Upskilling with Competency Tracking Software

By Wendy Trainor

Skilled labor shortages continue to increase, and are exacerbated by the lasting effects of the pandemic. The 2022 Mercer Global Trends Report states that 98% of organizations report a significant skill gap within their current workforce. What actions can organizations take to prevent skill shortages and proactively upskill their talent pool? A skills and competency tracking software can assist with tracking employees’ skills and the required competencies of your jobs in order to help with bridging any gaps and developing employees for future needs.

Define Your Library

Step one, is to ensure you have a repository of skills and competencies for your organization as a framework. If you do not currently have a skills library, there are many websites and vendors that can provide a list. Deltek Talent Management, a complete talent management and HR solution for project-based businesses, comes with robust a list of skills and competencies already defined to get you started. Once you have a list of competencies, these can be bulk uploaded to your Talent Library.

Your organization might have some core competencies that all employees should possess based on your corporate values, or you’ll likely have some skills or competencies that are more job specific. Keep in mind that some skills or competencies might relate to various jobs within the organization.

Sharing skills and competencies across multiple roles will be helpful when it comes to internal mobility and future planning. Your skills and competencies library will change and grow over time, as will the skills and competencies your employees’ possess. This is why a software application that end users can access is helpful for tracking and updating.

Aligning Skills to Jobs

If you already have a defined list of required job skills or competencies, you can bulk upload these to Deltek Talent Management and the appropriate skill levels to each job. If you do not have pre-defined skills and competencies tied to jobs, this task can be accomplished by conducting a thorough job analysis. This will allow you to benchmark required skills and competencies to each job. You may even go a step further and create a list of skills and competencies than can be gained over-time within a job based on experience.

The Talent Management integration with the O*NET library, a free online database of job descriptions, will allow you to search through more than a thousand different jobs and allow you to import job descriptions, requirements and competencies. Conducting a job analysis is a big undertaking, but with clearly defined skills and competencies it can help employees succeed in their current role, and lead to more efficient hiring whether you buy or build talent.

Tracking Earned Skills and Competencies

By assigning skills and competencies to your employees, in Deltek Talent Management, it will assist you with searching your talent pool for the right people for new projects and assignments. It will also assist with internal mobility when there are transferable skills between your jobs and your people. A competency tracking software, like Deltek Talent Management, can offer more transparency to the employees as to what they have and what they need to track their own progress and development.

In addition, you might uncover other relevant skills or education if employees are permitted to update their own skills and competency profiles. Ensuring you have the right tools in your Talent toolbox will help you stay competitive and agile.

Identify Gaps and Developing a Plan

To help empower your employees, give them access to see their skills and competency profile to provide them the tools they need to further develop. Deltek Talent Management allows you to create development plans that will provide recommendations on methods to earn new skills or competencies such as peer mentors, library resources, courses and other development suggestions for employee advancement. When you have skills and competencies assigned to jobs this will help with establishing career paths which will keep employees motivated by fostering upwards mobility.

Another benefit of using a robust solution like Talent Management is that managers and leaders can track employee progress by bridging any gaps between the person and the job. They can plan for employee growth by developing a plan to groom employees as successors for leadership roles. Investing in a skills tracking software demonstrates your dedication to developing your employees and their careers.

Putting Together Your Talent Strategy

According to a recent Gallup report, 65% of workers believe employer provided upskilling is very important when evaluating a potential new job. Skills and competencies are at the core of managing your people and you need to ensure you are tracking what you have and what you need.

A powerful competency tracking software like Deltek Talent Management will keep your employees motivated to develop their skills and competency tracking partnered with a learning and development strategy will show your dedication to their success