The workforce is rapidly evolving and so are their expectations from employer organizations. These expectations are often related to the skills that employees possess and the projects or the type of work they are eventually assigned to. Employees seek workplaces that offer opportunities matching their skills and capabilities.
However, often we come across situations where employees are hired for a particular role but they end up performing tasks that don’t properly align with their potential. It leaves them not being utilized appropriately and ultimately feeling disengaged. Organizations therefore need to be aware of how employees’ skills are getting utilized in relation to the projects they are allocated to, the time they spend on doing different tasks, and the end outcomes achieved. Skill mapping will help you understand if these challenges or opportunities offered to the employee are in line with their true potential and specialization.
Organizations that can join these dots are better placed to match the right employees to relevant projects and tasks. On the other hand, not having an active skills mapping practice can lead to employee dissatisfaction, lack of engagement, and ultimately attrition. According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost of hiring a new full-time employee is $4,700. This cost can easily be saved by putting an end to the uncertainties that are triggered by the lack of skill mapping and people insights. Unless appropriate steps are taken on the basis of skill mapping, initiatives on employee development, engagement, and retention will always be at a risk of failure. Hence, skill mapping plays a key role in driving work satisfaction and assuring employees that their career is in safe hands.
Proven reasons to leverage skill-mapping to boost employee engagement and retention
Enable meaningful conversations on employee strength and skill-gaps
Before having conversations about productivity and performance, managers must be able to see exactly what the employee is working on and how their skills are getting utilized. Having conversations without capturing employee strengths and gaps is akin to a teacher who is unaware of which exam the students are preparing for and how.
Skill mapping provides the required clarity and direction that employees seek, enabling businesses and employees to grow together. When managers have fact-led conversations around skillset, utilization, and performance, employee engagement and productivity will ultimately improve.
- Gartner forecast
Have more fact-led discussions on employees' skill relevance and growth opportunities
The more often you have conversations with employees about their strengths and aligned opportunities, the more engaged they would be at work. However, employees may not always be forthcoming about the way they feel about project tasks, if they find them relevant, or how issues affect their performance, etc. Often, they would expect managers to start the conversation.
Skill mapping is the steppingstone to identify employees’ strengths based on past project tasks and performance reviews by different managers and peers. By identifying their strengths or specialized skills, managers can thereby open-up a whole new dimension for discussions on opportunities that await the employee. These career conversations would give managers the chance to share meaningful feedback – for example, “You give your best when dealing with an XYZ problem.” or “You are best-suited to assist the client because of your ABC skills.”
Enable managers to provide the right direction and mentoring that employees require
Skill mapping is also immensely useful for identifying the gaps in employees’ skills and proficiency. As a result, employees become more engaged as they are eager to close these gaps to upscale performance. If you are not fact-led and are unable to show the skill-gap analysis, employees do not get a definitive direction on areas where they need to improve.
Skill mapping provides the required clarity and direction that employees seek, enabling businesses and employees to grow together. When managers have fact-led conversations around skillset, utilization, and performance, employee engagement and productivity will ultimately improve.
Encourage employees to proactively seek skills needed for upcoming projects
To keep employees consistently engaged, it’s important to create aspirations that employees can achieve and show new opportunities that they can relate to and prepare for. By using skill mapping, the organization can display information on upcoming opportunities to which people and skills are mapped or will be mapped to. It would help the HR team to create a dashboard or an opportunities marketplace where employees can see information about upcoming projects.
- Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
A view of upcoming opportunities will fuel employees’ aspiration to apply for new project roles and help them recognize areas where they can upgrade themselves or get certified to fulfil the requirements for these new roles. It is the best way to make employees proactive, self-motivated, and engaged. In addition, employees will be aware of where they stand and identify other prospective roles across the organization for which they would the right fit.
Identify the best-suited learning paths for employees
Through skill mapping, once employees’ training needs are identified, it can be used to personalize the advice and direction given to them. This process is also referred to as career pathing, and it helps employees realize how much effort the organization is taking to identify the right learning and skill-upgrades required to make them future-ready.
Drive workplace satisfaction by helping employees explore new opportunities
Let’s look at examples of how skill mapping in the view of new opportunities can drive employee satisfaction. An employee who is proficient at Excel spreadsheets can be prompted to take up additional upskilling for new roles that require analytical skills and visual reporting. A new role could prompt software programmers to take up project management as a new skill. Regular skills evaluation and mapping makes employees realize that their proactive engagement at work has a direct impact on their performance review.
Employees seek workplaces that offer ample opportunities to complement their skills and grow.
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