Solving the Jigsaw Puzzle of Skills Intelligence: The Beginning

Ahem! The big bang in the world of HR architecture and technology is here.??

Yes, it's none other than skills intelligence.??

?It goes by different names and definitions.?

But, to cut a long story short, skills intelligence is the practical usage of up-to-date skills inventories, skills taxonomies, and market skills intelligence to make intelligent talent decisions for building skills-first organizations.?

When you have these critical pieces of the skills puzzle in place, conjoined with the power of a skills intelligence platform, your organization can unleash the full potential of your workforce.

So, let’s look at the core elements of this puzzle in detail.?

Now, What is this Skills Inventory??

A skills inventory is a repository of skills, educational qualifications, and work experiences of the current employees in your organization. It can also include an expansive list of information with different certifications, licenses, relevant pieces of information on training programs attended, and skilled hobbies of your employees.??

Similarly, do remember that a skills inventory has to be a dynamic database with timely updates. It is integral to have an up-to-date skills inventory with skills data collected from your employees to keep up with your organization's business goals and strategies.?

Your organization can create a skills inventory by collecting skills data from different sources.??

By investing in skills inventory, your organization can strategically improve its workforce capabilities and create a future leadership bench. However, you can utilize it better when leveraged with skills intelligence for benchmarking and identifying the critical skills of the future.

For instance, let's look at an IT company's skills inventory focusing on skills like machine learning, analytics, big data, python, AWS, data visualization, C++, programming, communication, etc. Here, the skills inventory will have details of its employees based on these skill sets collected from their social, internal system, user input, and validated skills data. Additionally, the individual skills matrix of each employee will provide further information on whether or not they have the required skill sets.

For example, let's take an employee named Katy and analyze her machine-learning skills. Here, the skills inventory will provide data on if Katy has machine learning as a skill based on her social data collected from LinkedIn, her resume, etc. Similarly, it will consider the internal system data (like the projects Katy worked on previously), user input data (including the details provided by Katy's manager), and validated skills data (based on the skills assessments completed) to ensure if Katy has machine learning skills or not.??

Moving forward, integrating skills inventory into skills intelligence can help identify skills gaps, initiate learning and development programs, create workforce planning, and so forth.???

Let's move on to the next integral element of the skills intelligence puzzle. Well, no surprises this time. It's skills taxonomies.?

What is Skills Taxonomy??

Let's start with what Josh Bersin has to say about skills taxonomy. Josh Bersin considers skills taxonomy and intelligence platforms as the next big things.??

Skills taxonomies, or skills ontologies, refer to a comprehensive infrastructure of skills where different skills are present in an easy-to-visualize format with skills clusters or groups of overlapping skills, skills names, descriptions, hierarchies, and skills maps. Your company can optimize its business decisions and attain operational efficiency by making the best out of skills taxonomies.?

Let's look at an example of how ESCO created a skills taxonomy for the UK by utilizing the power of AI. As part of this process, the researchers gathered 62,892,486 job adverts from Text Kernel. From here, they formed a random sample of 500,000 job alerts and then, using AI, created skills sentence predictions and found 19,755,486 skills sentences. Here, they clustered skills sentences and formed a list of 6685 skills.???

Skills taxonomy is one of the first layers within a skills intelligence platform that works by incorporating taxonomies collected from open libraries, skills management vendors, existing organizational skills data, and other sources like LMS and ATS. This skills taxonomy relevant to your organization and its business needs within the skills intelligence platform can help you perform skills matching, facilitate skills insights, create skills matrixes, etc.?

Market Skills Intelligence? Is It the same as Skills Intelligence??

So, let's get things straight.?

Market skills intelligence isn't the same as skills intelligence.?

Market skills intelligence is a feature that can help you find out skill adjacencies and curate upskilling/reskilling pathways for your employees.?

For instance, consider your company wants to enhance its capabilities in data science, but your organization doesn't have any employees with data science skill sets.?

When put into practical use on a skills intelligence platform like ours, market skills intelligence can suggest employees with adjacent skills who can be easily upskilled or reskilled. In the case of data science, if you have employees skilled in statistics, your company can upskill them quickly to attain the relevant competence in data science.?

Remember that you can only obtain these insights with market skills intelligence when put into use with your company's skills inventory and skills taxonomy on a skills intelligence platform.

You might ask: Why Skills Intelligence? What is the Purpose???

The answer is simple.?

Skills intelligence can create a pathway to connect all the pieces of the skills puzzle to unlock your workforce's true potential. Since skills are the new currencies, evolving as the DNAs of every organization, your employees have to be skill-fit to remain relevant now and in the future.?

Well, before we move forward, let’s delve into some facts.

As per LinkedIn’s Future of Skills, between 2021 and 2025, skills could change from 39% to 44%. Similarly, according to estimations from the World Economic Forum, 85 million jobs could get displaced by 2025.?

All these facts mean that your employees have to engage in continuous learning and development processes to align with your company’s business strategies and facilitate growth. Not just because many skills are becoming obsolete but because new ones are emerging.

By the way, there are countless other reasons for relying on skills intelligence. ?

So, how can you benefit from Skills Intelligence?

All these components—skills inventory, skills taxonomy, and market intelligence, when leveraged by a platform like iMocha, with an extensive skills library, can help your organization attain skills intelligence.

Through this, your company can thrive better and conduct pre-joining and fresher training programs, perform skills gap analysis, create individual training paths, upskill/reskill, have certificate programs, enhance internal mobility, focus on learning adoptions, attain training effectiveness, initiate appraisal and performance management seamlessly. Here, you can bring in diversity, equity, and inclusivity and stay out of all forms of systemic and unconscious biases with the efficient usage of skills intelligence.

Now, let's look at what Sujit Karpe, CTO of iMocha, has to add on skills intelligence:

“Skills intelligence can be the next big thing in the world of HR. It can be a way through which your company can make the best out of your internal skills inventory, the hierarchical skills taxonomies, and the market skills intelligence. Thus, skills intelligence can aid in creating a single platform for executives, talent leaders, and CHROs for performing workforce planning, internal mobility, recruitment, upskilling, performance appraisal, employee engagement and retention, and more.”?

With several benefits and use cases in place, achieving skills intelligence by including a skills intelligence platform in your HR architecture can be an excellent way to prepare your organization for all digital transformations and reinventions.

Anyhow, that is all we have in store for today.??

We will be back with more on skills intelligence and other HR trends on Skillology soon. By the way, you can check out iMocha to learn more.

Until then, adios!