Talent Solutions Playbook

Systematically capture skills

Make a Skill Inventory

Formally log employees’ skills to help guide learning and development initiatives, measure effectiveness, and easily identify which workers are ready for advancement.

  • Maintain skills inventories to track employee skillsets, proficiency levels, and dates these skills were attained or refreshed.
  • Review skill inventories on an ongoing basis and incorporate skill-building into the review process. This ensures managers regularly document skill gains and behavior changes, identify barriers to engagement, and empower employees to learn new skills. This supports coaching on which skills need further refinement and which courses to take to advance along their chosen pathway.

Tips

Skill inventories are commonly created by administering surveys asking workers to self-report their skills — which are validated by 360-degree feedback from managers, peers, and/or direct reports — through robust learning management systems, or by leveraging artificial intelligence to infer skills based on resumes or previous internal projects.

Reviewing skill inventories provides an opportunity to get feedback from employees on their level of engagement and satisfaction with upskilling and retraining initiatives, which can be used to further refine the organization’s learning and development strategy.

Tips

Skill inventories are commonly created by administering surveys asking workers to self-report their skills — which are validated by 360-degree feedback from managers, peers, and/or direct reports — through robust learning management systems, or by leveraging artificial intelligence to infer skills based on resumes or previous internal projects.

Reviewing skill inventories provides an opportunity to get feedback from employees on their level of engagement and satisfaction with upskilling and retraining initiatives, which can be used to further refine the organization’s learning and development strategy.

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Tactics

Revisit job postings

Review Job Details Ensure job postings focus on skills and responsibilities (PDF) , rather than qualifications and requirements, to remove unnecessary barriers to entry and…

Retool and refocus manager training

Manager Training Ensure all leaders are equipped to support employees’ inclusion, training/upskilling, work-life balance, and overall health and well-being (PDF) . Train managers to speak…

Be transparent

Encourage Lifelong Learning Identify and promote career maps and establish a culture of lifelong learning by empowering employees to benchmark their current skills, easily identify…