Skills Management 💙 Engagement

The biggest competition on the labour market is the “competence race”. We are all involved – you, me, my company and your company. 

It can be seen as a competition with clear rules. Whoever has a plan, trains hard and develops wins. But is it that simple?

In your consulting company, your competence supply is the most business-critical tool. It is about your employees’ ability to use their skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their tasks to the best of their ability. To enable employees to grow and develop, active and strategic Skills Management will be one of your company’s most important tasks. 

But if you already work with Skills Management and still do not see the results that you want, what is missing?

Well-functioning competence management

You have done everything right according to all the rules, and you can check the boxes:

• Competence inventory.
• Define which competencies are crucial for you.
• Created a structure for grading your employees based on competence level.
• Analyzed what skills you need now and in the future.
• Identified the competence gap between present and future.
• Produced a risk analysis of what is most critical to address in the future.
• Created an action plan to fill the skills gap.
• Made an education plan, succession plan and recruitment plan.
• You have a digital way of working for this and a well-functioning system.

Check, check, check.

You have a well-functioning Skills Management and you know that this is a great competitive advantage. Still, you do not have pole position.

Workplace culture

Do you have a strategy in place? Is everybody involved in the process? If yes, great!

This is where culture comes in. An open culture to be precise. Check if you can tick the following boxes;

• Your workforce feels safe and secure at the workplace. 
• There is trust between managers and employees 
• Everybody feels a sense of belonging. 

Challenges, mistakes and feedback are a natural part of work. In short, three basic human needs must be met; a sense of competence (we want to feel that we are good at what we do), meaningfulness and free-choice.

Engagement at the workplace

There can be any number of strategies to bridge the skill gap. However, without committed employees that feel safe and secure at the workplace, it will be difficult. 

Your employees are the ones who have to learn new skills so that you have more to offer to your customers. If you want to raise the level of your Skills Management, you need to review the culture at the workplace. Is there a culture that emphasises on the employees being perceived as smart? Do they see knowledge as their own? Are they afraid of challenges and mistakes? Then you have a challenge in creating a more safe company culture. the skills gap and winning the competition.

If you can tick off all of the above mentioned you are on the right path towards success.