How to do effective skills mapping

Ensuring that your team is both highly skilled and in sync with your company's changing objectives can be quite a challenge. With industries evolving and technologies advancing, the gap between the skills your employees have and the skills your company needs may grow, resulting in lower productivity, higher turnover, and a significant disconnect between employees’ aspirations and the company's vision. When this happens, skills mapping becomes a way to track the skills and knowledge that your company has and see how they fit with current and future needs. This strategic tool is designed to bridge the gap between talent and objectives, ensuring that every employee fits their role and excels in it.

‍

Benefits of effective skills mapping

First, skills mapping aligns worker capabilities with company goals, ensuring that every project, department, and individual is on the same page. This alignment boosts productivity and enables swift market adaptation. Besides, skills mapping has a significant impact on employee engagement. Studies have revealed that employees feel more valued and connected to the company's mission when they know what skills they can use and see a clear growth path. For example, Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, says that workers who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $8.8 trillion in lost productivity, making this topic a high priority for HR leaders.

‍

Lastly, skills mapping makes it easier to focus on specific areas of growth. Instead of generic training programs, companies can tailor their development initiatives to address specific skill gaps, ensuring that both employees and the company benefit from every hour spent on learning and development. This targeted method gets the most out of training budgets and makes sure that workers will be ready for the future.

‍

Crafting future-proof skills mapping

This process involves conducting a thorough inventory of the skills and competencies present in your organization, developing competency models, and identifying upskilling opportunities.

‍

Skill inventory

In this step, you need to figure out what skills your company already has. You should make a full list of all the technical skills, soft skills, and everything else that your employees already have. Not only should you list them, but you should also put them into groups. Take a look at these examples of categories:

‍

• Technical skills: Expertise and knowledge of certain software, tools, or systems that are required for day-to-day operations.

• Industry skills: Expertise and know-how relevant to the industry, such as financial analysis in the banking field or coding languages in the tech industry. 

• Methodology skills: Advanced roles-specific skills like statistical modeling for data scientists or UX design for UX designers.

• Soft skills: Abilities related to communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking. 

• Leadership skills: Skills related to guiding teams, making strategic decisions, and project management. 

• Organizational skills: Management of time, resources and tasks. 

‍

This process can be improved if employees recognize their own skills and put them all in one place, like an AI-powered tool, saving you time and getting everyone involved.

‍

Competency models

Competency models define how skills are applied to achieve excellence in a specific role. These models often include levels of proficiency, behavioral indicators, and business alignment, offering a holistic view of how talent can grow within your organization. Key aspects to include in your competency models:

‍

• Levels of proficiency: Categorization of skills into different levels of expertise, from novice to expert. 

• Behavioral indicators: Specific behaviors that demonstrate skill competency and high performance.

• Alignment with organizational goals: Outlines how the skills support the organization's strategic objectives and cultural values. 

‍

Competency models are useful for more than just mapping skills. They can also be used to hire people, train them, and evaluate their success in the future. Platforms like Adepti connect key skills to specific roles and employees, streamlining routine tasks and allowing you to concentrate on data analysis.

‍

Upskilling opportunities

After having a good idea of the skills your workforce has, the next step is to make a list of the skills needed for each job. This list isn't set in stone; it changes as your business and the world around it do to be sure that everyone in every role has the skills they need to help your business succeed.

‍

The first step in this process is to get workers to think about their own skills and abilities. Employee self-evaluations can tell you a lot about what they think their skills and weaknesses are. Then, use input from coworkers, managers, and direct reports to get a full picture of how skills and performance are being used, this helps you find gaps that you might not see from just self-evaluations. Also, do regular checks of the skills of your employees to find gaps in their knowledge through tests, exercises, or performance reviews. Finally, look at the skills of your employees against benchmarks or standards in your industry to see where your company might be falling short. Comparing can show important gaps and help set priorities for upskilling activities. AI can enhance this process with updated labor market data, which allows you to know what is needed now and in the future.  Now you’ve reached effective skills mapping. If you want to know what to do next, read this article about using skills mapping data to build an upskilling strategy. 

‍

Identify, track, and map skills with AI

Adepti turns a one-time HR task into a moving, data-driven plan that helps businesses reach their objectives. Using advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, our platform shows you which skills are in short supply in your company and which ones are in high demand, helping you have the right people with the right skills. Book your free demo now.