Skills-Based Analysis enables agile organisations.

In a rapidly changing world, the skills required for each job is also changing rapidly.

If your organisation is still using jobs as a unit of analysis and people management, then you are probably not keeping up with those skills trends, and your talent acquisition strategy is falling behind.

Creating a true skills-based organisation can be an enormous project, but taking a skills-based approach to solving specific capability problems can deliver great results fast. Skill-based analysis can help identify the root cause of hiring and retention problems, it can find opportunities for the implementation of artificial intelligence tools, and it can support strategic workforce planning and organizational design projects.

Get in touch to discuss the specific capability problem you need to address.

“The work Andrew did to understand our workforce challenge was exceptional.  His research and analysis confirmed some hunches we had, but went far deeper than we had either the skills or capacity to do.  It has given us the evidence we need to made decisions, with a clear path forward on recruitment.”

Caroline Walsh

Skill-Based Analysis FAQ

  • Skill describes the ability to consistently manifest intent in the world through action. Skill can be attributed to individuals but can also be attributed to groups, organisations, or even non-human agents.

    Skill-based analysis provides an organisation with insights into how it exerts agency in the world. One of the benefits of this, is that organisations can think deeply about which employees might best support that capability. For example Skill-based hiring means hiring with a focus on organisational capability, rather than simply filling places in an organisation chart, or sustaining organisational functions.

  • You should focus your efforts on areas where your organisation is unique, or areas that are critical to sustain your organisation’s competitive advantage. The scale of the opportunity is also very significant, as the level of effort required to analyse one role is similar, whether there are hundreds of people in that role, or one person.

  • The shortest intervention, which includes an organisational needs analysis and desktop research to identify opportunities, is approximately two weeks. A longer more complex process which involves testing key supply assumptions may take up to three months.

  • • How can we best allocate tasks or outcomes to different jobs?

    • How can we redefine our jobs to improve our talent pools?

    • Where can we find the skills we need to achieve our organisational outcomes?

    • What are the transferable skills that would make someone suitable for our jobs?

    • How can we get better representation in high paying jobs in our organisation?

    • How can we make better choices about what prerequisites to include in our job descriptions?

    • Is talent supply a risk for our new business or program?

    • How are the skills required to do our jobs changing?

    • Can we automate, or move to on-demand hiring for, key tasks in our organisation?

    • What is the root cause of our inability to deliver certain organisational outcomes?

    • How can we reduce our WGEA pay gap?

  • All engagements will involve an initial diagnostic session, followed by a research stage which may use a variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. This may involve desktop research , a review of organisational artifacts observation or interviews.

    You can read in more detail about our typical engagement in this blog post: