Skills is not just a currency – It's HR ecosystem programming language
As we know, to communicate efficiently with a person, we need a specific language, to capture and align on signs meaning. A language enables us to share messages, consisting mainly of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture. Similarly, to communicate with computers, programmers are using programming to communicate with machine, operated through coding languages. The main coding languages nowadays are Python, Java, or C++, among many others.
So far – we can all agree. Now, in a world that is moving fast on the technology side, from touchpoints to platforms, and soon to ecosystems, we will need more and more to extend the way we understand programming language and push the boundaries of our understanding of what is a ‘language’ and what needs to communicate and be communicated.
This is how I would like to think about one of the current key buzzing words of HR, you name it, Skills. We hear a lot about ‘Skill’ as the new currency of our organization when measuring and leveraging on your talent capital. Let's push it further and try to think of ‘Skill' not just as a #currency, but also as a #language that has the capacity to help us build our HR system into an #ecosystem.
But what is the relation between language and skills?
How is a unit of ability captured through the notion of skill connected to a programming language?
To be or not to be a language
I believe we should look at skill as a language. More specifically as the language by which we can operate HR systems to the level of an ecosystem and help us deliver a #seamless #experience to the employee… As there is no way we can build a seamless customer facing interface if we don’t manage a fluidity at the back end, ensuring interconnectivity and shared data. In that case the efficiency of the communication relying less on the individual relationship, and the transmission of the message between two individuals, and more on the capacity of an #ecosystem to interconnect and, ultimately, take synchronous actions. ?
Being from a technology background, having spent a couple of years working on developing coding training programs, I was exposed a lot to #coding , and the possibility to break down ideas in a set of commands leading to operating actions mainly through applications. What I discover through coding, beyond the beauty of being empowered to run a reality you’ve scripted, is the responsiveness. A program encoded can be actualised, can change through time, can extend, and grow… Is ‘organically’ alive – meaning one change in part of the code will affect the entire execution.
Beyond the individual benefit of an enhanced experience, it can really bring to life the concept of workforce planning and push HR practice to its next level. Flip side of the coin, programming might serve not just the organization in quest of adaptability and agility, but also the workforce itself, and every one of us as individuals, helping us to step out of ready-made boxes called jobs. And finally understanding what structure the interactions in between all the dimensions of our relation with an organization. Connecting our dots into a journey.
?From a platform to a responsive ecosystem
When we look at HR digital system today and its outcome, the experience it offers to employees, it is hard not to see a collection of separated islands. At its best it is acting like a platform with an entry point redistributing into segmented avenues. All key dimensions are operating in their own complexities, with their own constraints, maintaining segmentations and imposing boundaries to their own agility.
?This has two majors’ effects:
That’s true – and it has proven very hard to overcome as the different avenues speak different languages. Talent has its own grid, same for compensation, benefits, engagement or learning and development… The translation in between information is very clumsy and rely on quick fixes that act like temporary bridges. If you change anything into the system, the bridges fall apart as they are not dynamics.
But is that what the different expertise of HR looking at so different that it feels impossible to express at least part of it through a shared language? If we go back at the core of its role as business partner and people enabler, HR should be about developing #potential. In other words, offering individual the opportunity to grow, while guiding an organization in best leveraging and increasing its #human capital.
?Then the idea that everyone as a responsibility in that shared mission, that can be articulated through skills could make sense. It’s what the concept of skill as currency expresses. But we need to think about it also in the operating model of our technology, so it is brought to life in and through our technology.
If we manage to do so, then we should be able to enter a new era for our HR ecosystem.
?Coding can be empowerment
A good news about coding it that it can be learn. It takes time to develop as you would take time to acquire a language, but this is not impossible. And it can be quite democratic, meaning that ideally, we should, as HR specialists, learn to articulate our ideas through skills while our people will get familiar at describing themselves through skills.
?Let’s imagine a world where you would hire, compensate skills, develop, and engage based on skills, and operated through skills as a shared language of our HR ecosystem. It might feel hypothetic today but if we think about it seriously then we see the opportunity to have a common focus point on describing different realities with the same language. That might redefine the way we operate in HR and our area of expertise, but it does also open new opportunities that we should be excited about.
?Then on the employee side the outcome would be to finally get into an experience that feels meaningful, seamless, and approachable. Empowering because understandable.
?A currency and a language
So, let’s take this opportunity and learn, through skills, how to reprogram the way we operate and the way we program ourselves to fully create the conditions of a future of work environment.
But we have to embrace it combining the currency and the language opportunities, to deliver an experience inclusive of the transformation to an ecosystem.
Sources
CEO Adloc Oy, CEO SofterHR Sarl
1 年I liked this approach. I think we should see skills as something you give back to your community. Skill based organization should recognize the skills and especially the processes creating those skills.
Innovation | Service design | Building communities | Getting designers to think business & vice versa
2 年Nice one! If skills are a currency, then your silver bullet is lifelong learners! In a changing world, a learners approach to life and business is a genuine asset. Let’s challenge oursleves, and keep on learning. Keep sharing, Clémence!
CEO at NEOBRAIN | Harvard University | Forbes30under30 | Author & Speaker | AI HR
2 年Congrats Clémence ????