Breaking free of the job role paradigm

The nature of work is changing fast. Technology, automation, and lessons learned from the pandemic have made it an operational imperative for organizations to adopt a skills-based approach to talent management and move away from job roles.

There are several elements behind this change. In the post-pandemic world, organizational boundaries—both how you engage with your workforce and who your workforce is—are disappearing. This means that many organizations are now keen to utilize their workforce in a more agile way, and leaders have recognized that skills-based practices are a powerful solution to challenges that have intensified since 2020.

Organizations have, for example, struggled to find the right candidates to plug skills gaps. They’ve also struggled to keep the talent that they hire as widespread issues such as the so-called ‘Great Resignation’ and ‘Big Quit’ wrought havoc on talent teams. However, by relying on a skills-based approach, organizations can increase the volume and quality of candidates who apply to open positions and assist current employees to advance internally.

What is a skills-based approach?

In a skills-based approach, a workforce’s capabilities are defined and described by the specific skills required to perform individual jobs. This is according to a 2022 report by McKinsey, which found that almost half of all employers cite sourcing job seekers with the right skills as one of their top hiring and talent challenges.

Skills-based organizations place less emphasis on formal degrees, qualifications, and experience required for a job role and instead focus on a worker’s actual skills. It’s an approach that promotes internal mobility and continuous learning while also:

• Helping to attract a broader talent pool filled with candidates who are better suited to fill positions in the long term. Skills-based practices also help to open up opportunities to non-traditional candidates, such as people without specific credentials on their resumés.

• Improving internal value propositions by working to establish a more resilient workforce. Hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education and more than two times more predictive than hiring for work experience. This is according to the same 2022 report by McKinsey.

• Building a better-equipped workforce by providing a roadmap for internal mobility, allowing employees to progress within their current organizations during times when external hiring could slow down. In 2018, the Society for Human Resource Management found that 77% of employees who left their jobs could have been retained by factors including career development opportunities.

Key objectives of the skills-based approach

In doing all this, the skills-based approach to talent management has three core objectives:

1. To prioritize skills over traditional role requirements, such as GPAs and college degrees. This increases the potential talent pool and provides opportunities for people with the skills to do the work needed.

2. To break down jobs into defined tasks and “work to be done.” This gives teams visibility into the skills required to complete tasks and organizes them according to these skills vs. traditional job roles.

3. To provide an overview of the organization’s overall skills profile. This informs talent acquisition and development strategies. It also helps to ensure that the right people with the right skills are matched to the most important tasks.

Fundamentally, the skills-based approach boils down to using skills to make decisions about work and the workforce. It puts people and their skills at the center of talent strategies and breaks down traditional jobs into projects and tasks based on the capabilities needed to achieve them. This deviation from the traditional job role approach is redefining how organizations hire talent, complete tasks, and achieve objectives.

The ‘jobs-to-skills transition’

A skills-based approach is a prerequisite of the wider jobs-to-skills transition: the organizational shift that sees organizations change the way they manage their workforce. It’s a permanent shift in focus away from traditional job roles to the specific skills required for those roles, and it includes three key elements:

1. Skill-centric hiring: Prioritizing specific skills over traditional job titles, degrees, and other qualifications. Talent leaders seek candidates who possess the exact, quantifiable skills needed to perform their tasks effectively.

2. Skills development: Workers are encouraged to continuously develop new skills to stay competitive in a changing job market. This involves continuous learning, upskilling, and reskilling to adapt to new technologies and industry demands.

3. Flexible career paths: The traditional linear career path is replaced by more dynamic and non-linear career trajectories. Workers may transition between different roles and industries by leveraging transferable skills rather than sticking to a single title or career path.

Four questions to ask before your jobs-to-skills transition

1. What skills do we need?

This is your job architecture: The definition of skills in your organization. “If you don’t have that right, you don’t have the anchor for building future reskilling journeys and movements from jobs to skills,” says SkyHive Founder and CEO Sean Hinton. We’ve seen that most organizations haven’t unified these definitions. One of our customers, for example, had 70,000 employees and 55,000 different job descriptions. Within weeks, this was reduced to roughly 1,200 job families and clear definitions within them.

The takeaway? Before your jobs-to-skills transition, identifying the skills that are essential to your organization is a must-do. This will involve a thorough analysis of your strategic objectives and the skills needed to achieve them. Engage department heads, team leaders, and key stakeholders to create a full list of skills vital for maintaining competitiveness and driving growth.

2. What skills do we have?

After identifying the skills your organization needs, the next step is to take stock of the skills currently present across your workforce. Conducting a skills audit and using the insights gained to build a skills inventory is the best way to do this.

Utilize methods such as skills assessments, employee self-evaluations, and performance reviews to gather accurate data. This information provides a clear picture of your existing talent pool, highlighting areas of expertise through skill profiles and making it easier to identify employees who might be ready for new opportunities or further development.

3. Where are our skills gaps?

Identifying the skills you need and those you already possess highlights the skills gaps that exist within your workforce. These are the areas where your organization lacks the skills and competencies it needs to meet its strategic objectives. Skills gaps can hinder performance, innovation, and growth if they’re not addressed sufficiently—and they’ve been a pain point for many talent teams since the pandemic.

Use the data from your skills inventory along with labor market intelligence to identify specific areas where your workforce skills fall short and make a build-buy-borrow analysis. Identifying skills gaps in this way makes it possible to prioritize training and development initiatives that will best benefit the organization in the long term.

4. What actions do we take?

With a clear understanding of the skills you need, the skills you have, and your skills gaps, you can now formulate an action plan. Your plan should outline the steps you’ll need to take to bridge your skills gaps and enhance your organization’s general skills resilience.

Consider a mixture of approaches, such as targeted hiring, reskilling existing staff for new roles, and leveraging external training resources. Establish measurable goals and timelines to track progress and ensure accountability. In addition, take steps to establish a culture of continuous learning and development throughout the organization. This will encourage employees to take ownership of their professional development.

Using skills intelligence for your jobs-to-skills transition

70% of organizations were adopting skills-based hiring strategies in 2023. This signals a widespread move away from outdated methodologies focused on roles to those that prioritize workers’ skills.

Organizations that are making the switch from being roles-based to skills-based must first understand what it means to be a skills-based organization, have an in-depth understanding of their skills resilience, and have the right tools available to make their transition successful.

AI-powered skills intelligence is perhaps the most critical of these tools because it helps talent teams to both analyze their skills and build valuable skills inventories. If you want to find out more about how automated skills intelligence platforms like SkyHive can help to make your jobs-to-skills transition a success, contact us for a product demo.