Challenges in Skill Mapping and How to Overcome Them

Introduction

It is important for any organization to properly identify as well as match the various talents that exist in the workforce to the requirements as well as objectives of the organization. The essence of skill mapping is in determining the abilities needed to perform certain tasks and analyzing the abilities available in the company. As a result, skill mapping is a tool that not only identifies knowledge and skill gaps in an organization but also provides strategies for education and training, staffing, and promotion, and acquisition of competency.

Mapping of skills can be very advantageous to an organization in a number of ways but it can as well prove to be a challenge if not well analyzed. There is a rapid change in society and economy along with development of new technologies, this is why the skills that are useful for the competition are also changing. This causes the ability of organizations to keep track of the skill spectrum to be highly limited and make it difficult to keep a record of the constantly improving and diversifying skills possessed by employees. Further, the evaluation of the employees’ skills and caliber may be a challenging proposition, more often than not, due to the subjective nature of assessment and lack of standardization across organizations and researchers.

There would also be a necessity of pointing out that skill mapping as an activity can be quite a challenge; however, the integration of the same into the general strategic model of the firm seems to be quite a problem, as well. There is therefore a need to highlight the fact that skill mapping should always stem from the concept of the organization and the intended goals and objectives. This involves understanding the requirements of the organization at the present time, the ability to forecast changes in the market, and the tendencies in the area of specialization. Moreover, carrying out promotion of education. Hence, encouraging employees is another necessity when it comes to the achievement of skill mapping strategies in an organization. To ensure that such efforts do not fail, they should engage employees and the management.

Nevertheless, these problems are not as easily achievable as one may think. Therefore, it becomes easier for the organization to avoid the various barriers that are often associated with skill mapping since the process is systematic and well planned. Incorporation of new tools and technologies also makes the process of identification and training of such skills easier through the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Experience Platforms (LXP). To explore how Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) can enhance your organization’s performance, check out Auzmor’s blog From Onboarding to Upskilling: LXP and LMS in context of the employee’s development.

Most of these platforms provide different tools for analytics as well as the reporting feature where the organization can be able to discover other qualifications and strengths of the workers. Furthermore, supporting a learning culture will compel the workers to take charge of their individual growth, improving the manner of effecting skill mapping.

In this blog, we will explore some of the challenges of skill mapping with solutions on how to overcome them to keep an organization relevant to future needs.

Understanding Skill Mapping

Skill mapping entails drawing up a list of all the required skills for all the positions within an organization with a view of comparing them with the available employees’ skills. This process aids in the proper staffing of an organization by matching its human resources with the organizational requirements. For more information on skill mapping, please feel free to visit LINK blog posts entitled ‘5 Benefits of Skill Mapping for Employee Development’ and ‘Skill Mapping: Identifying and Bridging Skill Gaps in Your Team’.

Skill mapping has various benefits for the organization and the worker as a result of efficient skill mapping. In regards to organizations, it helps to facilitate effort and strategize frameworking and the means of evaluation for strengths and areas of deficiency within the workforce. To the employees, it gives them a chance of understanding the skills needed for the corporate ladder and being in a position to seek those necessary skills.

Common Challenges in Skill Mapping

Skill mapping enhances the efficient matching of candidates to different positions, training, evaluating and improving the staff and organizational performance and customer satisfaction. It also has its defects. The following outlines some of the more commonplace problems that are experienced by skill mapping organizations. Such problems arise commonly and should be comprehended to be able to discover how they can be prevented or have their remedies found:

1. Absence of Facts: Among the major issues of skill mapping is a deficiency of the up-to-date and comprehensive data on employees’ skills. It has been seen, some organizations are weak in updating their information and therefore maintain wrong performance appraisal about skill and competency. Such a disparity can prevent making key decisions on various issues and the creation of efficient training programs.
2. Skills Demands Fluctuating at a High Rate: In today’s world of rapidly developing technologies, it is possible to lose skills in a relatively short time. Owing to the rapid innovation, people should adjust their skill maps so that they can help organizations to identify current and future requirements. This process is further complex and continuous, which makes it difficult to handle and needs constant attention.
3. Identifying Transferable Skills: Identification and documentation of cross-functional skills that are relevant in current and other positions tend to pose some challenges. These skills are useful in today’s economy where many employees occupy positions that demand versatility in the workplace but these skills are not considered in most of the times when they are carrying out mapping of skills.
4. Employee Reluctance and Engagement: Employees may not come forward to take such skill tests possibly because they are afraid of being assessed or probably they do not see or understand the importance in making such tests. The State of the Global Workplace Report shows that employee satisfaction at work has hit a record high. According to some research, 85% of workers don’t feel engaged on the job. This reluctance can result in approximate or distorted skill maps that organizations can use, and this is not good for anyone needing to see a clear picture of organizational workforce capabilities.
5. Integration with Learning and Development (L&D): Identifying L&D programs that can incorporate the skill mapping is another usual problem experienced by many organizations. Slightly many times the skill mapped during the exercise and the training programs that are available, do not correlate, subsequently creating skill gaps among the employees. 66% of companies are now using skill mapping to make sure their staff has what it takes to navigate uncertain times ahead.

