Taking the guesswork out of workforce skills management could be achieved by creating modern, motivating skills pathways within an organisation.

 What if you had a ‘heaven view’ of the business-critical skills that exist in your organisation, and where they reside?

What if you had mapped those skills to roles and progression pathways throughout your organisation, and both you and your employees knew the L&D pathways they were on, the learning they needed to consume to remain ‘current’ with the requirements of their role, and the learning they needed to complete to unlock career progression potential?

What if this skills map and enhanced transparency fostered a strong culture of learning in your organisation that made it fit to face the future?

While this might seem like a dream in a fast-moving skills environment, the reality is having a picture of the skills pathways is an important foundation for workforce skills management.

By understanding the skills required across the organisation, and crystalising that into an evolving map of workforce skills pathways, L&D and HR can see how their organisational structure, individual roles and pathways fit together to grow the skilled workforce they need.

Key benefits of technology-enabled skills pathways

Using technology to map skills pathways can have a lot of benefits for complex employers.

• Motivating, meaningful skills pathways

Technology can support the creation of meaningful pathways for employees. With clear pathways mapped out for employees to take, they can start to see their career with an organisation as a series of skills stepping stones, and gain clarity over how the attainment of hard or soft skills can contribute towards an internal career pathway. This can help HR retain and develop the best talent. Importantly, these pathways can be semi-connected across teams, allowing employees to ‘stop and swap’ pathways by augmenting what they do with the attainment of new skills, allowing them to move more flexibly through an organisation.

• Automation and efficiency at all levels

Tech-enabled automations can facilitate efficient and effective employee skills management. As employees complete skills milestones, workforce skills management systems can suggest or refer them into the next steps on their learning journey, keeping them moving forward and ensuring organisations are always building human capital. Likewise, L&D and HR teams in large organisations can benefit from delegating management of training program admin to systems and departmental managers. This allows these users to enrol employees in learning pathways or modules as individual goals are uncovered or different team needs become apparent.

• Milestone achievements and recognition

Skills achievements can be solidified and made visible through technologies like digital credentials or badges, which organisations can deploy to recognise the attainment of skills or milestones throughout the learning journey. Whether it is the attainment of an IT skill, completion of a leadership course, or achievement of a level of competency within a role, the ability to issue credentials (potentially with the backing of an education provider) can increase learning pathways engagement. Employee achievements can be shared via badges on social media, building the employer brand in their industry through association to a progressive approach to L&D.

• A 'heaven view' of organisational skills

Organisations are able to gain a more complete, actionable oversight of their skills mix. Using integrated business intelligence tools, L&D leaders can ascertain and visualise at a high level where they are from a capability standpoint, helping them refine and adjust their skills inventory. This can enable the dynamic management of talent and skills, ensuring they have a balanced workforce across sites, geographies and roles. Whether it’s maintaining workforce employability through updating skills in existing roles, or encouraging progression through new skills acquisition, this ‘heaven view’ can give organisations all the data they need to face the future.

Want to learn more about how we help employers manage workforce skills with next generation student management technology? Learn more about JR Plus here.