What we’re talking about…

As we dive into the age of digital transformation, the skills gap continues to expand. According to PWC’s 2019 CEO Survey, “availability of key skills” moved from 5th to 3rd amongst issues CEOs perceive as threats to organizational growth.

Businesses should always track their workforce’s skills and capabilities. Without this data, leaders could be making uninformed business decisions that are costing them valuable time, money, and talent. How can businesses avoid the consequences of a looming skills gap?  

With Visual Workforce, skills management initiatives don’t need to be year-long or even six-month projects. Organizations can leverage out-of-the-box skills libraries, a powerful survey engine, and pre-built visualizations so they can collect and catalogue data about their employees’ skills and proficiencies and start generating valuable insights about their workforce in days, not weeks or months.

For decades, HR leaders have been trying to eliminate biases and become more objective when it comes to making human capital decisions. We believe that a rigorous approach to skills management can go a long way towards helping organizations accomplish this goal.

The opportunity to embrace a more objective, data-driven approach to human capital decision-making is there – organizations just need to put the systems in place to weave the collection, analysis, and use of critical skills data into their existing processes and company culture. Below are four steps you can take to revolutionize the way you approach human capital decision-making.

Let’s face it - it can be a struggle to get people to do anything on a regular basis, aside from checking Instagram. Yet, a skills inventory that is out of date can be a major blow to the efficacy of a skills management initiative and the overall impact that skills data can have on human capital decisions. So, how can your organization incentivize people to proactively keep their skills up to date?

We have identified four easy steps that any organizations can take to keep skills management top of mind and get long-term buy-in from across the organization.

When it comes to skills management, the single most important thing you can do is get alignment on the proficiency definitions that will be used to measure skills across the organization. You want to make sure that a rating of a 4 means the same thing to a sales manager as it does to someone in HR or technology.

In effect, what you want to do is create a rating system that can be applied accurately and consistently across the organization by different managers who are rating employees on widely different skills.

HR professionals know that soft skills can be just as important as hard or technical skills when it comes to finding, developing, and retaining top talent. In fact, soft skills can often play a huge role in whether a new hire, promotion, or assignment works out in the long run. According to a recent study published by LinkedIn, “92% of respondents say soft skills are more important than technical skill” and “89%...[of] bad hires typically lack soft skills.”

With numbers like that, it is no wonder that insight into employees’ soft skills is high on the priority lists of many organizations. The problem is, most don’t know where to start.

Change can be intimidating and for many organizations the activities around a skills survey can be seen as a prelude to a big change like layoffs, a reorg, or even a merger or acquisition. This is a natural, albeit frustrating, response to this type of initiative – but it can be avoided.

That's why we've identified 4 steps you can take to put your employees’ minds at ease when it comes to skills management.

Today we’re kicking off a new series here on the Visual Workforce blog. It’s called Burning Questions and it’s focused on answering the questions we hear most commonly when we speak with HR professionals and organizational leaders who are embarking on skills management initiatives.

This week we’re tackling a question that’s fundamental to any skills management program: “How do we know what skills we should be tracking?” It’s a tricky one and the answer will vary from company to company (and even from team to team), but we’ve got some tips to get you started.

Let’s get straight to it- 2020 is the year of upskilling. Are you hopping on the upskilling bandwagon?

While upskilling may not seem all that different from regular training, the context in which upskilling applies differs greatly. Employees experience regular training to expand their skill sets and advance their careers. But, when companies see macro shifts in the way they operate, such as a massive digital transformation, that requires vastly new skills they can turn to upskilling to fill those gaps.

If you are a manager in today’s business world, you have been involved in some level of workforce planning. Workforce Planning is the process of analyzing, forecasting, and planning workforce supply and demand, assessing gaps, and determining target talent management interventions to ensure that an organization has the right people - with the right skills in the right places at the right time - to fulfill its mandate and strategic objectives.

With Visual Workforce, there’s no need to manually build a stand-alone skills matrix in Excel ever again. Our smart, scalable Skill and Proficiency Matrix visualization delivers familiarity to long-time Excel users, while simultaneously leveraging the power, scalability, and integration of the Visual Workforce platform.

A few weeks back we explored the 4 technological limitations that spell the end for the traditional, Excel-based skills matrix. And while the old way may be gone for good, the skills matrix itself isn’t going anywhere anytime soon – it’s too ingrained in the way HR professionals, managers, and project leaders operate on a day-to-day basis. However, as organizations seek to modernize the way they make workforce planning decisions, tools like the skills matrix need to evolve to keep up.

This week we’re examining the 5 characteristics that define a modern approach to building skills matrices. These matrices need to be built to handle the growing demands of modern business and able to arm businesspeople with access to insights about the skills and competencies of their people.

Can an Excel-based approach to building skills matrices successfully adapt to the changing needs and requirements of modern business? We don’t know about you, but we’re not holding our breath. Let’s look at a few of the technological limitations that have doomed the traditional skills matrix to your desktop’s recycling bin.

Focusing on employee growth is crucial to the success of any organization. While engagement is important, investment in hard and soft skills will return exponential benefits in productivity and performance. 

