Do you know your organizational capabilities?  If you’re in Talent, Learning & Development, you should.  And that probably means you should have a skills inventory.

But you may ask, why should I have a skills inventory? Because it will identify what my target audience is capable of doing.

And why is that important? Because if you know what your organization is NOT capable of doing, you know what development is required. If each person can execute their part of the corporate strategy, then the company’s strategy will be achieved. Read- hero status!

4 reasons you need a capability inventory

1)      Leaders will know what people are capable of doing and whether organizational targets can be achieved

2)      You’ll know what development they need to close gaps

3)      You can develop and deliver targeted personalizing learning

4)      The company’s strategy can be achieved, and the organization can be wildly successful

Skill Inventory allows you to leverage your capability inventory for a competitive advantage

So let’s say you use a competency assessment system to create and house your inventory of skills. Once it’s created, here’s what you can do with it:

• Determine who has the skills of the future, and can help move others forward

• Identify who to put on what projects, including digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) projects

• Assess the readiness of the group to meet customer requirements based on strengths/weaknesses

• Identify realistic goals/targets for each person or the team

• Optimally segment sales teams or channel partners

• Identify who can serve as task-based mentors to others (more on mentoring)

• Highlight who can lead workshops or present at internal meetings/conferences/industry events

Having a skills inventory is especially critical for:

• People in industries faced with technological innovations that require new and emerging skill sets to sell and support these innovations in increasingly competitive markets

• People in technology companies where managers are not always aware of their employee’s breadth of skills

• Professional services organizations where assigning the best person to an assignment is critical to success

• Organizations facing rapidly changing skills such as digitization, automation, and AI

How to create a skill inventory

So now that we know the importance of a skill inventory, how do you create one?  You need to know what each person needs to do to execute their part of the corporate strategy.  And what is that?  That’s a competency model (or capability model).

Once you have a competency model, you need people to perform a skills assessment against that model.  A self-assessment combined with a manager competency assessment or an expert competency assessment, complete with behavioral examples to guide assessment, works best.  A good competency assessment system then manages your skills inventory.  It should include capability analytics to help you look at skills from various viewpoints: regionally, by product line, by role, or other relevant characteristics.  And you want to be sure that everyone who needs access to those analytics has it. 

Pro Tip: Avoid using your Talent Management System to assess means risking the accuracy and the integrity of the results. Expecting someone to assess themselves accurately when compensation and promotions may be at stake is noble, but not likely to occur. It is human nature to overestimate capabilities if you know the results of your input can have an immediate impact on your pay and promotion/succession.  By utilizing Talent Management Systems to build your skills inventory, you risk having an inventory that does not accurately reflect the capabilities and limitations of your audience. 

If you use a role-based competency model to let people self-assess in a safe, unbiased environment, you will have the best opportunity for a true picture of organizational capability. You’ll be a hero!

Also found on LinkedIn and ATD.