Understanding the skills of the talent you have is an important way for businesses to maximize their true potential. It starts with having the right people in the right seats. A key component of this involves knowing what skills your employees have, which can be determined through an employee skills inventory. When conducted properly, this critical tool can provide significant insight and value to your organization.
An employee skills inventory is a measurement of the abilities and skills of various members of your team. This is an organized way of collecting information that can help you understand your employees’ strengths and weaknesses in terms of skills.
In our article below, we discuss the basics of what an employee skills inventory is, the right way to develop one, as well as other key insights.
An employee skills inventory is a resource that provides a global view of all the skills, experience, and education of your current employees. Most often, organizational leaders use this tool to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current employee base.
A completed skills inventory is often maintained as a digital document, typically a spreadsheet or PDF file, that is broken down by department and position. The structure and format of a skills inventory allows key stakeholders to see the skills breakdown on an organizational and departmental level.
When you understand the current skill sets of your team and can identify what’s missing within your organization, you can experience several key benefits.
While there are several valuable benefits offered by an employee skills inventory, a few stand out.
With a complete skills inventory, you should have a clear picture of the gaps in your organization that need to be prioritized when recruiting and hiring. Similarly, you’ll also know the skills you already have and in turn, can ensure new hires complement the skills of your current team. This focus should streamline the hiring process.
Another area in which a skills inventory is extremely effective is employee training. Everyone wants professional development to be useful and worthwhile, but it’s often the exact opposite. Employees say that what they’re learning isn’t relevant to their job or it’s something they already know. Leaders note that training takes too long, or employees aren’t engaged and consistent with following the course material.
By looking at a skills inventory, business leaders can better prioritize more specific training and resources that will be beneficial for employees and the organization.
No matter how great your organization is, people will leave, and you need to be prepared. An employee skills inventory can serve as a means for knowing which internal employees are well-suited to fill vacant leadership roles. This goes for senior-level, C-suite roles, as well as manager and director-level positions.
You need to have succession planning strategies in place in case someone leaves their position. By having your skills inventory up to date you’ll be able to quickly identify people who can quickly fill gaps within your organization. Sometimes, you may not have the specific skills in your current team needed to backfill the position. In this situation and as part of your succession plan, you may lean on external resources, such as a talent firm to place an interim candidate, while you’re recruiting for your full-time hire.
An employee skills inventory can cover a wide range of skill types. In addition to the skills, themselves, other valuable information is often recorded.
Typically, the types of skills and information assessed by an employee skills inventory include:
Depending on your organizational goals, you may choose to focus on one or two specific categories to prioritize. If you’re looking to develop a more comprehensive list of skills, it would make sense to assess all the areas above.
Focus on what’s most important to your organization right now and for the future. Identify and measure the skills that are truly going to move the needle within your business.
Creating an employee skills inventory is a twofold process that involves collecting the necessary data and then organizing it into a structured resource. You have multiple options for each part of the process. It’s important to consider what will work best for your organization and your employees.
The first step is to gather the information you need to build the inventory list. This will require using an existing assessment or creating one from scratch. There are a wide range of skills assessment tools available, and many of them are even free to use!
Typically, skills inventories are either a test an employee takes or a self-assessment. While a self-assessment is simpler to build and conduct, the data may be unreliable. A test, on the other hand, requires more time to create and may have a cost involved.
Another option is to have managers complete an assessment on their employees. This can make the assessment process quicker and often provide more unbiased information then a self-assessment.
After you’ve collected the skills data, you need to compile it into a document that can be accessed and used by relevant stakeholders. As noted above, data is often organized in a spreadsheet or PDF file. The formatting choice is ultimately based on personal and organizational preference. More important is whether the data can be segmented and is useful for decision-makers.
Skills data should be segmented into numerous categories. For example, technical and soft skills can be viewed separately, as well as leadership capabilities and career aspirations. Data should also be broken down by department so departmental leaders can quickly access what they need.
When building an employee skills inventory you should be transparent with your employees about what you are doing and how the information will be used.
Without proper communication, your employees might feel they are about to be scrutinized and may even feel threatened. This is why you need to provide clarity every step of the way as to exactly what your end goal is with your inventory and how it will ultimately benefit them with additional learning and development opportunities.
You also want to make sure that you are conducting your skills inventory with the complete participation of those stakeholders that are critical to its success upon implementation. Doing nothing with your skills inventory once created is a waste of effort and can be negatively perceived by employees.
This kind of inventory gives you solid data about the skill sets of your employees. Analyzing the results means you will take a look at your current goals and the future vision you have for the company and create a plan to align the workforce to those goals.
You will need to review by department how well your current team is meeting objectives. With this information, you can make critical decisions about whether you should move employees into different positions, what kind of training to provide for upskilling, and how you should adjust your recruiting and hiring strategies to add the right skills to your teams.
While it’s hard to argue against the benefits provided by an employee skills inventory, it’s important to acknowledge the challenges in creating and maintaining one. Being aware of the challenges is critical in ensuring you’re prepared to solve them.
Challenges in creating and maintaining an employee skills inventory include:
Regarding the first challenge of time and budget, whether this can be properly dealt with will ultimately come down to how important company leadership views the employee skills inventory. If it’s considered a worthwhile investment (as it should be), then adequate time and money will be allocated towards it.
The key to solving the other challenges above is commitment and clear communication. If employees and decision-makers within the company are all on the same page regarding the purpose, use, and process of the employee skills inventory, there’s a greater likelihood these challenges can be overcome.
Having the right HR Leadership skills in place is critical to the overall success of your organization. If you know that your business is missing key HR skills or you’re unsure what’s missing, we can help.
We are a leading HR search firm focused on providing HR professionals to Fortune 500 and emerging organizations. Our team of experienced and dedicated recruiters have a deep background in HR and can quickly find the right talent. Even if you’re not ready to add a full-time HR resource, we provide interim HR and Fractional HR services to fill a gap when full-time hires aren’t possible.
Ready to get help? Contact our team and we’ll find the HR talent that your organization needs.
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