Future Skills and Future Roles: How HR Can Prepare Employees

The ability – and the willingness – of employees to adapt and prepare for their future roles has become critical for organisations.

As an HR leader, you play a pivotal role in facilitating this preparation and ensuring your company remains competitive, and your talent retained.

The challenge of workforce shortages

Research shows that workforce and skills shortages are increasingly important and are seen as a significant business risk – particularly within certain industry sectors. The impact of such shortages can have far-reaching implications on the ability of businesses to innovate and compete.

But not only is talent with those much needed 'future skills' difficult to find, it is also difficult to keep.

While scarcity of talent is a significant hiring challenge, the real test lies in the upskilling and retention of talent you already have.

Retention through future-focused development

We know that a key part of the retention battle is enabling employees to envisage a future within our organisations. They need to be able to see and explore potential future career paths - and understand what skills might need to be acquired or developed to follow identified paths and routes.

Moreover, we know that employees are eager and motivated to learn new skills or undergo retraining to remain employable. To boost retention, it is crucial to establish clear development and career maps that show opportunities for progression.

Organisations must encourage employees to audit and understand their current skills levels, and identify what skills might need to be developed for the roles of the future.

Organisations, might begin by:

• Detailing the skills needed for business growth.
• Assessing and benchmarking the skills - and skill level - already in place.
• Addressing the gap between the two as the focus for development.

Creating a people-centric culture

A LinkedIn report shows that 83% of organisations want to build a more people centric culture and this aligns perfectly with the desire of employees to drive their own skill development and map out their career progression.

But how can HR leaders empower employees and allow them to take ownership of their development, skills acquisition and career progression? 

Tools that have traditionally been managed by the HR team can help. Maybe it is time to rethink how these are managed?  

Using 360-degree feedback for future-focused development

360 reviews are typically used for development by spotting skill or competency areas that need nurturing based on feedback from colleagues. They compare the current profile with the desired profile of the current role or organisation.

However, we can move the use of 360 on further and allow the current skills and competency benchmark to be mapped, not against today's ideal profile, but against the future skills that the future organisation needs.

During feedback sessions, facilitators can then help individuals look at the greatest gaps between their current scores and those of a future role or future organisation. Then, these 'gaps' can be considered as part of the development plan.

Shifting the ownership of skills management

While skills development and subsequent skills management have been successfully led by the HR team, this approach may limit the scope of any audit of current skills within the organisation. How can HR possibly know all the experience, qualifications, accreditations and competencies that each employee has to offer?

The logical solution is to ask the very person who truly knows what skills they have to manage and for them to update the skills system accordingly. This approach not only ensures a more comprehensive skills database but also engages individuals in their own future skill management and career exploration within the organisation.

Employee-centric career path mapping

Unclear future career paths hinder the retention. The challenge lies not only in providing employees with the visibility of potential career paths but also in demonstrably supporting them to explore and discuss their career ambitions.

A customisable career path mapping tool can help employees to explore and plot out possible career routes based on their current skillset and competencies, and look to the future. The ideal tool should:

• Flag specific competencies, skills and knowledge needed for the identified roles.
• Provide realistic timelines for achieving milestones.
• Suggest roles of careers moves not yet considered by the employee.

A ‘safe space’ provided by such a tool gives the employee the opportunity to ‘test drive’ potential career moves and gather information for more meaningful career conversations with their managers, mentors or coaches.

The triumvirate of employee owned talent management

By giving access to employees to – and ownership of – three areas of talent management currently led by HR, we can foster more future-focused and employee-centred skill development, better engagement, stronger belonging and improved retention.

1. 360 degree feedback – enabling individuals to benchmark their skills with those needed for the future – or their current role – and understand how those around them perceive their strengths. 
   
   
2. Employee-owned skills management tools – ensuring the skills database is always up to date, and includes all the skills the individual wants to share.
   
   
3. Individual career path mapping – allowing each person to experiment with their next steps, assess their readiness for the next desired role, identify the skills they still need to acquire and estimate timelines for career moves.

The Next Step

When you’re ready to rethink how you can put your employees at the centre of their own development and career progression – while freeing up your time so you can become more strategic – do get in touch.

We can help you create a more engaged, skilled, and future-ready workforce that drives your organisation's success.