Everyone wants to improve their skills. However, improvement for improvement’s sake doesn’t deliver optimal results, and employees often study the wrong things without guidance on what to learn. 

Seven in 10 people aren’t able to accurately judge their current ability levels one way or another. Employees who underestimate their skills spend valuable time studying material they already understand, while those who overestimate their abilities don’t recognize the need to study specific fundamental subjects. Both result in a workforce that is unable to drive forward. 

For organizations to truly get value out of upskilling, they need to align skill gaps with business goals — identifying what skills they need and how they can acquire them. But that’s easier said than done. 

Here’s how Workera customers are mapping skills to business needs and guiding employees along the personalized learning pathways that bring those goals within reach. 

Identifying gaps and verifying skill levels

Your C-suite has set its key targets for revenue growth and customer satisfaction. How do you know whether your workforce has the skills it needs to reach those goals?

First, you need to understand what skills are necessary to achieve your business objectives. Some organizations will require emerging AI and machine learning expertise, while others might look to advance in cybersecurity or data science. Once you’ve established your baseline requirements, you can assess whether your employees already have those skills and pinpoint any critical gaps. 

You can then apply resources where they’re needed most to drive results. Fortunately, AI mentors like Sage can significantly accelerate the learning process: Workera’s skills engine enables 5x faster upskilling and has shown to boost generative AI proficiency by 240%. Sage learns each employee’s job context, determines the most relevant skills to verify, assesses them, and provides a clear analysis of any skill gaps. From there, the AI mentor delivers instant and adaptive feedback to help learners close those gaps through direct practice and tailored resources.

Continual assessments and measurements are delivered in context, comparing individual learners to the entire team and established industry benchmarks. Business leaders can use this data to make informed decisions about investments in training and organizational structure as they ensure their workforce’s learning velocity outpaces the competition. 

Establish a skills framework

The best way to align skills with business goals — and tie them directly to outcomes — is to create a skills framework: a comprehensive strategy that maps each goal to a set of skills. Workera’s team of subject matter experts and psychometricians build skills frameworks for each relevant domain the platform measures; these frameworks underpin our ability to measure employees on the skills that actually matter to the work that they do. 

A skills framework gives business leaders the information they need to staff projects effectively. As the organization’s skills-based approach matures, leaders can secure essential skills within their team, reward their employees’ achievements and incentivize progress, and build teams with the combination of competencies necessary to complete projects ahead of schedule. 

This skills framework should be driven by AI to allow it to keep pace with changing skill requirements and technologies. There are no fixed points in skills development — especially when those skills are tied to business goals. Your goals will change, your employees and their abilities will change, and the tools they use will change. Your framework can’t be rigid. 

But when you build a flexible skills framework that updates in real-time — based on an accurate understanding of your workforce and backed by an AI mentor — you’ll always know where your employees’ skills stand and feel confident in where they’re going. 

To learn more about Workera and how we help leaders align the skills of their employees with the goals of the business, request a demo from a member of our sales team.