The human capital of a company is a treasure that we want to discover and enrich. The skills it contains are both complex to detect and changing. They are constantly changing, expanding and evolving! In this article, we will see how to set objectives for the " skillsapproach" and then draw the first outlines of the methodology to adopt to optimize your investments.
Why is skills an essential HR tool?
The mapping of the company's assets first feeds the " skills approach" at the origin of your Jobs & Skills Management. It is an in-depth work that benefits the different actors: HR, managers and employees.
- For the HR function
- Make career committees and job changes and salary revaluations more reliable
- Streamlining training programmes
- To guide the recruitment policy,
- Nurturing reflection on high potential and succession planning.
- To materialize the bridges between the professions, the potential losses of skills and the investments for the professions of tomorrow.
- For managers
- Improve performance measurement
- To guide the development of skills teams.
- Adapt performance and training objectives.
- Build loyalty by involving employees in their career paths
- Create an internal recruitment tool where skills and skills are visible to all
- For employees
- Learn about the levels of skills expected on their current jobs.
- Discuss with their managers and colleagues the appreciation of their skills
- Make career opportunities within their company a reality thanks to gateways to jobs and professions that are closer to their current skills and their motivations.
Cristel Guillain talks about the choice of Neobrain for her mapping of skills : access the video here :
What are the concrete objectives of the mapping of skills ?
- Responding to a transformation of one of the organization's branches, involving a very rapid evolution of the business lines: illustration with the SNCF.
- Structuring a Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des skills: illustration withAfpa.
- Carry out a dynamic management of the company's ages to anticipate potential losses of skills : illustration with Bosch.
- Empowering employees and managers in career management with an intuitive and sustainable tool: illustration with Sage.
- Facilitate internal mobility through better career management and the implementation of a Talent Marketplace: illustration with Natixis.
- Renewing practices in terms of training and support for employees: illustration with Amicio.
Gather the actors of the process around a project.
The mapping of skills is the result of the combination of your business repository and your skills repository.
Who are the actors of the mapping of the skills of the company?
The HRD is the project manager of this approach, and involves several actors:
- Managers: they contribute to the mapping by listing all the skills available within the teams.
- The job expert: he/she describes the main tasks attached to the jobs he/she manages and the resulting skills .
- The business sponsor: validates the strategic skills contained within the family of businesses that concerns him. He/she participates in the prospective vision of the organization's skills , and already thinks about future skills so that they can be integrated from the start of the process.
- The HR project team: the HR functions of the projects we carry out are training, HR development, HRBP and HR information systems.
- The Competency Owner's role is to be defined at the start of the process: he/she ensures good practices in the formulation of these skills and their meaning for the populations concerned. The competency owner conducts interviews and reviews with the business experts and the local HR or HRBP.
Business Gateways and Internal Talent Marketplace
Your mapping is taking shape, you have all the data your employees need to position themselves on their jobs. They now complete their levels of skills, this action reveals two essential pieces of information:
- Gaps between expected and actual skills levels.
- Levels of skills that allow for advancement to other roles within the organization.
This self-declaration is insufficient to reveal the real level of each person, in our article "mapping: optimize your training budget" we discuss ways to make self-declarations more reliable.
What is the definition of a business bridge?
Business bridges form the basis of mobility, and are created thanks to the skills transposable from one business to another. For managers and the HR function, the mapping of skills highlights the skills shared between professions and, consequently, the paths that are most likely to lead to success.

Mapping then becomes a tool for steering career paths and will allow for objective job changes based on the only objective criterion: skill. For the employee, this information system provides visibility of the roles towards which he or she can evolve, which will reinforce his or her commitment.
In order to make this mobility dynamic, the positions open internally will highlight the levels of skills required. This information will help filter internal applications and save time in managing the internal recruitment process.
Internal talent marketplace
Internal projects are the lifeblood of companies, and having the right skills people to carry them out is becoming a key factor in the sustainability of the organization. These internal projects do not always require the use of external candidates. Thanks to the mapping of your skills managers can find the right resources according to criteria that can be adapted to each company:
- Certifications
- Level of skills expected
- Past performance
- Location
- Seniority
- Current position
Update your mapping and avoid inflation of skills
- It is therefore essential to constantly update and feed your cartography! Neobrain scans 60 million job offers every day to suggest new skills that you may or may not include in your repositories.
- Watch out forthe "inflation of skills " which carries a risk for the relevance of your tool. Limit the addition of skills by employees. A good skills repository should not exceed 15 skills per job.