Reskill to retain – and shift skills management to the employee

Employee turnover rates are climbing in the UK in both the private and public sectors. The challenge facing talent leaders is how to slow this, retain key talent and upskill for future organisational needs. What role does skills management have in this?  

Discussion and debate propose a multitude of reasons for this: a rethink of career and workplace location post-pandemic; inspirational career opportunities elsewhere; the cost of living crisis encouraging workers to look for increased salary; a more employee-centric market.

Regardless of reason, when staff leave, it’s the former employer that bears the brunt of the cost.

High employment and high vacancies

In today’s tight labour market, vacant posts can be a struggle to fill.

Nearly one half of organisations in the UK have hard-to-fill vacancies and yet, employment rates have risen over the past year (although still remain below their pre-pandemic level). It is, as they say, an employee’s market.

The dual challenges of high turnover and the difficulties in hiring mean that business and HR leaders are asking how best to keep hold of their people.

The number one planned response for 41% of employers is actually quite straightforward: reskill existing talent to retain employees.

Jonathan Boys, CIPD’s Labour Market Economist comments on this in the CIPD’s quarterly Labour Market Outlook of Summer 2022: “In the battle to secure the labour supply needed to meet demand, retention is as important as recruitment.”

We could not agree more.

Reskilling as part of retention – and to build organisational resilience

Reskilling retains talent and saves resource. The CIPD reports that reskilling current talent saves organisations £50k compared to hiring in new.

Reskilling helps save resource costs and retain key talent. But it also builds the resilience of the organisation, supporting any future-proofing action undertaken.

Business leaders have realised in recent years the critical role that reskilling and nurturing current workforce competencies has on the delivery of business strategy, and the development of resilience and agility.

Back in 2021, Gartner reported that over two-thirds of HR leaders said that their most pressing priority was the building of critical skills and competencies.

But, while they understood the imperative of making this happen, they admitted gaps in current skills management practice.

• 36% cannot measure the skills gap between the current skills profile and what it needs to look like.
• 33% do not integrate learning with current employee workflows.
• 31% cannot create skill development activities fast enough to cope with evolving needs.

These gaps in practice - together with the accelerating need to create a more individual-centric employee experience (in which staff are engaged with the business vision and values, understand the role they can play and are empowered to contribute) has led to workforce skills management being re-imagined across organisations.

Skills management: managed by the individual not HR

Skills management has been typically led by the HR team – and has been successful. HR can audit current skillsets using a pre-defined list of competencies and skills that the organisation requires – and then develop (and record) skills development activity accordingly.

There are a number of issues with this approach.

Firstly, the pre-defined list of skills and competencies is likely to be out-of-date. How often is this list updated in our organisations? When was the last time that we determined what essential competencies our workforce requires?

Secondly, we know that the skills needed today are likely not to be those needed for the organisation of the future. Gartner showed that one third of the skills listed in a typical job post in 2017 are now no longer mentioned in ads and job posts in 2020 required 10% more skills than in previous years.

Thirdly, having this as an HR-led activity may limit the scope of the audit of current skills. How can we know of the experience, qualifications, accreditations and competencies that each employee has to offer? Most of us will have gathered this information during the hiring process, updating it as courses are attended or qualifications awarded. But only those developments that HR know of.

What of those skills or experience gained from project work, assignments or outside of work? If it is worth gathering this information at pre-hire, why not once in-post? And, while we are at it, why not ask the very person who has these skills to update the skills system themselves? This links to the next point.

Fourthly, if reskilling is to aid retention, shouldn't reselling be more engaging? Is it not more empowering (as well as enlightening for us in HR) to turn to the individual and ask them about the skills, experience, qualifications, accreditations and competencies that they have – backed up by a 360 or other competency assessment if needed? 

By turning skills management on its head and seeing this as an exercise owned by the individual, it changes the nature of skills management.

It means individuals are given a forum to promote their skills across the organisation making them ideal targets for specialised project teams, career moves, cross-functional working parties, client assignments… 

It means that we, as HR, will get a far more realistic view of the current skills and capability landscape - and that has to be a great place to start a benchmark or audit when looking to develop the skills needed for the future!

Skills management by the individual: the tool for the job

To make this shift to employee ownership and management of their skills profile (and to demonstrate organisational commitment to this) we need to invest in a tool for the job.

Skills management software is not new.

But, if it is to be managed by the individual rather than HR, it needs to be readily accessible and readily updateable. It needs relevance and support. It needs to be woven into our talent management strategy, shared and communicated.

Tools such as Talent SafeGuard go beyond the capabilities of most skills management systems. But thinking only of the functionality misses the point.

Skills management now must be individually owned and demands a wider perspective. Talk to us to find out what this means in practice.

Career navigation by the individual: the tool for the job

The next logical step to give individual employees is to enable them to imagine future career paths within the organisation. Maybe a career yet to be considered, maybe a route not yet thought about – but using the skills they already have, can easily acquire, are keen to develop or are relevant for the future.

Talent Navigator provides this. Almost unique in its approach, individuals get to take the competencies they already have and explore career routes they can take. And they can see what competencies and skills are needed for future roles that may not yet have. It focuses their plan for development, maps out their career with your business, engages them in their future and empowers them to take action.

For us, career path mapping must be part of any organisations reskilling and retention plan.

Watch our video, Career Pathways - Getting Employees Started

Reimagining skills and career management

Current skills management systems may give some information – but can only ever be limited in their value to the organisation. They are likely to be measuring out-of-date skills, possibly future-irrelevant competencies and can only ever offer an incomplete picture. 

Career conversations based only on current established career paths fail to recognise the need for individuals to reskill and upskill – and to move into roles not yet considered.

Giving employees access to tools to update their skills management profile and link this to possible careers and how these competencies may be deployed, gives them a vehicle to promote themselves and their talent and empower them to build their own future.

It is more 'joined-up' talent management.

What are the next steps? What are the features we need to be looking for to support this more employee-centric approach?

A readily available, single online portal that employees can access and update whenever they wish. 

An easy-to-use system for HR and managers to dip into when needed and interrogate the system’s data.

The ability to cut and slice the data in various ways, export it into reports and present it for different audiences.

Configurability – so the system can adapt and flex as skills and priorities change.

A system embedded and recognised as the ‘go to’ for skills information.

We need to reskill our workforce – and support it to understand its future career paths. What are we doing about this?

Get in touch with us to have that initial conversation about the next steps. Contact us today.