Competency
Every skills initiative starts with the same question: what skills actually matter here? Not the generic list from an HRIS vendor. The specific, measurable capabilities that define what good looks like in your organization, and what separates "meeting expectations" from "ready for the next level." The
Competency
Most competency management systems are bought after an audit finding, not before one. The auditor asks to see evidence that the person who ran a critical procedure last Tuesday was competent against the current revision of that procedure. The training manager produces a completion record from the LMS, dated two
Assessments
Every organization already assesses skills. The manager who decides who gets the hard project is assessing. The team lead who signs off a new hire on the line is assessing. The partner who staffs a client engagement from memory is assessing. The problem is that none of it is written
Skills Management
Ask a company how many job titles it has and the answer is usually a number that embarrasses someone. In 18 years of implementations we have routinely seen a title count that is a third of the headcount, sometimes higher. Titles multiply because they are cheap to create and expensive
Skills Management
Every organization has a skills inventory. Most of them just don't know where it is. Quick reference: Skills Inventory — the short version of this post, with the one table that matters. It lives in the heads of a few senior managers who know that Priya is the only
Skills Management
Two maintenance technicians both have "hydraulic systems" on their skills record. One can swap a failed pump from a work order. The other can diagnose an intermittent pressure drop across a 40-valve manifold that has stumped the shift for a week. The record says the same thing
Skills Management
Ask a plant manager what skills their maintenance crew has and you'll get a list of people. Ask the HR system and you'll get a list of job titles. Ask the LMS and you'll get a list of courses completed. None of those is
POV
The annual engagement survey runs in March. Forty questions, fifteen demographic cuts, a board-deck readout in May, a senior leadership debrief in June. The "engagement score" moves three points, plus or minus. The slide deck goes into a shared drive. Mid-year reviews start, performance cycles spin
Assessments
The assessment is where competency frameworks meet reality. It's the moment you stop talking about what skills people should have and start measuring what they actually do have. And it's the step most organizations either skip or execute so poorly that the data is useless. A
Skill Gaps
Most organizations that say they "manage skills" are really just tracking them. They have a spreadsheet, an HRIS field, or maybe a dedicated tool that records what skills employees have. That data sits somewhere. Occasionally someone looks at it. And workforce decisions continue to be made on gut
Skills Management
The training needs analysis is one of the most important exercises in L&D — and one of the most dreaded. Every year, someone gathers survey responses from managers, reviews performance data, scans industry trends, and assembles a report that says, more or less, the same thing: we need more
Skills Management
Every skills tracking effort starts in a spreadsheet. And honestly, for the first version, that's fine. A Google Sheet with names down the left, skills across the top, and proficiency ratings in the cells is a perfectly good starting point for a team of 10-15 people. The