Skills are a critical foundation for career progression and mobility within organizations. Focusing on skills enhances talent prospects for both organizations and employees by creating a dynamic internal talent marketplace that spans jobs, business units, geographies and functions. By breaking down these artificial constructs, organizations get better visibility into the breadth and depth of existing skills across the company, and employees get visibility and access to career growth and mobility.
When executed effectively, including with a solid methodology and supporting AI technology and tools, a skills-based approach to career progression and mobility can:
These opportunities all reflect a significant return on investment for both organizations and employees. Following are considerations for how a skills-based approach can provide a competitive advantage with talent.
Skills are an equalizer, clarifying expectations for work that organizations need accomplished and what employees are expected to deliver. By focusing on skills rather than specific jobs, the talent conversation and opportunities broaden exponentially. Career progression becomes less about the job itself and more about the type of work being done, how it gets done and the skills and experiences required to do it.
Upon adopting a skills-based approach to careers, many organizations discover that exceptional hidden talent lies within. Organizations already have the talent that can make more substantial contributions in roles that may not have been considered within the standard / traditional path.
For employees, a skills-based organization opens the door to accelerated career growth beyond traditional job progression. A skills-based approach to career progression and mobility offers employees novel experiences, allowing careers to develop in any direction.
Looking at careers like a playground is a useful analogy. Playgrounds have a variety of structures to move through up, down, laterally and diagonally. Movement may not align with any one direction, but that makes the opportunities more interesting, appealing and challenging both in the moment and where someone ultimately wants to be. Some may experiment in different parts of the playground or stay in one place for a longer time.
When extending this analogy to careers, it’s important that both employers and employees know what they’re getting from any move they make. For example:
Careers can – and should – go in any direction. It can be difficult to shift from a mindset that movement is always upward. However, with the right methodology and implementation, a skills-based approach to career progression and mobility opens many doors and pathways for organizations and employees that embrace it.
A skills-based approach to career progression and mobility requires fluidity across the organization. This may mean loosening boundaries and silos across functions in the healthiest ways while recognizing there still is a need for a foundational structure of jobs.
At the same time, in an era when lifelong careers are less common, a skills-based approach is even more important to retain talent. This approach enables greater mobility and more frequent movement for talent, effectively giving employees an opportunity to develop, progress and contribute meaningfully within the same company.
A change in mindset is required.
Let’s start with the organization’s perspective. It’s far too easy for employees to go on LinkedIn and find enticing external opportunities. Employers need to make it easier to find compelling opportunities within the organization and focus less on keeping their talent in specific roles, job families, business units, geographies or even functions. Organizations must genuinely embrace the ability for employees to move internally.
For employees, when they think about building career experiences, their perspective must go beyond thinking about the job they do today – as well as the promotion they’re aspiring to. Instead, the skills and experiences they gained in prior jobs, even those that may not be directly related to the job they’re in today, could be valuable in a different way in a different role.
It is important to encourage employees to provide the organization with full visibility into the breadth of skills they have, not just those relevant to the job they’re in today. For example, an employee may come from a legal background and be in a commercial job. For an employer to know that this employee brings that background is important. Conversely, employers need to provide the technology for employees to easily share this information.
It is equally crucial that employers provide full visibility and equitable access to opportunities across the organization. In addition to vacancies and job boards, this also happens through an integrated career framework that employees can easily access and interact and engage with so they can see where they can progress and how. Through transferable skills, they can see how their skills align with other needs and opportunities.
An integrated career framework that brings together work, jobs, job levels / grades and skills is the foundation to creating a talent marketplace within organizations. Leading organizations that have implemented integrated career frameworks well have seen significant returns on investment.
For example, a leading UK-based financial services organization designed, implemented and brought its career framework to life through an internal marketplace. The company observed:
Other organizations have gone even a step further. To drive this mindset shift, they have implemented agile operating models to enable greater talent fluidity and skills growth while also driving greater efficiency for stronger business outcomes. By the very nature of these operating models, the organization is forced to think of deploying working teams to focus on a project, product, process, problem or mission.
A robust skills architecture is core to successfully implementing these new operating models. That architecture will provide both employers and employees visibility into the skills they have today and will require in the future.
The employee experience is an equally critical aspect of skills-enabled career progression and mobility, particularly around technology and transparency. It’s nearly impossible – particularly in larger organizations – to enable career progression and mobility without a technology platform. Today, employees expect a consumer-grade experience at work.
Consider online banking as an example. We expect ready access to information about our accounts, balances, the products from which we might benefit, and savings advice tailored to our needs. The same holds true for employees, who increasingly expect this type of experience as it relates to careers from employers. Organizations need to provide a platform for employees to self-identify:
Many organizations have developed sophisticated career frameworks and the resources for employees to help navigate them. Unfortunately, though, employees often don’t know where those resources are or how to access them. As part of the employee experience, it’s important that managers proactively raise these topics with employees, encourage them to seek out and identify other opportunities, and help employees navigate those opportunities accordingly.
AI can play a big role in bringing this career experience to life in two ways. First, talent marketplace technology platforms have the functionality to provide employees with predictive career moves. This can encourage your employees to think about opportunities that they may not have considered in the past. AI algorithms use the skills data they are fed on the employee and organization to determine these opportunities. This puts more emphasis of a solid foundation of job leveling, job architecture and skills architecture frameworks that power the AI technology platforms.
Second, AI technology platforms play a significant role in helping organizations keep their content relevant and well-governed – a traditionally common challenge for organizations.
Throughout your adoption of a skills-based approach to career progression and mobility, it is important for HR leaders to work hand-in-hand with the business to understand their needs both real-time and in the future. Most organizations want to understand:
Linking to the business strategy forms a critical part of the people agenda. It compels leaders to examine how they acquire talent – either internally or externally.
Using skills as the foundation for career progression and mobility is an opportunity to propel the organization forward in its talent and business strategies. It enables organizations to tap into and retain internal talent, improve the employee experience and reduce turnover. For employees, a skills-based approach offers rewarding and unconventional career growth opportunities. For both, it’s a bold – yet achievable – strategy that provides competitive advantage and growth opportunities.