From these challenges, it is possible for organizations to implement the process of skill mapping by embracing some effective strategies. To rectify these problems, information gathering and updating have to occur frequently, cross-skills have to be valued and there should always be identification and proper communication with the employees. Furthermore, it has to be integrated with the Learning and Development programs well to convert the skill mapping into developmental initiatives. If addressed in a proactive manner, these issues prepare the workforce to address the present and future needs of the organization effectively.

Strategies to Overcome Skill Mapping Challenges

To address the challenges that are characteristic of the skill mapping process closely, senior management should develop a long-term approach that incorporates the following tips as best practices. Applying these recommendations, organizations can build better and more relevant maps of employees’ skills for the present and future demands. Below are some key strategies to consider:

1. Technology and AI Adoption: The idea of technology and artificial intelligence may become rather helpful in the process of skill mapping. Currently, available AI and machine learning platforms can work with this data to supply managers with the most relevant and updated information about their employees’ skills. 
2. Long Duration Learning/Enduring Learning: Ensuring that skills maps are up-to-date can be regarded as a process that requires consistent attention and updating and building organizational culture where learning is valued is critical in achieving this aim. When employees are trained often on how to improve and develop themselves by offering training and developmental courses to enhance the capabilities of the firm to face new challenges, then that is good. Some of the ways to make this a continual learning culture include microlearning and ever-learning platform.
3. Enhancing Employee Engagement: Including some factors like participation of employees in the skill assessment process can be made to increase employee engagement. For example, the assessment results can be followed by some incentives like providing workers with recognitions or bonuses for doing the assessment or incorporating skill mapping in the performance appraisal in order to emphasize its significance. To overcome this issue, it is also important to provide as much clarity and fostering as possible to reduce employee’s concerns into submission.
4. Identifying and linking to other areas ability: Transferable skills are recognized by using a different skill mapping approach. Some practices include the use of the competency profiles that group skills by fields and roles of the organization. As for the documentation of these skills, tools like the O*NET databases may prove useful to organizations in this regard.
5. Alignment with L&D Activities: The integration of skill mapping with learning and development programs guarantees that the gaps identified in relation to employees’ skills are closed by orienting certain training and development activities. This can be facilitated by engaging the L&D teams on the skill mapping undertaking while using the findings in designing the appropriate training. Skill maps and L&D initiatives can be synchronized by conducting the above-mentioned processes more frequently and updating them when needed.

When fully executed, these strategies convert the skill mapping from a one-time event into a continuous process of skill mapping that is purposeful to institutions, goals and employees. In this way, applying technology in talent management, encouraging learning, increasing employees’ participation, identifying cross-utilization, and aligning skill mapping with L&D, companies can develop a holistic and adaptive skill map. Besides aiding in skill gap analysis and talent deployment, it also enables the growth of employee’s skills as well as succession planning and ensures that the workforce is always fit for future demands.

Conclusion:

Even though there are challenges in practicing the skill mapping approach, there are some possibilities on how to go about these challenges. It can be done by adopting technology in mapping skills, embracing learning as a process that is comprehensive and increasing employees’ commitment, recognizing and appreciating skills that can be transferred, as well as relating the skills mapping to learning and development activities. In this way, the problems arising in the process of carrying out the skill mapping will be solved to ensure the adequate readiness of organizations for training and development to meet the needs of the modern staff.

Review your own skill mapping practices and plan to apply these tactics to improve your company’s workforce planning and development.

With the ongoing and more so with the growing changes in the nature of work, it would be useful to explore the concept of skill mapping for workforce development since this is the growing requirement for organizations in the future.