Employees have been expressing a “quest for meaning at work” for several years, which is reflected in several phenomena: the rise of freelancing, the appearance of “slashers”, departures to the provinces and career changes.
These new desires are an opportunity for companies to reinvent themselves and thus engage their employees by ensuring their employability.
Transforming career wishes into mobilizable skills within the organization has long been the main concern of the HR function alone. The accelerated transformation of professions is now undergoing a new evolution with the increased responsibility of managers and employees. How can employees be made responsible for managing their skills ?
Matching proficiences with tomorrow jobs
The HR populations we meet highlight the increased maturity of employees to train themselves, either by themselves or with the support of their companies.
This appetite for training, supported by digital tools, carries the risk of creating expectations that can be disappointing.
How to Align Company Skill Requirements with Training Programs?
We recommend 3 actions to combine the needs of skills and training programs: to undertake a global SWP approach, to clearly communicate the strategic jobs and skills to the employees and, finally, to integrate them into the training content. Here are the details:
- A first response consists in initiating a Strategic Workforce planning approach. This consists of anticipating and aligning the skills of the entire organization down to the individual level. The programmed obsolescence of certain professions, while certain skills are becoming penurious, places this tool at the heart of the organization’s challenges.
- Secondly, it is the employer’s responsibility to inform employees of the jobs and skills that will be essential in the future. This requires clear communication of the jobs of the future and the skills to be acquired.
- Finally, matching the skills identified as strategic with the training content of Learning Management Systems, is becoming an imperative to which HR solution providers have adapted. Neobrain’s partnership with 360Learning, for example, is proof of this.
Fostering a learning company culture
In most cases, employees are only asked to reflect on their skills and their evolution on one occasion, during the annual appraisal interview. Being aware of the evolution of one’s skills has long been associated with the completion of the annual performance.
However, this scheme is no longer effective, which is why companies like Netflix, Orange or General Electric have abandoned it. They have turned to a very regular orchestration of evaluations to meet the imperatives of immediacy in an uncertain world.
It is now a question of making the same transition towards the permanent updating of skills employees. This is a cultural change that digitalization successfully supports, as shown in the view of the Neobrain "Skills" solution's employee interface below. The employee interacts with his level of skill and his motivation to develop it.
Offering a tool in which the employee interacts on a daily basis, allowing him to see in real time the evolution of his actions on his key skills , are part of the elements of a culture of permanent learning.
Employees feel more confident about their mobility when they focus on their skills. Our clients testify to the positive impact of showing employees the proximity of their skills to the skills required for the organization’s strategic businesses. Renault has thus managed to increase its internal mobility by 60% in one year.
The last step in this movement towards empowerment is to adapt the support offered to them. This is why relevant training is automatically suggested on the interfaces of the various users (managers, HR, employees) of the Neobrain solution.
The artificial intelligence developed since 2018 is associated with a “human” action where the employee can himself make suggestions. Managers and hr also choose from their catalog the most suitable training courses to include in the employee’s development plan.
Adapting retention approaches
While engagement levers such as compensation or benefits are showing signs of fading, skills development is becoming a key driver of retention.
Give continuous feedback to involve
The 5feedback solution, focused on real-time feedback, highlights the benefits of regular feedback in engaging employees in their career paths. The culture of immediacy in which we evolve must be reflected in the relationship of users with their management tool skills.
This includes:
- Display employee and manager evaluations on the same page
- Real-time incrementing of skills levels following training
- Present the employee’s progress in achieving his or her performance objectives
- Suggest training courses adapted to your career path
Integrate the HR dimension into the work environment for an optimal user experience
The creation of HR-oriented marketplaces by players such as Google, Microsoft or Salesforce is indicative of the future panorama of the workplace.
The convergence of tools in a single environment is a reflection of the excellence sought in the user experience. In the future, integrating all of the employee’s tools in a single environment will encourage the employee to consider the development of their skills as a key activity.
Involving the employee in the management of his skills has three virtues:
- Reinforce the employee’s employability;
- Improve knowledge of the company's talent pool;
- Consolidate their future performance.
Matching the ambition of allocating the right skills for the future of the company on the one hand, and the development of employees on the other, is now possible thanks to new generation HRIS tools.
What our clients who have successfully implemented this approach have in common is that they have taken the time to present the meaning of these tools, not only their benefits, but also the behavioral change that the digitalization of the various HR dimensions implies.
Do you want to go further in employee engagement?
User experience is one of the critical elements to adopt your HRIS. We offer you a guide to effectively address this aspect.
