Skills Management

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What is Skills Management?

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Skills Management is the process of collating your organization’s skills data to understand employee competencies and optimize their proficiency. Skills data pinpoints employee interests and competencies and helps you find an intersection of both to ensure optimum proficiency and job satisfaction. With skills management, you get a microscopic view of the existing skills and the skills that you’ll need in the future.

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When it’s done for day-to-day needs, such as assigning jobs to the people best suited for them, it’s called Operational Skills Management. When it comes to future needs, it’s called Strategic Skills Management. It gears up your workforce for future work while also preventing skills obsolescence.

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Skills Management begins with identifying the skills necessary for various organizational roles, considering current and future needs. This can be done through job analysis, competency mapping, and performance evaluations. Once the required skills are identified, the organization can assess its employees' existing skill levels through various methods, such as self-assessments, peer reviews, and skill tests.

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Key Components of Skills Management

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Skills Identification and Assessment

Skill management is all about understanding the strengths your workforce brings to the table. Traditionally, this might involve manual tracking skills through spreadsheets or internal systems. Modern systems use artificial intelligence to gather information from resumes, HR data, and more, creating a clear picture of your current skill set.

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Once you have this information, evaluating these skills is essential to understand your team's capabilities. This used to be done through surveys or performance reviews, but modern skill management systems can automate a lot of this process.

Identifying Skill Gaps

The next step is figuring out where the gaps lie. This involves comparing what your employees can do now with the skills they'll need in the future. Here's where different leaders play a role:

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HR or People Operations: Focus on ensuring employees have the skills they need for their current jobs, which might involve additional training or development programs.

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Business Leaders: Look towards the future, keeping an eye on industry trends and technological advancements. They can then anticipate what skills the organization will need in the coming years.

Learning and Development

By identifying these skill gaps, you can create targeted training programs to bridge them. These programs can take many forms, from workshops and online courses to mentorship programs and hands-on training. But the goal goes beyond just filling the gaps - it's about creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

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Skill management isn't a one-time thing. In a thriving learning environment, employees are constantly acquiring new skills.  This ongoing process keeps your skillset up-to-date and ensures everyone in the company knows what expertise is available. Ideally, employees can easily update their skill information within the system, keeping it accurate and valuable for everyone – from sales staff knowing what skills exist within the company to HR understanding where new skills need to be developed or recruited.

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Also, discover our latest blog featuring the 'Top 16 Skills Management Software', offering unparalleled insights into your team's skills and performance for 2024 and beyond.

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Skills Management Benefits

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• Bridge Skill Gaps – Knowing exactly where your workforce lacks can improve the efficacy of your upskilling and reskilling initiatives and ultimately close skill gaps.
• Futureproof Workforce – Skills Management helps your workforce keep pace with the industry. When you expect and plan for change, adaptability becomes easy.
• Reduce Employee Turnover – Investing in employees’ growth makes them feel valued. Apart from that, when their interests are aligned with their jobs, turnover plummets.
• Strategic Resource Planning – With Skills Management, you know which skills are always in demand and which are losing relevance. This informs your future hiring decisions.

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Terms related to Skills Management

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• Skills Taxonomy and Ontology – A Skills taxonomy organizes skills in a hierarchy, while a skills ontology defines relationships and properties between those skills.  
• Skills Assessment – Evaluating an employee's current abilities to see if they align with present or future job needs. A skill assessment may consist of tests, examinations, simulations, interviews, or demonstrations to assess an employee’s competency and potential.
• Skills Tracking – Skills tracking is understanding your employees' skills and continuously updating that information.
• Skills Development – Skills development is acquiring and improving abilities to perform tasks effectively.
• Skills Utilization – Skills utilization ensures your workforce has the right skills to do their jobs now and in the future.