Is Your Organisation Future Ready ? Beginning the Journey with Skill Development !

[abhishegupta]

Overview

The job market is evolving every minute and skill have become an ultimate catalyst to thrive and unlock full potential of the workforce. Senior industry leaders across the globe are facing challenges in adapting a consistent workforce planning strategy and with rapidly advancing skills, automation, and AI landscape.   

This blog is aimed at SuccessFactors Talent solution to overcome critical challenges and watchpoints faced by business leaders in large, medium, and small businesses during HR transformation program and journey.

What sets apart this blog is that it offers both technical (SuccessFactors) and non-technical perspective on implementation of skills-based organisation design.

Key questions and challenges across global businesses which are answered in this blog:

1. Where to start?
2. Where can we get an industry specific skills catalog that is evolved based on latest market trends?
3. What is the best approach to stay updated with dynamic market trends and changing demands in the business?
4. What are the use cases of AI within SuccessFactors to support skill-based processes?

In this blog we are focusing on SuccessFactors, which provides a comprehensive solution for Skills portfolio and a path to migration to Talent Intelligence Hub. Talent Intelligence hub enables you to manage skills centrally as well as provide a single view of individuals readiness for existing and future roles.  

Where do I start?

Different organisations are at different level of maturity in terms of workforce planning skills, jobs, and architecture. However, there is one thing in common i.e. to develop workforce for future ready skills that is paramount.

For starting position, you can look at the core roles and required skills to fulfil those roles within your organisation, such as recruiting roles that are most frequently hired or some of the key roles that are hard to replace.  – Its important to envision the destination before embarking on the journey!

Where can we get an industry specific skills catalog that is evolved based on latest market trends?

Instead of starting from a blank slate, you can look for a library of skills as a starting point to develop and evolve the skills required for your organisation. There are vendors and third parties that provide market led skills library or you can even leverage SAP SuccessFactors developed attributes library and skills ontology to get ahead in the game.

What is the best approach to stay updated with dynamic market trends and changing demands in the business

Skills and market trends are fast changing and so does the orgranisation workforce strategy, as a starting point you can categorise the workforce by various distinct groups for example: markets, industries, worker classification, types, sectors etc. as personalisation is the key here and dividing a bigger problem into smaller bite size chunks is always easy to solve.  –  Consider market trends, organisational goals, organisational strengths, competition in the market, scalability, and future vision for your skills strategy.

Keep a track of trends that are changing within your organisation, combining  market trends that are available via skills library/third party skill providers. Establish a governance to periodically update your skills library via upload or via integrations with third party (In roadmap for SuccessFactors).

What are the use cases of AI within SuccessFactors to support skill-based processes?

1. Recommendations: Within SuccessFactors, recommendations are made for adding skills to the growth portfolio for individuals to pick and choose the skills that are required to demonstrate either current role or future aspirations. It’s a great way to track your skillsets against the expectation and provides an opportunity to improve on the individual skills and meet organisational demands at same time. This is supported by learning processes to enhance the skills to help cross train your workforce and elevate the overall business performance.

(Growth Portfolio – Screenshot)

1. Suggested and personalised learning courses based on skills that your role requires and as per individuals’ aspirations.
2. When linked with recruiting and other modules talent intelligence hub can be really a powerful tool while assessing candidates during hiring process.  
3. Opportunity Market place is another great example of usecase of skills where your workforce can fill gaps in the business by applying on some critical assignments across the organisation. – Again, improving productivity and providing opportunities for upskilling the workforce

(Opportunity Marketplace  – Screenshot)

Summary and references:

We recognise that there are number of challenges which are not technical. However, with proper plan in place and right foundation for skills the journey to become skill-based organisation can be smooth.

I have been part of some key discussions and seminars with SAP on these new and upcoming functionalities. Some parts of this blog are taken from below references:

1. Talent Intelligence Hub Blog by SAP - https://community.sap.com/t5/human-capital-management-blogs-by-sap/everything-you-need-to-know-about...
2. To understand first half release highlights https://community.sap.com/t5/human-capital-management-blogs-by-sap/first-half-2023-release-what-s-ne...
3. To understand migration approach and implementation steps https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUCCESSFACTORS_PLATFORM/e15477b0414b4b25b224a97ad52c12ec/ec345d8396d64...