Abstractness of Talent in Skills Dimension
Line functions and business leaders appreciate that ‘Talent’ is the key driver of the company or business. But ‘Talent’ visibility is fuzzy. There is a lack of clear information particularly if we focus on the “skills” dimension of Talent i.e. not just of age, demography, education, experience or qualification related information of employees.
Data helps the business make better analysis and plan and track progress. Lack of data on skills frustrates line function as they are not able to make data-backed decisions on skills such as – what skills to develop, what skills to hire and such.
HR is comfortable with behavioural and soft skills. Line functions are more concerned about the functional / technical skills. Thus there is a lack of ownership of the skills of employees as a whole.
What can be done?
We need to source data on skills of employees, as we would have data of any other resource in the company – materials or money. Skills are not the same as people related information.
We need to have the skills information or data that is holistic i.e. includes behavioural or soft skills as well as functional or technical skills, that is dynamically managed (updated regularly) and easy to manipulate like other data.
HR should take ownership for “skills” as a whole and not for pieces of information. They should start paying attention to information or data on skills as much they do on other information or data.
How can this be enabled?
It’s Your Skills offers a powerful way for mapping skills of employees and jobs using a dynamically updated exhaustive skills library covering functional/technical and behavioural skills. Using these, HR teams can easily and effectively facilitate business decisions through a control of skills data.
