Today’s business realities are shaped by a growing digital revolution and changing global landscape. Technologies are fusing, blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds, and artificial intelligence and robotics continue their path of sophistication.
A skills-first approach is an important lever to address the fast-moving challenges associated with technological and geostrategic change. WTW helps clients like you define infrastructure for work as well as identify and maintain the skills you need to achieve your business results in an evolving landscape.
Taking a skills-first approach is critical for your business to meet its objectives and stand out in a competitive talent landscape. Linking your skills strategy to a solid work architecture provides connection and continuity among the business, how your jobs are organized and, ultimately, how you measure performance and reward your employees.
A work architecture has three parts:
Job leveling involves evaluating the scope, complexity and impact of jobs within your organization. By leveling jobs, you create career bands and levels as well as a structure that clearly defines roles, responsibilities and career progression. Establishing job levels helps you make fair and consistent decisions regarding compensation, promotions and career development opportunities.
How you can establish a skills-first strategy
- Establish a career ecosystem: You can establish an overarching career ecosystem by building on a solid work architecture, which is comprised of job leveling, job architecture and knowledge architecture. Doing this provides connection and continuity among the business, how your jobs are organized and, ultimately, how you measure performance and reward your employees.
- Develop an overarching skills strategy and optimize your skills: A successful approach to skills requires a fit-for-purpose skills strategy. Whether you want to develop a custom skills taxonomy or buy a single off-the-shelf solution, we can help you enhance your approach – quickly. We’ll help you consider key factors for your strategy, including the alignment of skills to your job architecture as well as the granularity of skills.
- Forecast and embrace future skills needs: From a skills perspective, a clear link to job architecture and job leveling creates a mechanism to understand and forecast your jobs and skills needs based on the work being done in your organization today as well as what will be needed in the future.
Prepare for the changing nature of work
Your organization needs to think about how HR programs and processes can support new ways of working and realistically implement them. At WTW, we delve into your work strategy to determine your key business drivers and technology plans:
Understand the data
Start with an analysis of the overall existing job architecture, considering the roles that currently are in place and how the requirements for work are changing now and in the future.
Design a knowledge architecture
Identify the competencies and skills required for work and develop a clear organization-wide approach to linking these to jobs and people.
Map skills
Lean on data to verify talent supply vs. demand and map the skills to work. This will help you understand what type of skills you need today and tomorrow.
Enable talent applications
Create transparency for your talent to connect on new work and further their ambition in meaningful, purpose-driven work.
At WTW, we believe in building a clear, defined work architecture to provide a clear view of the work being done and the skills that are required to achieve the right business outcomes.
