Q&A: How Do We Begin to Inventory Our Employees' Skills?

How Do We Begin to Inventory Our Employees' Skills?
	My CEO wants me to prepare a report that gives an inventory of our employees' skills. The issue is important as this report will be submitted together with a succession-plan project for the company. With such a huge undertaking, where should I begin?—Planning for the Future, human capital officer, construction, Lagos, Nigeria
	Depending on the industry, job and/or technical discipline, there are literally thousands of skills, and evaluating all of them could be an endless task. So it is important to narrow down the project by zooming in on the skills most desired by your CEO, and understanding how this information will be used. Considering you mention succession planning, I suspect the list is narrower rather than broader. If your CEO could pick 10 to 15 of the most important skills or skill areas, what would they be? Are they the same ones you use to assess employee performance reviews and individual development plans? Is this an inventory for the purpose of knowing that they can do something, or how well they have been doing it? It's worth a follow-up question or two to clarify the actual need and avoid wasted effort. The next question: Is this skill inventory a do-it-yourself project, or is it something that can be delegated to others? Depending on the total number of people being evaluated, it seems that a divide-and-conquer approach to the task would work best. Create a simple form, pre-filled out with each employee's name, the generic list of 10 to 15 skills being sought by your CEO, and a place to either check off the skill (yes they have it, no they don't), or provide a rating (such as 1 for rudimentary, 2 for intermediate and 3 for advanced, depending on how your CEO answered the questions above). Set a deadline and create a review process to make sure the inventories are done consistently. Finally, if this is an "all-skill" inventory, meaning you want to know all of the relevant skills everyone has, the process is largely the same. You still will need to find out the most important and relevant skills your CEO expects employees to possess, but this list will be longer. You may need to build or buy a generic "skill list" and narrow it down from there, but it's critical to get guidance from your CEO. I've been through large all-skill inventories, and while the information is interesting, it tends not to be used thereafter, unless the skill lists being collected are relevant to the work at hand and where the organization is headed.   [SOURCE: David Peck, Leadership Unleashed, San Francisco, August 29, 2006]