There are also several indirect benefits to Skills Planning, like talent retention, that contribute to your company’s competitive advantage and bottom line. The top reason people left their jobs in 2018 was boredom. Employees didn’t feel like their managers were challenging them enough, so they sought career growth elsewhere. Additionally, a recent survey found 42% of respondents highlighted learning and professional development as the most important factors when deciding where to work. 

Organizations are leveraging data to improve all aspects of business. Many industries are adopting a data-driven mindset to make better business decisions, personalize the customer experience, and enhance products. Even non-technical industries, like fashion and sports, are finding unique ways to incorporate data into their products and operations.

The quantity of available data is massive. Nearly every action in a business can be tracked, analyzed, and improved. However, how we translate big data into actionable insights is still a work in progress.

Mergers and Acquisitions are complex. Evaluating and deciding how two organizations will transform into a single successful venture requires comprehensive due diligence. This involves investigating everything from financial records to business models to intellectual property. 

Yet, there’s one element of prospective companies that often gets deprioritized during this rigorous process. People. 

Digital transformation in any organization is a very big change. But change must happen for any business to survive. The most recent report 2019 Executive Perspectives on Top Risks states boards and C-suite leaders globally are most concerned about their organizations’ ability to transform so they can compete with organizations that are “born digital.” 

Change is inevitable, especially in today’s evolving digital economy. The majority, if not all, organizations will undergo a transformation in the coming years. This could be the result of a merger or acquisition, a product expansion, a strategic pivot, or a digital transformation. 

We wanted to explore how leveraging data in your change management approach can help combat several challenges business leaders face that contribute to the 70% failure rate. To investigate how data can elevate your approach to change management, we sat down with two experts: Cynthia Siewert and Tammy Marino MBA, Ed.D. 

The skills gap is growing problem facing numerous industries. No company, big or small, is exempt from a potential skills shortage, particularly in technical skills. According to a recent study, 60% of U.S. employers have job openings that stay vacant for 12 weeks or longer. On average these vacancies are costing businesses up to $800,000 annually. 

However, the implications of a skills gap takes on a different, often more intense meaning for a growing venture than an established corporation.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) offer an effective strategy for companies looking to enhance their competitive advantage and bottom line. According to the Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances, the number of M&A deals decreased by 8% in 2018. However, the average value of these deals has increased to 3.8 trillion USD.

These numbers show us that the financial stakes of M&As are higher than ever, and the importance of achieving post-merger synergies is vital to the long-term success of the companies involved.

Employee engagement has become an overused buzzword and often misinterpreted as only developing "engaging" cultures that keep employees happy. Statistics tell a different story.

In 2018, it was predicted that 42 million employees would leave their jobs.

Why are these statistics so dismal if employers are emphasizing employee engagement?

According to a recent poll of nearly 5,000 professionals, the top reason people are looking for a new job is that they are bored. Employees don't feel like they are challenged enough and are seeking new means of professional growth.

The phrase digital transformation has become a regular buzzword in the business world. Organizations are gearing up to incorporate new technologies like cloud infrastructure, AI, and the Internet of Things, all promising new operational efficiencies and competitive advantages.

CEOs referring to "digital" in their strategic plans increased from 2.1 percent in 2012 to 13.4 percent in 2018. It's not all talk either. Gartner predicts worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.2 percent from expected spending of $3.7 trillion in 2018. Those are some significant, expensive commitments to change.

In 2021, talent shortages are at a 15-year high. Finding top talent that is proficient in the skills of tomorrow is difficult for many companies.

Some companies recognize this modern recruiting challenge and are shifting their approach to how they hire. Instead of searching for new employees outside the company, savvy managers are looking in their own backyard to fill the talent void.

This approach is called Internal Mobility.

As the skills gap continues to widen, especially in technical fields, companies need to consider the long-term value of training employees internally versus hiring new people. A shortage of top talent already exists across several industries. According to the 2018 Talent Shortage Survey,  33% of employers say the main reason they can't fill roles is a lack of applicants, while 27% say candidates lack the necessary hard or soft skills.

The quantity of available data is massive. Nearly every action in a business can be tracked, analyzed, and improved. However, how we translate big data into actionable insights is still a work in progress.

Your projects have an immediate and long-term effect on the health and success of your organization. You need projects to be completed on-time, on-budget, and the result has to work. Simply put, the life of your organization depends on it. The people you place on your project teams will make or break your project results. Selecting the right people with the right skills is not an exact science, but you can always improve your decisions using data. 

Here are 6 ways to use data to build better project teams.

Plain and simple, the #1 thing HR professionals can do to improve in 2020 is to learn how to leverage data. This is not a new thought, nor is it necessarily a new skill. HR professionals have been using data for generations just not in the ways that data must be used today.

Onboarding is a crucial step in any employee-employer relationship. It’s your new employees’ first impression of your company and this impression is long-lasting. Think about your last first date. Did they make a good or bad impression? How did that affect the rest of the relationship?

