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More organisations are making the shift towards skills, but this change is so much more than a tweak on a job description.
Organisations are increasingly looking to adopt a skills-based approach to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving business landscape, which focuses on identifying, developing, and utilising specific skills across the organisation to improve performance and adaptability.
The shift towards a skills-based approach is driven by the need to address the dynamic nature of work. Jobs are constantly evolving, as are market demands and customer expectations. As a result, identifying the specific skills required for each job, while ensuring information is governed and kept up-to-date, is critical.
A skills-based approach to jobs and work gives organisations the ability to move employees around to where their skills are most needed. It also enables the development of targeted skills-based training programmes. Lastly, it helps identify and proactively address any skills gaps that may hold an organisation back through the use of a skills-based hiring approach. This is essential for developing the organisational agility that is now required.
Research from Deloitte underlines the clear benefits of a skills-based approach, both in terms of better business results and an improved employee experience. Organisations that had embedded a skills-based approach were found to be:
63% more likely to achieve results than those who had not adopted a skills-based approach
107% more likely to place talent effectively
57% more likely to anticipate change and respond effectively and efficiently
52% more likely to innovate
79% more likely to have a positive workforce experience
Barriers to a skills-based approach
A chaotic job architecture, where roles haven’t been organised into job families, can significantly hinder the transition to a skills-based approach.
From our experience working with clients moving to a skills-based approach, the main barrier to making this change is a chaotic job architecture and an absence of skills-based job families
A job architecture forms the building blocks of an organisation. It provides a framework for defining and aligning jobs within an organisation. A skills-based job architecture is based on the skills required for each role, rather than traditional job titles or hierarchies.
The key components and characteristics of a skills-based job architecture are:
A skill taxonomy: This is a comprehensive catalogue of the skills relevant to the organisation, sometimes categorised into technical, functional, and behavioural skills or competencies
Skills-based job families: Job roles within the job architecture will be grouped into job families based on similar skill sets
Skill levels: Each skill within the taxonomy is usually assigned proficiency levels (e.g., beginner, intermediate, expert) to indicate depth of expertise
Career paths: A skills-based job architecture will show clear progression routes around an organisation based on skill acquisition and mastery, rather than just vertical promotion
Flexible job design: Roles within a skills-based architecture can be easily reconfigured by adding or removing skills as business needs change
Skills-based recruitment: Evaluation of candidates and employees will be based on demonstrated skills rather than qualifications or experience alone
By grouping jobs into job families based on similar skills, you can more easily identify skills across the organisation. It also helps you systematically identify and categorise the skills required. In truth, without a skills-based job architecture, moving to a skills-based approach will be an uphill battle.
One of the biggest challenges in moving to a skills-based approach is identifying and consolidating the skills required
A skills-based architecture provides a structured framework to consolidate, capture, and manage skills. When linked to a consistent skills framework or taxonomy, you can then better understand the skills landscape across the entire organisation.
Aligning your jobs into a skills-based job architecture also provides a framework for workforce planning and enabling organisational agility. If, for example, you are looking to see where skills may exist in the organisation to support strategic initiatives or if you want to look at deploying skills from a reorganisation, your skills-based architecture allows you to see where these skills are so you can more rapidly deploy and relocate employees.
In truth, without a skills-based job architecture, moving to a skills-based approach will be an uphill battle.
There is a growing trend among organisations to adopt a skills-based approach to stay competitive. A skills-based approach enables organisations to deploy employees based on their skills, develop targeted training programmes and address skills gaps proactively.
A major barrier to this transition is a chaotic job structure. However, the implementation of a skills-based job architecture and a job family framework will the critical first steps towards controlling the chaos and moving to a skills-based approach.
