It is not training, but skills that allow people to succeed in their job. Employees may be compelled to attend training classes after training class, and they may even pass tests. However, while the trainer may be satisfied that his trainees have ‘learned’ what he was teaching them, it does not necessarily mean that they would be able to implement what they have learned in the real-life situations that they would be confronted by during everyday work.
What is Skill Management?
Companies define skills within a framework of pre-defined skill names in which each skill would have a description combined with a scale, possibly a numerical one, of the proficiency-level. Each level has a set of behavioral indicators described in detail, which an employee needs to demonstrate to be considered as possessing the specific level of a certain skill.
Skills management refers to the practice of creating definitions of employee skills and job descriptions, devising ways to perform skills assessment, and using the results of such assessment to map personnel into different job levels depending on the skills required for those roles.
To understand the skills and proficiency level in each of the skills that every individual employee possesses, skill management systems provide several methods of conducting self-assessment of such skills, the ratification of which could later happen by an appropriate third party, which would typically be the line manager.
Now firstly, let us understand why skill management is important? When you develop and successfully implement skill management protocols, you enable employees to expand their skill-set and ensure that their skills fully match the requirements of their jobs. Now, if an employee’s skill-set matches the skill requirements of their job role, you have a ‘win-win’ situation for both the employee and the organization. The employee would be more confident while performing his job, and as a result, be happier while working. Also, the company can extract greater productivity out of its employees as the efficiency of the workforce gets enhanced, something that would boost the bottom line.
It is anybody’s guess then, that having a technological system, such as a skill-centric Learning Management System would immensely aid in developing skills among the company’s workforce. A skill-centric Learning Management System (LMS) is different from other LMSs in that, the latter only aid in managing training and are not centered on managing skills. A skill-centric Learning Management System (LMS) can play a great role in facilitating skill development. The LMS would not just help in identifying existing skills of employees, it could also help employees to achieve higher levels of proficiency on those skills, and also acquire altogether new skills. If you are planning to buy an LMS, make sure to evaluate the benefits of a skill-centric LMS over a non-skill-centric LMS.
What Is a Skill-Centric Learning Management System?
A key differentiating factor for a skill-centric learning management system (LMS) is that it uses skills as the foundational building block of training programs. Thus, all modules of the LMS are developed with a complete focus on learners’ skill development, and not just towards only providing a platform to conduct online training. Therefore, the focus of training programs conducted over a skill-centric LMS is bound to be on ensuring that the end-goals of training are realized.
Benefits of Skill-Centric Learning Management System
The following are various benefits of skill-centric management systems for employees, managers, and executives.
Benefits for Employees
By using a skill-centric LMS to drive the training, employees can obtain:
- A better understanding of skills and the respective proficiency-levels of each skill that are essential to possess in their roles
- A clear view of the skills that they currently have and the skill-gap between their existing skill-set and the skills that they need to possess
- A learning and development plan developed for them to enable them to meet job, organizational, and/or certification-based skill requirements.
Benefits for Managers
The adoption of a skill-centric learning management system would enable managers to get:
- A clear picture of the existing skill levels of their employees, their strengths and weaknesses, and skill-gaps on an individual employee level
- An informed basis for career development planning discussions and for creating various skill-training programs
Benefits for Executives
By adopting the use of a skill-centric LMS, executives can ensure:
- That their staff has the skills to meet current business needs.
- That they can obtain comprehensive and real-time insights into the organization’s capabilities to enable informed strategic decision making.
- That they have the proof that their organizations comply with regulatory requirements to avoid penalties and other undesirable results.
What is a skill-centric design?
A skill-centric design allows for a hierarchical overview of the entire learning process, with the end goal of creating pragmatically designed learning programs that can address the learning gaps of employees which is vital for them to perform the duties that their roles entail. Such a design ensures that the trainees on the LMS imbibe all the desired skills to strengthen the organizational core competencies. Moreover, trainers can have granular control over the skill-development programs. The process of formulating learnings primarily for the development of skills can address positional shortcomings and extend the reach of organizational learnings.
How Skill-Centric Approach Benefits the Organization?
GyrusAim utilizes a skills-centric approach. This provides organizations with a common language to describe skills in the organization and enables an agile workforce by using skills as the common currency of the business. This approach also helps integrate talent management processes.
Skill-Centric approach to benefits the organizations in several ways such as:
- Improving the recruitment exercise by providing a consistent skills specification for each job and facilitating skill-based assessment
- Providing the ability to consistently manage employee performance by comparing their existing skill-set against pre-defined skills for each role
- Supporting career planning by facilitating skill-gap assessment for future roles and using skill-based job descriptions to identify future roles for each employee
- Enhancing the value of the learning & development function by ensuring that learning and development programs are aligned to business requirements
Is Your Organization Moving Towards a Skills Gap Crisis?
The skills gap can be defined as the difference between an organization’s current competency, skills, and the required skills it needs to achieve a goal. With rapid changes in technology, consumer market, business process, organizations need to have the right skills set among their workforce. The skill gap can drag your company down and drastically reduce its market competitiveness before you even realize it.
Such situations can only be controlled if organizations take charge of their current workforce’s skills gap and find a medium to develop and engage them for their future needs
- Start Identifying the Required Skills: The Human Resources (HR) or the Talent Development team should identify the current and future needs of the organization and the existing skills among employees and see if there’s a gap between the two
- Start Building Skills Framework: Once you have identified the skills, it is important to see how they fit into your company’s workforce structure based on the Job profile.
- Make a skills development plan: Once you have identified the required skills and its framework, the last and most important step is to develop a skills development plan. See whether your current training program can incorporate skills-based learning. Think about all the in-house resources you can use.
If you are observing a skill gap crisis soon to have occurred in your organization, you should start implementing the practices mentioned above.
How Skillsoft Learning Content in GyrusAim® Learning Management System (LMS) can Help?
At Gyrus Systems, we have designed the award-winning GyrusAim® Learning Management System with Skillsoft’s Open Learning Services Architecture (OLSA) to take care of your organization’s training needs. The integration is based on API technology and enables Gyrus clients to facilitate a richer eLearning experience to their workforce by enabling access to pre-loaded Skillsoft content assets.
“Building this OLSA integration into GyrusAim allows us to provide our customers with an improved experience for content and training,” said Viren Kapadia, President, and CEO of Gyrus Systems. “We are excited to offer these new capabilities as part of our LMS”