Now, this isn’t a one-way street. A great onboarding process gets new hires to work faster, enables greater productivity, and earns a greater return for the company. Given the benefits (and downsides), optimizing onboarding processes should be a top priority. Yet, the numbers show this is not the case for most organizations.

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.

Employee engagement has become an overused buzzword and often misinterpreted as only developing "engaging" cultures that keep employees happy. Statistics tell a different story.

In 2018, it was predicted that 42 million employees would leave their jobs.

Why are these statistics so dismal if employers are emphasizing employee engagement?

According to a recent poll of nearly 5,000 professionals, the top reason people are looking for a new job is that they are bored. Employees don't feel like they are challenged enough and are seeking new means of professional growth.

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?

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.

When you think of people analytics you may think it’s only an HR tool or that you don’t need a tool to tell you about your people. You work with them every day. As their manager, you already know them. Well, that may be true, but how do you really know? Is it just a gut feeling or do you have hard evidence? 

We are constant creators of data at-home, at-work and everywhere in between. We understand that organizations are collecting information about us, our shopping, our movements, our relationships, our habits. It’s through the collection of this data, and analysis of this data, that we get bombarded with even more data suggesting things to buy, places to go, people to meet, things to do. 

Data. Is. Everywhere. 

It’s never been more critical for managers to have a clear vision of their team’s capabilities. With IT systems becoming more intertwined, gaps in skill sets threaten the overall performance of your team and its ability to deliver on time and on budget. 

With a bird’s eye view of your team’s skills, you can attract, retain, and train your talent to build your highest performing team yet.

Our CEO, Bryan Bostic recently sat down with Reworked, a digital publication covering the r/evolution of work and the transformation of the workplace, to discuss the skill-based revolution that is occurring in HR.

As organizations plan for a post-COVID world they face stark challenges associated with increased economic uncertainty, a highly competitive global talent marketplace, and the rapidly growing remote work movement. Recently, Visual Workforce, in partnership with ChamberRVA and Richmond SHRM, hosted a Virtual Town Hall designed to dig into those very issues.

The event shed light on how business leaders are thinking about the evolving role data and analytics can play in shaping conversations around employee retention, emergency succession planning, learning and development initiatives, and workforce optimization.

In early July, Amazon made waves with its announcement that the company will pledge over $700 million to upskill more than 100,000 of its U.S. employees. Amazon's big move comes during a critical shift in the U.S. workforce. 

An urgent need for new digital skills and a small talent pool leaves a massive skills gap in our workforce. People cannot keep up with the pace of digital transformation, while employers are struggling to recruit people with the right skills to adopt new technology.  Amazon recognizes these changes and is taking proactive steps to lead their company into the future of work. By investing in upskilling their employees now, they are setting the stage for long-term, sustainable success in the digital age.  

The skills gap is real, and it’s growing. As industries continue to move towards a new, digital era of work, the skills gap is only getting bigger, and it has real consequences - we’re talking a potential $2.5 trillion drag on the U.S. economy over the next decade. So, why is this problem getting worse, not better? The rapid pace of technological change, educational deficiencies (especially in STEM fields), poor formal training programs, and a lack of clear strategic direction from corporate leadership all contribute to this growing problem. Read on to find out how your organization can take proactive steps today to start investing in your people and close skills gaps within your workforce.

We’re very excited to announce Visual Workforce has received $100,000 Business Development Grant from Virginia Innovative Partnership Authority’s Commonwealth Commercialization Fund. Check out the press release to learn more about how this state funding will allow our company to enhance tools which help employers recruit, retain and develop talent. #funding #development #skills #workforce #analytics #data #talentmanagement

We are pleased to announce a new partnership between Visual Workforce and PeopleBest. PeopleBest offers a revolutionary, scientific and simple way to predict success inside people, teams and companies.

We are pleased to announce an exciting partnership expansion between Visual Workforce and Capital TechSearch (CTS). CTS is a four-time Inc 5000 honoree, recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 200 recruiting firms in the nation. CTS provides industry-leading companies a competitive advantage in talent acquisition by delivering strategic recruiting solutions for IT and Sales professionals on a retained, direct hire, and contract to hire basis.

We are pleased to announce a new partnership between Visual Workforce and Talent Management Academy. Talent Management Academy provides employers with a competitive edge in talent acquisition through its unique system of Agile Emotional Leadership, a change process to be managed both at the personal and organizational level.

We are pleased to announce a new partnership between Visual Workforce and The Change Decision. The Change Decision works with leaders to show them how to create high-levels of team engagement to generate exponential value. Using deep expertise in team effectiveness, change leadership, and group decision-making, The Change Decision shifts the way teams operate and shows companies how to engage their teams to deliver the results they are seeking.

We are pleased to announce a new partnership between Visual Workforce and APS Team Solutions. APS Team Solutions develops business leaders and teams through relationship-based coaching and consulting, moving theory into everyday application.

Visual Workforce will be exhibiting at Booth #201 at the 2019 ACEC Annual Convention and Legislative Summit, being held at Marriot Wardman Park in Washington D.C., May 5-8, 2019.