Whilst there is so much going on, now is a great time to undertake a skills map of your staff.
This will be particularly important given the potential changes to your work environment for the foreseeable future or forever.
If you’ve seen lots of change, then you will need to understand sooner rather than later, what skills you need in your business moving forward.
By creating a ‘skills map’, you can get a view of the entire team, see how each person on the team contributes and the skills he or she is best at.
Firstly, let’s confirm the different types of skills. There are two key types – they are:
- Soft skills
- Hard skills
Soft skills are things like:
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- adaptability
- Communication
- Problem solving
- Work ethic
Hard skills are things like:
- Computers, ie, network security
- Project management
- Marketing
- Human Resources
- Design
- Web development
So, how do you go about doing this?
Here’s a few tips:
- Be careful to be objective. Consider getting input from multiple sources, both for the skills required for the role and for the skill level of any given individual.
- Skills mapping should show the current skills of your staff (basic, intermediate or advanced)
- Skills mapping can help you to highlight what level of skills (or different skills) you will need moving forward.
- Once you’ve mapped everyone’s skills for your business planning purposes, down the track, skills mapping may be used for individuals (added into performance planning discussions)
- You can train for both soft and hard skills.
- If you are looking to train staff, it’s always good if the employee has an interest in developing that skill.
