The career landscape is transforming at an unprecedented speed in 2023, and many business leaders are struggling to keep pace. Questions like “What elements define an inclusive workplace culture for our organization?” and “How might we implement hybrid work while still leveraging productivity?”, have many business leaders befuddled— but nevertheless show that a paradigm shift in the work world is long overdue. 

One of the biggest challenges on the C-suite docket has been the growing communication gap between employees and employers. This misalignment has resulted in low employee engagement and productivity, which is costly in more ways than one. In fact, according to Gallup’s 2022 State of the Global Workplace report, only 21% of employees were engaged at work, leading to a whopping loss of $7.8 trillion in productivity globally. 

There is hope for addressing the root cause of this lack of engagement, however. By understanding the skills that define your workforce through assessments focused on people-centric data, organizations can effectively acquire, manage, and retain talent.

Skills: Helping organizations and employees get back into  lockstep

Companies have been looking over their greatest asset—their people—and workers have started to notice. In fact, the University of Phoenix’s 2022 Career Optimism Index revealed nearly 43% of employees reported not having a clear career advancement path, with 70% saying that they would stay with their employer throughout their career if they felt supported in gaining and developing skills.

This is why, according to an article recently released by Deloitte, companies are moving towards a “skills-based model” to meet the demand for agility, agency, and equity in the workplace. The article found that 77% of business executives agree their organization should help their workers become more employable with relevant skills, but only 5% strongly agree they are investing enough to do so.

In the modern-day workplace, siloed departments need to reconsider their boundary lines so that organizations can employ a more granular technique of evaluating employees’ contributions. This will help to accurately comprehend what each employee contributes to the greater ecosystem of an organization, focusing on outputs and skill talents rather than on years with a job title. 

More and more studies are showing that much of the data for skill evaluation is locked into the often looked-over “soft skills”, or human capabilities, of employees. The trouble is that to date, there has been no framework to evaluate these abilities in the professional setting of the work world.

Almas Insight is looking to build this framework. Our proprietary analytics platform, which analyzes a number of high-demand human capability skills, helps to bring employee skill context into a company’s business model. By using our dashboard, organizations can gain data that helps to identify high-performance individuals, streamline reorganization efforts, and build more effective professional growth plans for employees. 

Assessment can provide answers

The assessment industry is at the core of helping to shape human capability data for workforce management. 

With the changing landscape of work, businesses need to be more proactive in identifying and nurturing talent, rather than relying solely on traditional recruitment methods. Assessments that derive information on human capabilities can uncover the hidden potential in employees who may not have been considered for leadership roles or career advancement opportunities based on their traditional qualifications alone. 

What is more, assessments can be valuable in driving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. By using assessments to identify areas of bias in the hiring process, companies can take steps to ensure that their recruitment and retention practices are truly inclusive—leading to more diverse workforces and boosting productivity. 

When more contextual, connected, and continuous decision-making is made for the workforce, organizations across industries can better understand and leverage their talent. This could help to end the current dismal “hire, fire” cycle that is plaguing organizations across sectors in 2023.

Closing thoughts

Understanding your talent pool’s behavioral skills, as well as skill gaps, can help lead to improved employee development and engagement, better hiring decisions, and insight into how to build stronger, and more adaptable, teams.

Companies that build teams that embrace change, and position their company to adapt to market conditions, drive their companies to win in rapidly changing business conditions. When this objective acumen is integrated into your overall talent process, the potential for growth is infinite—allowing businesses to become descriptive (describe their issues), predictive (see where they need to go), and prescriptive (implement change) when they manage their workforce. 

Companies are merely an extension of the people that run them. For organizations looking to prioritize their cultural and performance goals simultaneously—people-centric data will be the key to unlocking a brighter future of work.