As we enter the digital age, how we conduct business is changing. Business leaders are rapidly adopting new technology and automation to drive greater operational efficiencies and win more business. We are also seeing major changes in the skills required to succeed in this digital environment, resulting in a growing skills gap for many industries.
Read MoreToday we’re kicking off a new series here on the Visual Workforce blog. It’s called Burning Questions and it’s focused on answering the questions we hear most commonly when we speak with HR professionals and organizational leaders who are embarking on skills management initiatives.
This week we’re tackling a question that’s fundamental to any skills management program: “How do we know what skills we should be tracking?” It’s a tricky one and the answer will vary from company to company (and even from team to team), but we’ve got some tips to get you started.
Read MoreAs a business manager, you are constantly looking for optimal combinations of the various skills and capabilities of your workforce. You recruit and train based on specific requirements that will help you meet your business objectives. You build teams based on strengths and weaknesses that will produce the best performance.
You don’t just manage people, you manage and track skills. Therefore, you need to keep close tabs on your workforce’s current skills and capabilities in order to make effective, timely business decisions.
Read MoreIf you are a manager in today’s business world, you have been involved in some level of workforce planning. Workforce Planning is the process of analyzing, forecasting, and planning workforce supply and demand, assessing gaps, and determining target talent management interventions to ensure that an organization has the right people - with the right skills in the right places at the right time - to fulfill its mandate and strategic objectives.
Read MoreUnlock Your Organization's Potential: Skills Inventory, Skills Matrix, and Skills Based Organizations
Discover how a comprehensive skills inventory can transform your business with informed decision-making to enhanced talent management and improved operational efficiency. Learn how to create a powerful skills matrix, and transform into a successful skills based organization.
Read MoreWith Visual Workforce, skills management initiatives don’t need to be year-long or even six-month projects. Organizations can leverage out-of-the-box skills libraries, a powerful survey engine, and pre-built visualizations so they can collect and catalogue data about their employees’ skills and proficiencies and start generating valuable insights about their workforce in days, not weeks or months.
Read MoreFor decades, HR leaders have been trying to eliminate biases and become more objective when it comes to making human capital decisions. We believe that a rigorous approach to skills management can go a long way towards helping organizations accomplish this goal.
The opportunity to embrace a more objective, data-driven approach to human capital decision-making is there – organizations just need to put the systems in place to weave the collection, analysis, and use of critical skills data into their existing processes and company culture. Below are four steps you can take to revolutionize the way you approach human capital decision-making.
Read MoreLet’s face it - it can be a struggle to get people to do anything on a regular basis, aside from checking Instagram. Yet, a skills inventory that is out of date can be a major blow to the efficacy of a skills management initiative and the overall impact that skills data can have on human capital decisions. So, how can your organization incentivize people to proactively keep their skills up to date?
We have identified four easy steps that any organizations can take to keep skills management top of mind and get long-term buy-in from across the organization.
Read MoreWhen it comes to skills management, the single most important thing you can do is get alignment on the proficiency definitions that will be used to measure skills across the organization. You want to make sure that a rating of a 4 means the same thing to a sales manager as it does to someone in HR or technology.
In effect, what you want to do is create a rating system that can be applied accurately and consistently across the organization by different managers who are rating employees on widely different skills.
Read MoreHR professionals know that soft skills can be just as important as hard or technical skills when it comes to finding, developing, and retaining top talent. In fact, soft skills can often play a huge role in whether a new hire, promotion, or assignment works out in the long run. According to a recent study published by LinkedIn, “92% of respondents say soft skills are more important than technical skill” and “89%...[of] bad hires typically lack soft skills.”
With numbers like that, it is no wonder that insight into employees’ soft skills is high on the priority lists of many organizations. The problem is, most don’t know where to start.
Read MoreChange can be intimidating and for many organizations the activities around a skills survey can be seen as a prelude to a big change like layoffs, a reorg, or even a merger or acquisition. This is a natural, albeit frustrating, response to this type of initiative – but it can be avoided.
That's why we've identified 4 steps you can take to put your employees’ minds at ease when it comes to skills management.
Read MoreLet’s get straight to it- 2020 is the year of upskilling. Are you hopping on the upskilling bandwagon?
While upskilling may not seem all that different from regular training, the context in which upskilling applies differs greatly. Employees experience regular training to expand their skill sets and advance their careers. But, when companies see macro shifts in the way they operate, such as a massive digital transformation, that requires vastly new skills they can turn to upskilling to fill those gaps.
Read MoreThe end of an era and the beginning of a new decade of work is fast approaching. The way we work has already changed significantly over the past 10 years and shows no signs of stopping. How will you ensure your workforce succeeds in 2020?
Read MoreWill Modern Businesses Meet The Same Fate As The Titanic?
The RMS Titanic was a modern marvel when it embarked on the doomed maiden voyage in 1912. Despite four decades of sea-faring experience, Captain E.J. Smith ignored seven warnings from his crew and other ships in the area confirming hazardous conditions In the time leading up to this journey.
Captain Smith shared, “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern ship-building has gone beyond that.” We will never know all the factors that contributed to the decisions made that night; however, we do know that there was an undeniable level of complacency and misplaced confidence.
Read MoreAll organizations will face a significant change at some point during their existence. How business leaders respond to these changes will determine the success -- and sometimes survival -- of the organization. While aligning resources, capital, and systems with business goals is a crucial part of a successful transformation, aligning your skills and capabilities is equally important.
Read MoreA skills gap can be a costly, time-consuming problem for businesses. As industries continue to shift towards digital, companies need to find more proactive approaches to avoid gaps, instead of managing them as they appear.
How Do Companies Currently Track and Identify Skills Gaps?
While many companies recognize the need to optimize their workforce, not everyone has developed an ideal method for tracking and identifying skills gaps. Here are some methods we see companies using today.
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