Skills! Skills! Skills!

Does it seem like all anyone is talking about is skills today? Since the beginning of my HR life (which has been long, but not as long as this concept has been around), the concept of skills is not new. Skills have always been in existence, they are a component of competencies, which are a component of capabilities.

And so I dismissed the latest discussion of skills as the fad du jour for us business and HR folks who needed another way to demonstrate the value of our roles.?

But I’ve had some time to do some research and some thinking, and even as I’m writing this my thoughts around skills are becoming clearer. So I write this with healthy optimism but a word of caution.

A long time ago, organizations had lots of competencies and each competency had multiple levels. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert. It took a long time to create these competency frameworks, it took a long time to explain them to managers, it took a long time to explain them to employees and it took an even longer time for employees to develop them. We designed our performance management systems against these competencies and measured the attainment of these with some success, but not necessarily consistently or productively.

Enter skills. In today’s day and age of fleeting attention spans and living in our VUCA environment, the ability to develop individual skills may be easier than moving from a beginner to advanced level of a defined competency. Skills may be more tangible and measurable than the complexity of competencies. Many roles have a combination of technical skills and strategic skills (aka “soft” skills but I don’t use that word). Just as in job families where roles are similar but have their differentiating qualities, roles have many of the same skills needed to be successful, albeit in different degrees and of expertise required per role. A family of skills may make up a competency or capability.

Since companies are now looking at the skill level, we can leverage modern learning tools to our advantage. Gone are the days of weeks-long learning programs bringing people together to focus on skill development. It takes time to develop these programs, it takes money and resources to take employees out of their busy schedules to focus on learning. This concept is a luxury, which continues to exist for very specific roles and people. For the majority of us, we still have a lot to learn. But the expectation of learning is now done in the flow of work, and we CAN build skills in the flow of work.?

The expectation is to learn on the job, with tools available at the point of need. The opportunity to develop skills can be done in an agile and efficient manner using bite-sized and micro learning. Employees can develop some skills more quickly than a complex competency. And as skills are being developed, we can directly impact employee engagement by recognizing, rewarding and motivating employees who’ve attained competence at the skill level. Not the job or competency or capability level which will come over a longer period of time. When it comes to employee engagement, we don’t have the luxury of time. If we align our reward and recognition systems at the level of skill attainment, we may be able to attract and retain talent more quickly and effectively.?

??Skills + bite-sized + tangibly measured + recognized= Increased Employee Engagement

So I think we are onto something with skills, if it’s done right. There remains a place for competencies and capabilities, but to recognize and acknowledge employees for their development of skills will go a long way.?

And now, my word of caution. How many skills do we need at one time? To what level and degree of expertise do we need said skills? What do we do with the skills we have, when we need to add on more skills? Where do they go? I once had the skill to create some pretty complex excel formulas, however I haven’t used this skill in years. Is it ok that it’s gone? Like muscle memory (fitness reference here) will it come back if needed? Do I need to practice it every once in a while, though I’m focusing on building new skills?

This may be a post for another time, but we need to be careful about adding too much complexity to our skill building, as then we may find ourselves once again, creating the unattainable, multiple levels of competencies and capabilities to which our employees move on before achieving full their potentials at our organizations.?

How have you seen skill development used in a positive way?