Five Pillars of a Skills Culture

Yesterday, I talked with Stacia Sherman Garr and Dani Johnson at the Transform conference about EPAM Systems skills journey. (For those that don’t know, we’ve been at this for almost the entire 30-year existence of the company, using homegrown tech and AI/ML-driven people analytics to solve increasingly complex business and talent challenges across the lifecycle.)

One of the questions was about our culture and what drove it. Since we were pressed for time in the session, I thought I would expand a little bit (okay, a lot) on that here.

There are five major things I consider at the core of our skills culture.

1. Purpose. Our skills journey began because our software engineers were trying to solve a fundamental business challenge. EPAM is a professional services organization, which means that we need to assign the right team for the right projects in the right locations to achieve results for our clients. The first iteration of our skills work was staffing (not TA which seems to be most common for others). Leaders were trying to achieve greater clarity on the people and the work because the company was growing so fast that it was impossible to keep in mind. Next, we tackled learning, talent acquisition, then performance management, and so on because each of them presented problems for the organization.? Then AI came along, and we got a lot smarter and faster and began finding new ways to use skills data to bring value to the business and our employees (e.g., we have a pretty awesome attrition prediction engine).

2. Data-Driven Decision-Making. We believe that skills are another form of data and that we should be using people analytics to make decisions, operationalize our business strategy, improve employee experience, and become increasingly efficient. And this means we need to be laser-focused on data quality (garbage in, garbage out). We gather many data points, both direct and inferred, to validate EPAMers’ skill profiles, and we weigh the data points by their validity and reliability. For example, people self-report skills at EPAM, but that is weighted less than having an identified expert validate on someone’s behalf, and we need a certain number of data points to consider a person skilled. We also know that skills have a shelf life, and our algorithms increasingly reduce the confidence value of an individual’s old skills until they are completely dropped from the model. If validated again at sufficient levels, the skill returns to the employee profile. These are just two of the many ways we strive for data quality.

3. Governance. Unlike many organizations I know, the skills ecosystem is not owned by the people organization-—at EPAM, subject matter experts drive everything. Of course, HR, TA, L&D, OD, people analytics, and others are part of the governance team, but they are led by SMEs. Why? We believe that quality skills ontology is the lynchpin for everything and that experts close to the work know which skills are most relevant and valuable for their part of the organization and also have the motivation to get those skills right (remember, we’re a professional services firm).

4.? Performance Management. Learning is at the center of a skill-based organization. People are the engine of business, and if the engine isn’t properly tuned or is missing parts (skills), your car (organization) won’t get you to your destination (strategic objectives). At EPAM, we believe this deeply, which is why we tie validated skills to performance management. Although we certainly use a number of other factors, we expect employees to demonstrate the critical skills that are required for their job. This means people can’t keep their jobs or grow in their careers unless their skills are up-to-date. And you know what? Most people are motivated to keep their jobs and grow in their careers, which is why we have a truly continuous learning culture. In many organizations, L&D works in a push economy: they push learning out to the organization and hope people take it up. We’ve turned that economy on its head: employees pull learning from L&D and demand high-quality content and programming, which we provide. For me, this is one of the secrets to success. If you can’t get people to develop new skills, what’s the point?

5 Leadership from from the Top. Do you know who is and always has been the biggest proponent of our skills ecosystem? Our founder/CEO. Remember EPAM’s whole skills journey was initiated to solve a core business challenge (then and now). Our executive team sees skills as a means of achieving business agility. Of course, they care about attrition and learning and engagement and operational efficiencies, but that’s not why we do this. We do it to be nimble and responsive to new technologies, competitors, and opportunities in the market. And it works. We’ve transformed four times as a business (so far) and attribute a lot of that to having skills at the heart of what we do.

For the many people on their own skills journey, I hope this was helpful. And, as always, a big caveat: we don't live in a skills utopia. Our systems are far from perfect; we are always improving the quality and quantity of data; and despite our AI-enabled foresight, we can't predict the future. And we have stumbled many times in our skills journey. The goal here isn't to pretend everything is hunky dory. It's not. But I hope there's something in our experience that will help you see the art of the possible and learn from our trials and triumphs.