What is a skill?
In the workplace, a skill, which is a word or combination of words, refers to the knowledge or ability that enables an employee to perform tasks on behalf of their employer and thrive in their role.
Defining what a skill is in an organization is one of the most difficult exercice to go through.
365Talents has experience identifying, beyond an ideal expression of a skill, which skills align with business needs and can be effectively used within an organization.
A good skill is expected to be:
- Applicable: the skill is used to perform a task. As an example, for the sales population, it would be expected to have skills such as sales negotiations, budget planning, customer services, active listening.
- Measurable: it is possible to use a notation system to measure the level of expertise of the skill. In 365Talents each skill is evaluated on 4 levels.
- Developed: if the skill is measurable, it is expected to get a definition that would explain how it is possible to progress to the next level of expertise.
- Transferable: one element that is important to identify when selecting a skill is to identify if the skill is applicable only for a specific function or if it can be applicable across the entire organization.
What we would not consider as skills:
- a word or a combination of words that are actually combining multiple skills;
- a full phrase;
- a role / job function.
What we would not consider as "good skills":
- Generic words/skills such as "Language" or "technology";
- Acronyms as they are difficult to analyze and can have multiple definitions/meanings;
- A word or group of words that will exceed 50 characters
How is a skill activated with the NSP?
Each skill will have its own journey within the 365Talents platform.
Below are the different statuses that a skill can have during the steps performed with a NSP Platform. The schema and the stepper describe the process followed to get a skill activated—from declaration by an employee or an admin to activation in the platform.
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1. Declaration
User: Employee or Admin
Skill status: Declared
Description:
- An employee is declaring a new skill (either suggested or added manually).
- An admin is creating a new skill within the skill framework page.
2. Data collection
User: -
Skill status: Declared
Description:
- The new skill declared is sent to the 365Talents platform for annotation.
3. Annotation
User: 365Talents
Possible skill statuses: Need Clarification / Invalidated / Validated
Description:
- Need Clarification: the annotation cannot be performed as the meaning is not clear enough to be understood (i.e an acronym or specific tool in use only in the company).
- Invalidated (No skill meaning, multiskill, ...): declarations not meeting the definition of a skill will be tagged as "Invalidated".
- Validated: declarations meeting the definition of a skill will be tagged as "Validated" and considered as a skill. Once confirmed as a skill, 365Talents will generate the translations and identify potential groupings (groups of skills that have similar meanings) between that skill and other skills.
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4. Customer Review
User: Customer
Possible skill statuses: Need Clarification / Invalidated / Validated
Description:
- The customer platform, upon 365Talents action, is calling for any new skills to be added.
- The customer is informed about the result of the annotation, the possible changes and impacts.
5. Integration
User: 365Talents
Skill status: Active
Description:
- Upon the customer's decision, the validated skills are integrated within the skills framework.
6. Customization
User: Customer
Possible skill statuses: Active / Inactive
Description:
- The customer can customize attributes for each skill.
- A skill can be inactivated when it is not needed anymore.
- A skill can be re-activated when it is needed for use again.