Skills, Skills-Based - Help or Hindrance?

Hey there! It’s Friday!

As we wrap up, let's unwrap some sparking ideas?

Let’s talk about the whole ‘skill-based’ thing that’s has triggered mixed reactions!

Some of us - “Ah it is another trend” and

Some of us – “are adopting it”

You know, ‘going skill based’ is like the new oil.

It sounds super cool, right? Like it’s going to totally change the game for jobs, performance, and productivity.

I find it hard to ignore the value here.

??You can shatter the traditional talent pool constraints. By assessing the ability to do a task you can expand the size of talent pool for hiring.

??As an interviewee, you can show rather tell. (Sometimes we may not be able to sell our experience through words only.)

??During the pandemic, we saw food servers transition to customer service roles (as highlighted in HBR). Yes, transferable skills! Also, how skills can dissolve the biases against cross-industry experience.

I love the perks, but we can't ignore the downsides.

What's the issue with 'skills-based'?

Here’s the bitter pill! ?? Skills are necessary but the method to identify and map them is arduous. And contributes to the very problem it claims to combat.

A recent McKinsey survey reveals 48% of respondents find validating skills and competencies a challenge.

Underneath all that hype, there’s this super tricky process of figuring out what skills are needed and who’s got them. And let me tell you, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies.

Traditionally, skill mapping’s been this big, centralized deal.

HR,OD, and L&D folks huddled around a table, trying to document every skill under the sun, getting everyone to agree, and trying to make it streamlined for all.

Exhausting, right?

And it often fails to capture team level needs or keep pace with business model changes. The way the skills are explained ends up being complicated for use.

Business needs to spend time translating dense skill level descriptions. Not so great!

Now, having said that, consider the traditional approach of hiring for broad education and experience.

This could limit your accessible talent pool.

After hiring, you still need to train the person in specific tasks or outsource to specialists. Many times, you may feel it was a wrong hire.

What's the up-side of skills-based?

What if you could split your project or workflows into tasks and assign each to a specialist? ?

You could widen your talent pool by hiring for specific skills like graphics design or AI data annotation. And you could test them upfront.

I've witnessed the value of skill assessments firsthand. Decades ago, we assessed vendor script writers. This used to help us gauge their current skill level and provide necessary training. They resisted initially, thinking we demanded too much effort. ?Yet, it eventually avoided excessive rework and built rock-solid teams.

Skill assessments demonstrate abilities. At the same time, limiting the bandwidth of those casting a wide net looking for jobs. ( this is my inference).

In my regular research readings, I have come across organizations who use UX/UI design projects as hiring assessments. I have taken Learning design assessments in my own search for jobs.

So, what's the bottom line?

Here, I ask myself. What’s stopping us from going skills-based? Creating skills assessment takes time.

Before that, we have a complicated, protracted skills mapping. Many skill mapping projects get shelved after running for few long years.

We got to ask ourselves a question! Do we really need that much detail in skill mapping, or are we making things harder than they need to be? ?

Here’s where we hit some major roadblock:

Roadblock 1: Identifying and assessing skills is not easy. Teams spend countless hours and may still not reach conclusions.

Roadblock 2: Even when skills are identified, dense documentation buries descriptions.

So, what’s wrong with that? ?

This is time-consuming for employees to interpret in the context of their roles.

Or the skills live in separate skills assessment systems. That is good right! Digital Avatars? ?

Digital may seem like a solution, the systems storing them may fail to allow creation of tailored development recommendations based on individuals’ gaps.

The skill assessment is one system, and the learning content is in another.

How to make it work smoothly? That question itself reveals the challenge!

Roadblock 3: This may sound like I am nit picking. Terminology deters people from adopting skill/competency maps.

If it feels difficult, we use emotions to decide against it.

Final thought:

My recommendation is to take the good from? the traditional ways and simplify the new Skill-based mapping process. ?

Stay tuned, because in the next piece, I’ll dive into some practical ways to tackle these roadblocks. Making way for a skill mapping process that’s as agile and dynamic as today’s business world needs it to be.