Is Today’s Skills-Based Approach Anything New?

Is Today’s Skills-Based Approach Anything New?

by Dave Vance, Executive Director, CTR

I have heard a lot lately about skills-based organizations (SBOs), but I have to wonder whether this is really a new concept. And, if it is, how does that align with the strategic focus we advocate to run learning like a business?

I sat in on a webinar this past week on SBOs to learn more. The presenter described an SBO as an organization that identifies specific skills and proficiency levels needed by employees to perform their jobs well and then provides the learning to address those unmet needs. But isn’t that what L&D has always done? I know we have not always done as well as we would like and there is always room for improvement, but how new and different is this concept? Don’t we routinely conduct needs analyses to identify if learning has a role to play in the desired performance improvement, and if it does, exactly what skills, knowledge or behavior must be improved? Hasn’t it always been about skills?

Someone on the call asked the question that had come to mind; namely, isn’t this focus on skills the same as a focus on competencies? For those of you newer to the field, the 1990’s saw a big push to adopt a competency framework across the organization. The idea was to identify the competencies and the proficiency level in that competency to enable employees to identify what training they needed to reach their desired level of proficiency. Ideally, once this framework was in place, your LMS or similar system could be programmed to direct employees to the appropriate learning.

Sounds fabulous in theory. In preparation for launching Caterpillar University in 2000, I spoke to a number of CLOs at large companies about their experience with an organization-wide competency framework. Every single one told me to proceed very carefully. Many had tried and failed to successfully implement an organization-wide competency framework. Especially for large organizations the complexity is enormous when you consider how many job descriptions exist (many of which have not been updated in years) and the difficulty in establishing even five levels of proficiency for each position.

Given the consensus that it was simply too difficult at scale we did not attempt an organization-wide competency implementation. We used competency frameworks for individual programs we designed but not across all positions.

Back to the webinar presenter. He gave a long answer suggesting competencies could be defined to include skills. For example, a single competency for leadership would include numerous skills the leader needs. So, in this sense, skills are the building blocks for a competency. He did acknowledge, though, that many use the terms interchangeably. Bottom line, it seems to me that an organization would encounter all the same complexities that doomed the competency framework approach 20-30 years ago. The task of identifying the skills and proficiency levels for each job description for a large organization remains enormous.

That said, I can imagine using the skills or competency approach for a smaller organization where there are a reasonable number of positions. Ditto for a particular business unit or area, such as IT or sales. I can also imagine using the approach for soft skills in general without being tied to a specific position. For example, identify the proficiency levels for communication skills and let employees and their supervisor decide if the employee is currently proficient if that is important for their work. In other words, a more informal and less intensive approach.

The presenter also showed a maturity spectrum with a SBO being at the highest level and an organization focused on strategic alignment being at the second of five levels.  While I like maturity scales, I don’ think this one is helpful. In my experience, most organizations have not even mastered strategic alignment although they have made great progress to attaining the third and fourth levels focusing on the learner’s needs and experience. Doesn’t it make more sense to see all these as necessary to produce the highest quality and most impactful learning? I would put all these important attributes in a circle with a high-performing L&D function at the center.