Why Your Company Needs A Standard Skills Vocabulary

In the complex nature of business, managers work hard to simplify the execution of everyday business processes. But, what about simplifying communication via a common language?

For example, accountants use the same standard language to communicate the financial health of the company to colleagues, executives, and investors. Without this standard language for a complex business component like accounting, it would be incredibly challenging to communicate any successes or issues effectively.

Do Skills Deserve A Common Vocabulary Across The Enterprise?

In today’s economy where the way we work is drastically changing, skills are becoming the new currency of business. As with any currency, it’s important to be able to measure your current balance in order to forecast future needs. And when multiple people are involved, a standard vocabulary makes collaboration on this effort quick, easy, and actionable.

What Does a Common Skills Vocabulary Look Like?

Typically, companies that have successfully adopted a common skills vocabulary have an organized library of skills that the organization requires to conduct regular business. Managers can pull skills from this library to create job descriptions, performance reviews, RFP proposals, training plans, and much more. We’ve found that the best way to maintain an organized skills library is through a centralized system (more on that later).

Here are the benefits of having a common skills vocabulary.

A Common Language Between Managers & Employees

A manager-employee relationship is built on trust. Developing a common skills vocabulary provides consistency in reporting and performance reviews by keeping you and your employees on the same page. Offering an accessible skills library also enables employees to understand their role’s expectations and measure their own growth.

A Common Language Amongst Managers

A common skills vocabulary also improves manager-to-manager communication. For example, if a manager is looking to fill a position for an upcoming project, he or she can develop a job description using the standard language. The recruiting manager will know the specific skills to look for throughout the hiring and interview process. The same goes for training plans. The standard language eliminates the need for back-and-forth conversations and enables quick action.

A Common Language Between Managers and Executives

When managers are developing reports and plans for executives to review, a common skills vocabulary again improves communication. For example, instead of having 3 different versions of “collaboration” skills, there is only one “collaboration” skill. Instead of 3 different versions of “javascript programming” skills, there is only one. A common language streamlines plans and eliminates miscommunication holes.

How To Start Building Your Skills Vocabulary

You may be thinking- we have hundreds of skills, how are we going to create a standardized library of all of them? Here are a few of our best tips you can implement right now:

Adopt A Central Skills Management Tool

Investing in a central skills management platform reduces the manual work to create and maintain a standard skills vocabulary. Tools like these are designed to make it easy for anyone in your organization to select a skill from an organized list and add it to job descriptions, training plans, or performance reviews.

Look To Existing Job Descriptions

When you’re looking to get people to adopt a new language, start by pulling from the existing one. The best place to start is your existing job descriptions. If you see common skills across job descriptions for the same role, then pull those for your library. If you see differences, this is a great opportunity to collaborate with colleagues to find out their preferred vocabulary. Starting from a familiar foundation is almost always better than starting from scratch when implementing a large process change like a skills library.

Be Patient

Remember the last time you tried to learn a new language. It could be French class from high school or trying to understand your teenager’s “cool” lingo. Remember how hard it was to get your brain to think an entirely different way than you are used to?

As with any company-wide adoption, developing an established skills vocabulary takes time and patience. Stay committed and make it easy for managers, employees, and even executives to leverage the skills library. Again, this is where a centralized system is beneficial. If people see that using the skills library is easier than their current methods, they will be much more likely to adopt it. However, any change takes time, commitment, and patience.

You use standard language across your organization every day. Skills are no exception. Skills are the currency that defines the value of your most important asset, people. In order to fully understand and communicate your people’s value, you must start with a common skills vocabulary to ensure everyone is on the same page.

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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