Skills in Action Workshop Agenda
The agenda is split into three (3) days, with discussions in the morning and dedicated clinics in the afternoon, covering the topics presented below. Pre-work diagnostic questions are to be provided prior to the first session, and an offline exercise is included after the second session.
Morning Day 1:
- Spotlight on operational problems/issues raised by participants
- What is the role of HR?
- Integrating HR
- How a disjointed approach to HR management leads to temporary solutions that do not address the root cause of problems.
- Overview of how common HR practices can negatively impact cohesion
- How alignment/integration of principles, policies, and tools can lead to clarity and consistency
- Birches Group’s Integrated Workforce Formation & Management Framework: Principles, Policies, Tools
- The Foundation
- Establishing equivalent worth of jobs across different occupations
Afternoon Day 1:
- Constructing a balanced pay scale
- How to support both external competition and smooth progression between grades
- How to design structures to support recognition and career progression
- The Bridge
- The Community™ Skills Progression
- How to determine the value of individuals’ experience using explicit measures of knowledge anchored on the factors of job evaluation and aligned with job grades
- Designing Jobs integrating functions with skill profiles
- How to link the job profile with the target skill level for candidates
- Distinguishing Skills from Performance
- Recruitment: The Starting Point
- Evaluating candidates’ skills during recruitment
- How to translate the target skill level into structured interview questions and objectively rate responses
- How to determine hiring salary based on the assessed skill level of a candidate
- Skills-based recruitment: a holistic, long-term solution to talent attraction
- How traditional recruitment practices (using salary history, allowing negotiations, using years of experience as a proxy for skill, use of unstructured interviews) limit your reach, perpetuate inequity, and harm organizational cohesion
Morning Day 2:
- Recruitment Exercise
- A classic BG11 Program Position
- A management BG12 position
- An entry BG9 Program Position
- A BG12 expert position
- Recognition
- Skills as a basis for managing individual pay movement
- How to assess staff
- How to communicate the results of the assessment to staff: a guide for HR and Managers
- Application of Skills to different organization structures (e.g., 1:1, broadband, project-based, or time-limited)
- Imputation of Skills and Correlation with Manager Assessments
- Skills readiness for promotion
Afternoon Day 2:
- Reinforcement
- How Skills positions L&D as a tool to build capacity
- L&D as the roadmap for growing and sustaining capacity
- How to build an L&D plan
Morning Day 3:
- Strategic Workforce Planning
- Using insights from aggregated skills data to assess overall team capacity
- Using skills data and insights to inform workforce planning (examine alignment with organization strategy and mission, restructuring, expansion, downsizing, succession)
- Computing the financial impact of a skills assessment round Overview/Walkthrough
- Skills Policy, Budget, Planning
- How to develop guidelines to ensure adherence to your payroll budget
- How to design a Skills policy that balances skills progression, recognition, and budget
Afternoon Day 3:
- Case Study
- Clinic for 2.5 hours
- What’s Next? A Path Forward
- Managing a flexible and remote workforce
- How using the Skills framework, by fostering transparency, can help managers keep their teams connected, productive, and motivated.
- The road to pay transparency and equity
