Because it is a real lever for economic and social performance, managing skills is a major challenge for the company. As such, the HR teams deploy, jointly with the management, a strategy that not only ensures to steer them but also to mobilize them in the interest of everyone. Here are some key points to mobilize the right skills in the organization.
Activate professional Skills
How to describe professional skills?
The skills can be described as a professional's mental toolbox. It contains everything needed to be effective and successful in one's work. It is a set of skills that allows a person to skillfully navigate through professional challenges and find creative solutions to overcome them.
Professional skills can vary considerably from one industry to another. The most important thing today is to be aware of one's own strengths, to have the curiosity to develop them and the ability to apply them in the context sought.
Which Professional Skills Will Shape the Future?
Although it is impossible to predict what exactly skills professional skills will be in 10 years, some experts in the world of work envision 4 key skills in the coming years:
- Understanding and using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Cyber security and good security practices in an increasingly connected world.
- The ability to think creatively and design new solutions for complex challenges.
- Sustainable development, understanding the environmental and social impact of one's own activity and the ability to change it.
A professional skill alone is not enough for its own success: it must be used wisely.
Unlocking and activating dormant skills
Just as the company must not operate in a vacuum but must take into account its global ecosystem, its skills management policy must have permanent visibility on skills and skills critical to its proper functioning.
Deployable skills: what definition?
The skills mobilizable are the skills technical, cognitive and sectoral skills present in the organization and at the expected level. Indeed, for each required ability the governance team stipulates a level of requirement to carry out its role. We detail skills in our page“the categories of skills“
Critical skills : what definition?
The skills critical are the skills essential to the proper functioning of the company. They may be either absent, soon to be needed, or at a lower level than required. We explore how to identify them in our page“Detecting the needs of skills“.
The HR strategy is thus aligned with the company’s general strategy and is able, on an ongoing basis, to put its human capital into perspective with that which it needs. This allows it to orchestrate changes, evolutions, adaptations…
Acquire the missing skills
An effective HR strategy must match jobs, headcount and skills talent to strategic business needs. When skills is lacking, there are two key processes within the HR function to acquire it:
The training
The training policy, like everything else that touches the crucial points of the company’s strategy, must be the subject of an action plan, performance measurement indicators and monitoring tables:
- The action plan will be defined following the collection of employees’ training needs.
- The follow-up tables will be created from the collection of evaluations inherent to each training course, which are sometimes neglected by the training organizations. However, the evaluation criteria are not negotiable and must be required by the company!
- Finally, the measurement of training performance is translated into ROI (Return on Invest). The ROI, borrowed from the commercial services, has its place in HR. It allows us to put the cost of training into perspective with what it generates in terms of commercial added value for the company once it has been successfully completed!
Job and career management policy
Since 2005, the Labor Code has required companies with at least 300 employees to negotiate the management of jobs and career paths (Jobs & Skills Management) with the social partners every three years.
The Strategic Workforce Planning is to adapt jobs, staffing and skills to the requirements of the company’s strategy. It must also take into account changes in the economic, social and legal environment of the company.
The Strategic Workforce Planning is an important link in the management of skills because it provides employees with the information and tools they need to be the actors of their professional career. And this is true both within the company and in the context of external mobility. Indeed, since September 23, 2017, and the entry into force of the “Labor Ordinances,” companies, regardless of their size, are encouraged to negotiate agreements Strategic Workforce Planning. In this context, they must, in particular, set up “mobility leave” to support their employees’ professional reorientations and transitions.
