As 2024 begins, many companies will again face several opportunities, but also challenges. In this ever-changing and evolving world, the key to success is the seamless integration of skills and talent development into every business objective. In this blog, we discuss the visualization of skills that are important for today's business and the systematic development of skills to achieve business goals.

Skills Assessment: Mapping the Landscape for Success

What does your current skill map look like? How updated is it? Unfortunately, the skills view of many organizations is still very static, and its updating relies heavily on employee memory or HR maintenance. This old-fashion approach is inefficient, expensive, and makes the data pretty much useless. As a result of outdated information, unnecessary recruitments are done, internal skills and potential go unutilized, and when taken to the extreme, talents leave.

However, just as a skilled navigator requires a detailed map to chart a successful course, companies also need comprehensive skills mapping to understand the true current state of their workforce. By performing a thorough analysis, you can identify not only your organization's strengths and weaknesses but also potential development areas.

If your organization lacks processes and automation for updating skills and competencies, it is time to consider and implement a new operating model. By adopting a more proactive, dynamic, and visual approach to skills assessment, you will ensure your organization remains competitive and adaptable in today's ever-evolving business environment.

Every organization is a sum of its parts.

‍

Visualizing Current and Future Skills

With comprehensive skills assessment and data visualization, organizations can take the next step towards success by mapping and visualizing the skills that matter to the business and the future.

The work can start by asking what needs to happen for the business goals to be realized. Once different things or tasks have been identified, you can proceed to the next step and list 5-10 skills that are required for the successful implementation of the task. Is it necessary to develop current skills? Do we need to acquire new certificates to be more credible in the eyes of our customers? -are questions to be asked.

Once the most important skills have been identified for each business objective, the assessed levels can be added to them. At what level should we know the skill in question? How many certificatesare needed to be credible?

Visualizing future skills together with the current ones gives a picture of where you are now and where you need to be in the future. This visualization serves as an effective strategic plan that allows companies to start planning and implementing concrete plans related to skills development. When market situations change, this exercise and the process will enable the implementation of the necessary changes in an agile and efficient way. In other words,the need for skill development can be matched to the ever-changing demands of the market.

With the right tool, current skills stay up-to-date, and you have a visual and updated picture of your current skills, but also of skill gaps that guide actions to achieve business goals.

Identifying Skill Gaps

Skill gaps act as an obstacle to success.

Skill gaps can be created through a few different ways: 1) Comparing current skills and levels with skill expectations, or as mentioned in the previous paragraph, 2) the difference between where we are now and where we will be in the future.

By conducting a thorough skills assessment, where the required skill level is part of the assessment, the data will help identify areas where skills do not meet the required standards. One very effective way to achieve this is using skill-based roles.

In addition to job descriptions, a minimum requirement for skills and skill levels is added to each role. As a result, a comprehensive picture and expectation of the skills, competencies and qualifications needed for each role is created.

Through the self-assessment process, organizations get a comprehensive understanding of the current state and skills and areas where there is room for development.

Visualizing these skill gaps offers organizations and employees a clear picture of possible challenges and skill development priorities. The data can be then used to set strategically targeted measures to systematically close the gaps. This not only helps to improve the overall skills of employees and thus the whole organization but also ensures that the organization has excellent capabilities to overcome the challenges ahead.

With the help of cutting-edge visualization tools, such as Talbit, this entire process becomes simpler and more streamlined, allowing businesses to effortlessly track progress and make informed decisions along the way.

‍

Strategic Skill Development

When an organization has a clear understanding of the skills needed to succeed and the skill gaps, it can begin to make informed decisions to address the gaps. The data can be used to plan and implement strategic learning and competence development needs. Not only does this create a better focus on what skills matter the most but allows to create targeted content for learning and development.

When knowledge and skills are directly linked to the attainment of crucial business objectives, it creates relevance. This makes the strategy more understandable and inclusive. In addition to offering content to develop essential business skills, providing tasks and projects where these skills are put into practice ensures that business goalsare met.

Innovation, motivation, and the ability to adaptto ever-changing business environments are born in such companies.

‍

Adapting to Dynamic Changes

‍When an organization combines learning and development into a strategic business process, it creates an agile culture and excellent operating model to support the operation in today's fast-paced business environment.

Skill-based roles will serve not only the present but also the future. For example, the changes and requirements to work brought about by generative AI can be implemented nimbly by adding new skills to the roles and automatically communicating them to the employees working in these roles.

This creates an easier way to adapt to ongoing and future changes and stay at the forefront of development.

Fostering a Culture of Continuous Learning

As we have entered the new year, we can all agree that with all the changes happening around us, we need to commit to continuous learning. Yet, according to our Workplace Learning 2023 survey, too many people lack the time and budget to develop skills and competencies.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve and ensure your organization is competitive, innovative, and competent, you must make significant changes to the implementation of skill development.

Those who understand the importance of agile skills development and have implemented processes and systems to meet these challenges build a culture of continuous learning and development and achieve their business goals.

Creating budgets and enabling the use of working time, e.g. 2 hours a week, to develop one’s skills is a good starting point. Team Leads and Managers must understand the business importance of continuous skills and talent development and find the means to enable it to be realized in their team. Regular 1:1s or growth discussions and performance reviews support the realization of the process.

By promoting a culture that values, encourages, and monitors (measures) continuous skill development, organizations ensure their employees have the opportunity to adapt to changing business goals, attract and retain talent, serve customers better, and outperform their competitors.

‍

Talbit & Visual Skill Assessment

At Talbit, we understand that the future of work requires a dynamic and skilled workforce and processes to ensure them. We offer a process and visual tool that helps ensure communication, visualization, and development of the right and business-relevant skills:

1)     Strategic Skills Mapping:

Unlock the full potential of your workforce by connecting skills to your business strategy and goals. We help you create skill-based roles that are not just job descriptions but strategic resources. We work together with you to define the future skills and competencies that are important for the strategy.

2)     Visualize your Workforce Evolution

Once the definition work is done, we offer our platform to get a visual view of your current and future skills and skill gaps. With the help of this visual view, you can plan and communicate skills that are significant from a business point of view and start building them in an agile and systematic way.

Talbit helps you understand where you are today, where you need to be tomorrow, what the gap between the two looks like, and how to bridge it agilely and systematically.

‍

Contact us to learn more.

‍

Conclusion:

As we embrace the possibilities of 2024, the symbiotic relationship between skills and business goals will become even more important. Through skills assessment, visualization, and strategic skill development, organizations can navigate the complexities of the business environment with confidence.

By systematically developing skill gaps and strongly linking competence development to business goals, your organization can not only meet the challenges of the new year but also become a pioneer in the constantly evolving business environment.