Are You Skills Ready?

Edition one of this newsletter provided an overview of my first three months of skills research, and concluded that 'skills is a thing, but it may not be for everyone'.

In edition two, I explain why I believe this and why organisations need to assess 'skills readiness' before embarking on their skills-based journey.

Our research with global organisations, including Allianz Randstad Enterprise 谷歌 思科 Arcadis Bupa EPAM Systems NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration 渣打银行 诺华 has helped to inform what TQ calls its 'Skills readiness framework'. Our framework is a diagnostic that enables companies to meaningfully assess themselves and their readiness to become a skills-based organisation.

Our current version of the diagnostic is highly qualitative, so we are working on a future version that strengthens the quantitative aspect of our framework and further defines our 'readiness dimensions' including a view on which dimensions are most important and influential to an accurate assessment of readiness.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Sandra Loughlin, PhD from EPAM Systems last week, and it was encouraging to hear her comments on skills readiness as the four areas she talked to are already contained in our framework. Epam Systems is probably the most mature skills-based organisation in the world, so this was especially reassuring.

The image below brings TQs framework into view:

This basic view allows you to quickly spot several important issues:

1) Business / Function #3 is largely ready for skills.

• Its employees are highly engaged and mature in thinking
• Skills is relevant to the workforce segment and access to these skills is difficult externally
• Their ways of working are zlready aligned to operating with a fluid workforce
• They are already pretty data mature

However, the leadership isn't ready and they are still operating with traditional mindsets. They may think more individually and not as a whole; they may prefer to 'hoard talent' rather than 'grow and release' talent; their incentive structure may not be aligned.

Outcome: Until the leadership is on board and this dimension matures, Business / Function #3 is not a good candidate for a skills pilot.

2) Business / Function #1 is also a poor candidate for a skills pilot.

• Maturity is low across most dimensions, particularly relating to mindsets
• Employee trust and engagement is low
• Data maturity is also low
• The workforce segment itself may not be as relevant for skills as some of the other parts of the businesses

Outcome: It may mean the various use-cases for skills will be less limited for this business than others, or that a more limited case for change exists here.

3) It is clear from the readiness assessment that Business / Function #2 is very ready for skills

It's mature, engaged, well aligned and experiencing talent challenges. This is the perfect area for the skills journey to begin and where we recommend a pilot takes place.

Let me bring to life a few of these dimensions and explain why they are so important.

Change Management: Our research shows that businesses that invest heavily in change management activities to support their skills journey tend to perform better. You may recall my $1:$5 ratio from edition one , implying that for every $1 spent on technology, companies should invest $5 on change activities. Importantly, change needs to be top-down and bottom-up, so leadership is crucial. Further, as skills will result in business transformation, leadership has to be on board with the strategy, and ideally own the journey rather than outsourcing the accountability to People teams. If leaders are not bought in the strategy will fail. Therefore, an assessment of leaders mindset maturity towards skills is crucial.

Adoption: There is no skills party without people participating and being willing to share their own skills data, career goals and aspirations. Equally, people need to be willing to learn, invest in their careers, upskill or maybe reskill over time. So workforce mindset maturity is critical too. One trend our research is showing is that where trust levels between workers and leaders are high, there is more willingness to participate. The same is also true with employee engagement levels, which is understandable given the relationship that has been proven to exist between trust and engagement.

Ways of working: It is becoming very clear that businesses operating in a more 'agile' or project-based environment are more ready than others. Professional Service firms mostly work on a project-by-project basis and resource management is critical, so moving to a skills-based organisation is more accessible for companies like this. The same can be said for companies that have moved to more informal or formal agile structures. The skills strategy lends itself well to this way of working. This is mostly due to the reduced change management required and the relative ease of moving to the new practices. Traditionally structured businesses with strong hierarchies and siloed working practices will require significant change management, especially if this is coupled with mindset shifts.

TQ will continue to enhance its skills readiness framework in the coming months as we delve deeper into our global research but we hope this initial description and explanation helps people and companies embarking on their own skills journey.

So that's it for edition two. So far we have explored the relevance of skills to organisations, and now, their readiness to play. In future editions we will explore some of the more challenging aspects of skills-based organisations including appoaches to proficiency ratings; the inclusion of human skills; and various approaches to pilots and roll-outs.