Closing the skills gap: Talent Development

Inadequate policies

For years, governments and businesses have been highlighting the growing discrepancy between the skills needed to transform and the skills the worldwide workforce currently offers. That only 20% of the current workforce offers the skills to cover 60% of all jobs is no surprising fact, but does prove we have not yet found the key to bridge a chasm. Organizations and universities seem to tirelessly leap upon attracting and maintaining talent, but fierce competition – offering big wages and ample amounts of data to play with – is snatching away the very best people. Besides the fact that an influx of new talents is considered crucial, organizations are also adopting new ways of thinking when it comes to talent development within the organization as a component of successful digital transformation.

In a holistic perspective, talent development focusing on the current workforce encompasses the embedment of data-driven working into the entire organization. It includes developing analytical and technical data skills and knowledge across all layers and domains of the organization to increase understanding and execution power, boosting the adoption of new ways of working, and learning leaders to take decisions based on data and to lead projects of the future. As such, for talent development to lead to sustainable value, organizations will need a mix of external recruitment and upskilling their current workforce. By assuming responsibility for educating and training their own workforce, organizations can lead the way to closing the skills gap, not only within the boundaries of their own organization, but also for the broader society.

Insufficient resources

Developing talent from the inside does not only allow organizations to become less dependent of the external environment, but also to up- or reskill their current workforce while institutionalizing domain knowledge, experience and culture. This is especially vital since the value from data is only acquired when its application is aligned with business needs. However, it has proven difficult to develop adequate inhouse education programs, and the results of this year’s FD Transformers survey speak volumes in this respect. Only 37% of respondents believe that ‘their company offers employees the resources and opportunities to develop their skills and thrive in a digital environment.’

How to close the gap

The internal skills gap analysis

For organizations to provide employees the resources and opportunities they need, an assessment of the current state, identifying the discrepancy between the current level and the level that is desired in future, is a good starting point. Questionnaires and interviews can be conducted to determine current levels of knowledge, experience, competencies and ambitions for each individual. For data specialists, these questionnaires and interviews can be tied to a data science capability framework. Such a framework allows organizations to assess levels of domain knowledge, data analytics, data engineering, data management, research methods and project management. The pitfall of conducting a skills gap analysis however is to focus on data specialists only. Including staff and management is just as important since focusing on specialists alone will lead to innovations and experiments that are not aligned with business needs. For the target audiences beyond data specialists, it is important to not only assess the skillset, but to include the mindset and toolset in the analysis as well (see excerpt 1).

<sub><strong>Excerpt 1
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<strong>Mindset </strong>– someone’s attitude, beliefs and willingness to change

(<em>“knowing that data-based decisions are better than gut feeling”)</em>

<strong>Skillset </strong>– someone’s behavior, understanding and approach to solving problems

(<em>“choosing the right type of model to solve a business problem”)</em>

<strong>Toolset </strong>– someone’s practical and concrete skillset in the tools to solving problems

(<em>“knowing which button to click”)</em>
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Taking a holistic perspective, organizations should as well map the aggregated levels of knowledge, experience, competencies and ambitions to and align with company strategy, the technology roadmap and the project roadmap (i.e. prioritization of projects). This outcome will highlight the capabilities an organization will need to prioritize. From experience, we have, for example, seen organizations hiring an abundant number of data scientists that didn’t lead to sustainable value. The results of the analysis led to the conclusion that they lacked other – often overlooked – roles, such as the analytics translator, who would have helped drive the change and align with business, and data engineers, that would have helped them to bring models into production. Analyzing your internal skills gap will help you to lay the foundation for a strategic reskilling plan and an education program to train your workforce.

Organizational talent development demands a broad-based approach

When embarking on such a strategic reskilling plan and developing an education program, it is important to look at the roles, responsibilities and required (new) skills of the entire organization, rather than merely focusing on specialist data talent. Digital projects are influenced by and have consequences for the organization in its entirety.

A legal department that is for example requested to assess the proof of concept of a new application for GDPR compliance, benefits from a certain degree of knowledge in the digital field. Similarly, customer contact center employees who have to use a chatbot application for improved customer satisfaction and efficiency will also require training to cope with this new way of working. And the same goes for those higher up in the organization. Senior management responsible for strategy formulation will benefit from up-to-date knowledge of developments in the field of data use cases, techniques, models and technology, as well as associated methodologies. Middle management must also have the skills and knowledge to enable them to make decisions based on data and what opportunities and pitfalls exist (understanding the difference between causality and correlation, for example), and to provide data specialists with the right (business) input. The education program does however have to cater to different needs, depending on the roles and levels of the various target groups.

A modular and tailored education program

A successful education program offers differentiated curricula properly tailored to the different roles and levels within the organization, aligned among the different target groups and with the overall business needs.

→ Example:A call center employee will benefit more from short videos that explain clearly what will be changing in their day-to-day work. These videos are often part of a change program, promoted by a communication campaign combining fun challenges and puzzles to boost awareness and stimulate buy-in. Data specialists, on the other hand, will need a more extensive curriculum that combines on-the-job coaching with online and offline lectures and hands-on workshops of a more technical nature.

Modular programs guarantee flexibility and a high degree of relevance since you only want to teach the skills that can be directly applied in the day-to-day and organizational context. Modular education programs can easily be tailor-made for specific groups or individuals, by combining the various building blocks and modules that fit the needs of the target group. These building blocks and modules could be a combination of executive bootcamps, in-depth analytics training sessions, on-the-job coaching and internal community building. Creating an internal community, for instance, will enable like-minded people – that are skilled and positioned as such – to lead the change by example. Such a community breaks down silos by bringing members together that ‘speak the same language’ and enables them to collaborate better on projects (see excerpt 2).

Excerpt 2
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Communities of practice are groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise. Communities of practice can drive strategy, generate new lines of business, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop people’s professional skills, and help companies recruit and retain talent.
Source: Harvard Business Review
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When putting together curricula for large groups, new methods such as blended learning, which is a combination of online courses, on-the-job training and classroom teaching, promise to be an effective approach. Especially when an organization must deal with a large group of to-be trained people, in order to keep costs under control.

For a sustainable change: applying the new skills on-the-job

In ensuring the relevance of the training, and with that the newly acquired skills and continued cultivation of internal careers, the distance between the subject material (the ‘locus of acquisition’) and the application of the material (the ‘locus of application’) must be as small as possible. Developing for and offering one-off training modules to the entire workforce, for instance, will rarely lead to the desired results, since the locus of acquisition will be too far removed from the daily practice of the majority of employees. In addition, external courses and education programs that are not properly attuned to the locus of application will lead to skills that are difficult to apply in daily practice. It is therefore not only important that the knowledge and skills taught to employees are relevant to their day-to-day work, but also that enough time is allocated and opportunities are created to put what they have learned into practice.

A lasting impact

Embarking on a successful transformational journey demands skilled people. Even judging solely on the basis of profit, organizations would be foolish to not assume responsibility for educating and preparing their workforce for the future. Aiming an education program that is solely mobilizing specialists is too narrow an approach. Data-driven working affects all layers of an organizations: from the call center employee and legal counselor all the way up to senior management. This holistic, broad-based, approach will have a lasting impact on the organization, contributing directly to profitability and increased efficiency.

This article is powered by Robert Monné, Manager of The Analytics Academy.