Crossing The Talent Management Chasm With Skills Data

Crossing-The-Change-Chasm-With-Skills-Management

The word chasm is defined as a profound difference between two things. When referring to talent management, the chasm exists between the identified, existing skills of your workforce and the required, future skills of your workforce.

Today, using traditional methods to cross the chasm is not sufficient. Factors such as the rapid evolution of technology and the lack of available skilled workers have upended the labor laws of supply and demand. Consequently, the talent management chasm continues to grow wider and deeper across the organization with no signs of slowing down.

To combat and conquer this growing challenge, you need a new talent management strategy with built-in sustainability and continuous integration and deployment. One that will stop the expansion of this skills chasm and help you build a bridge to eventually cross it.

You need an agile workforce methodology.

The agile workforce methodology is built on a strong foundation of digital data that feeds employee mindset, executive support and ultimately the success of your organization.

Digital Skills Data is Important Because…

It all starts with skills data. You must employ digital technology to determine where your employees are, where they need to be and, most importantly, how you are going to get them there. Understanding your current state starts with a baseline of your current employee’s capabilities and understanding how your organization is operating today.

Don’t be fooled. Thinking you know the answer to this question is not the same as knowing the answer. Facts are facts.

Perception is subjective and leaves unwanted opportunities for bias and oversight. Facts are facts. Skills data puts everyone on similar ground. Therefore, it’s important to collect sufficient skills data that helps you:

Define a starting point
Identify critical gaps in skills and proficiencies
Develop a clear, measurable roadmap
Define a successful endpoint

While this process may seem daunting, there are tools that offer a live, automated skills inventory that enables you to visualize your workforce beyond vague head-counts and org charts. These tools empower you and other managers in your organization to capture key insights into your most valuable asset, your people.

But it’s not enough to just know your workforce. You must take action on these new insights and start to develop your workforce in the skills and proficiencies they need to succeed.

Use Data to Drive a Growth Mindset Amongst Employees and Executives

Simply hiring talent is no longer a reasonable solution because there just isn’t enough talent to fill the gap. Upskilling has emerged as a key element in reducing the skills chasm. But, that requires people to endure a transformation.

For many reasons people resist change. Additionally, today’s workforce seeks career security and growth. People want an employer that supports their career goals while also guiding them through their development.

So, it’s not that people don’t want to change, but rather, they don’t know how to make the change happen. Here’s where you need to take a proactive approach to create and facilitating career growth plans within your organization.

Again, this initiative starts with data. With data, you can instill credibility, obtain trust, reduce fear and demonstrate support. Data supplies an unbiased influence you need to truly engage and guide your employees through this change.

You want employees to feel that their role is important to the business. While they may not have the right skills or proficiency levels right now, a commitment to upskilling shows employees that they can develop the skills to remain relevant in the business. In other words, your employees won’t feel like a replaceable resource and instead are worthy of management investing time and resources towards their success.

This encourages a company-wide growth mindset, where the collective focus in on strengthening the workforce as a whole, instead of just finding people to fill jobs.

How do you use data to develop a growth mindset?

Start by letting the data reveal opportunities for growth. Use data visualizations to show your employees where they have the potential to improve and excel. This lends credibility and build grass-roots support for your initiatives. Objectivity helps raise the level of trust that people have in the change rather than thinking this change is just the new flavor of the month.

Data can also help you define objective milestones that align with business objectives. When people are provided a defined, objective path that adds certainty to a previously unknown future it relieves stress, reduces fear, improves productivity, and inspires the growth mindset.

This demonstration of support for the well-being and advancement of your employee helps establish your organization as a place employees can upskill, stay relevant and have career security. An organization with this reputation can expect not only great talent retention but attraction as well.

Let Data Inform Business Strategy and Eliminates Uncertainty

Many executives understand and have embraced agile development methodologies in their organizations. Yet support at the executive level for the agile workforce still lags. At the same time, executives are fully aware of the skills gap they are facing, citing difficulties finding the right talent resulting in longer hiring cycles, delayed projects and slowed growth.

So why the resistance to adopting this new talent management approach?

It’s not so much a lack of will to shift to an agile strategy but uncertainty in how best to apply this new approach to their workforce. For a third time, we turn to data. Data enables your organization to build a portfolio of talent, skills, and competences. Data can help you identify current skills gaps, recognize how these gaps will impact future initiatives, and take immediate action to address the gaps.

Skills data can also be used in overall budget strategies providing concrete justification for training spend and talent acquisition. Data also guides efficient and effective matching of skills to projects, reducing costs and improving productivity.

An agile workforce is more engaged, more productive and more invested in the operational performance of the business. Evidence of this is directly reflected in the products they produce and their interactions with customers. Agility is essential to sustained business success therefore executive support of the agile mindset throughout an organization must be a top priority.

Attracting, retaining, and developing top talent that can execute business objectives is the goal of any great talent management strategy. Today, finding that talent has become a costly challenge. With demand far outpacing supply, you must break from tradition and employ methods that are rooted in data.

Armed with the right data, tools, and strategy you can lead your company across the talent management chasm into the future of work.

Ready to enhance your talent management strategy? Start leveraging skills data today with Visual Workforce.

Learn how Visual Workforce helps you automate the discovery and optimization of the skills of your people, teams, and projects to help you cross the talent management chasm.

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