Knowing the skills of employees, in addition to what tasks are automate-able, informs decisions around job augmentation and elimination.
  • Competitive advantage. Leaders (and investors and others) need to know whether employees' current skillsare a competitive advantage or disadvantage for the organization.
• Who are your "skills" stakeholders?
  • Line of business, functional, and / or regional leaders
  • Learning and development
  • Talent acquisition and hiring managers
  • Performance management
  • People analytics
  • Compensation / total rewards
  • Workforce planning
  • Succession planning
  • Organization development
  • Organization strategy
  • HR Technology specialists
  • C-Suite and Board
  • Employees themselves
  • Regulators
  • Investors
• How can current skills data be gathered and verified?
  • Create a custom skills taxonomy or leverage from a partner (e.g., Workday, Korn Ferry, etc.)
  • Ask employees to manually enter into their profile (in Workday, etc.)
  • Pre-populate by using AI/Automation to scrape from work history, experience, education, e-learning completed, etc, then have employees review.
  • Pre-populate by using AI/Automation to scrape job descriptions, then have employees review.
  • Pre-populate by using AI/Automation to scrape i LinkedIn profiles and/or resumes and other info from your applicant tracking system.
  • Suggest additional skills be added to profiles after completion of training, gig assignments, job rotations, mentorship, volunteering, etc.
  • Verify skills through some combination of assessments: self, peer, manager, or formal testing.
• What are some key questions or challenges that arise when creating and maintaining a skills database?
  • Employee motivation. Employees need to understand the WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) to fill out their profile and then maintain it going forward.
  • Standardization. Settling on one skills taxonomy across the entire organization is a must.
  • Validation. How will skills be validated? Assessment via self, peers, manager, or formal testing? What level of assessment is desired, e.g., can range from binary to a 10pt likert scale.
  • Skill deterioration over time. Many skills have a half-life: they variously decay over time if not used. How will this be captured in the database?
  • Level of granularity. Will you identify capabilities / competencies and their related skills only, or go further by identifying X number of levels of proficiency in some or all of the skills?
  • Scope of roles, both initially and long-term. Will you start with a pilot? If so, where and why? Is the ultimate goal to have skills information on all employees, or only those considered critical roles?
  • Skill mapping. How are skills mapped to current job and role descriptions, and how will they be mapped to gigs or project opportunities (e.g., in a talent marketplace)?
  • What technology should be used? What technology for a skills database current exists in the organization, and how does that compare with what is available on the market relative to identified needs and goals?
  • Emerging / future skills. How far should you go in including emerging and future skills in the taxonomy?
  • Skills and compensation. To what extent, if any, will skills data be used to determine or update compensation? Will bonuses or other incentives be leveraged to drive new skill acquisition?
  • Biases. What human biases might exist for employees or managers in cataloging skills? What biases might exist in the AI algorithms used to scrape internal or external data sources?
  • User interface. The user interface for employees and managers to input and update skills information needs to be clear and easy to use.
• What change management tactics and mindset shifts need to come into play?
  • Shifting focus on degrees to skills and experience.
  • Shifting focus on jobs and roles and more towards tasks and projects.
  • Expanding focus beyond discrete jobs/roles to also consider talent pools.
  • Skills-based or skills-influenced pay.
  • Talent hoarding vs. talent development and movement.
  • Developing and maintaining a learning culture (e.g., know-it-alls vs. learn-it-alls).
  • Establishing an assessment / evidence culture vs. assumptions based on biases and proxies (e.g., degrees).
  • Shifting the role of managers to being developers of talent.
  • Understanding of skill adjacencies as relevant for work and development.
  • Seeing skills as being one answer to DEI challenges and goals.
  • Breaking down organizational silos by having skill agility and fluidity instead of job/role/department barriers.
  • Rewards and recognition for skills development (for employees and managers).
  • Generational values, to the extent they exist, around skills, skill development, etc.
  • The importance of a skills-centric focus as part of broader employee experience.
  • Shifting career conversations from once-a-year to ongoing conversations and feedback.
  • Increased sharing / transparency, within guardrails (especially as required by laws), of employee skill information.
  • Recognizing the role of AI/Automation alongside and to augment human skills to grow overall capabilities.
  • Recognizing the value of MVP approaches (e.g., to building a skills database) and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  • Employees and their skills as critical to overall organization strategy and success (e.g., giving substance to "our people are our greatest asset")
  • Skill information and measurements seen as Board-worthy data to share
  • Skills-centric culture and skills-development as key element of employee value proposition and talent attraction / retention strategies.
• How can future-needed skills be determined?
  • Interview leaders of each business, geographical, or functional unit
  • Interview employees
  • Hold focus groups with employees and managers
  • Resources from i4cp and other human capital research / consulting firms
  • Research relevant competitors and the skills of their employees
  • Read books and articles from futurists and thought leaders
  • Review LinkedIn data and reports to see what is trending
  • Consider the desired future state of the organization (5-10 years in the future), and deduce the employee skills need to get there
  • Consider likely future customer demand changes (e.g., privacy, personalization, social media, etc.)
  • Consider likely future regulatory changes and the impact on skills needed
  • Consider current and upcoming AI/Automation technology that can augment or change current tasks. What skills will be retired and which ones will need to be introduced?
  • World Economic Forum, BLS, BurningGlass, TalentNeuron, OECD, and other data sources

The i4cp Workforce Planning Exchange is a group of workforce planning and related professionals who come together to share and discuss their challenges, successes, lessons learned, and leading practices in striving to accelerate workforce readiness at their organizations. The goal of the group is to share information and insights, and develop and share tools and practices that will aid in enhancing workforce readiness and workforce planning capabilities.