Your organisation may be setting up an internal talent marketplace, or introducing some form of skills-based management using a technology platform. Your goal may be increasing organisational agility, improving retention, enhanced workforce planning, or all of the above. To get this process started, there is a good chance you may have used either a standard skills library from a provider, extracted skills from your company systems (job descriptions, resumes etc.) and/or relied on some system of self-reporting by employees or managers.

These approaches are one way to get started on a skills journey but face certain limitations. What do the skills look like in your organization? How do you integrated skills with various organisational functions? How important and unique is each skill? Is bias embedded in your skill data? How do you measure skill proficiency?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, your skill system could actually be slowing your organization down, not speeding it up.

You need to decide where to focus your effort on creating a skills system where skills reflect your own organisation’s strategic priorities, actual practices, and which can actually be used to make decisions