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FIVE STEPS TO IMPLEMENT COMMUNITY™ SKILLS

Written by Kai Donesa on April 12, 2022. Posted in Resources.

In our previous articles, we have shared the powerful and versatile capabilities of the newest solution from our Community™ integrated approach and platform, Community™ Skills. In this article, we will go over the five steps needed to implement Community™ Skills in your organization. This innovative tool allows organizations to manage and build their capacity by measuring the skills of their workforce, tailor learning and development plans around explicit measures at every grade level and skill stage and be able to objectively recognize skills growth through pay movement, prepare for their staff’s promotion, and so much more.

So, perhaps you’re thinking, “Sounds great! But how exactly do I implement this? Where do I even begin?” “Does it really only take five steps to implement Community™ Skills in my organization?” Because there are several HR functions that will need to be aligned to the Community™ Skills approach, this undertaking will take a bit of effort. But we, at Birches Group, have gone through this process ourselves, and here are some of the steps that we have taken to get everyone on board:

Align your organization’s job evaluation and pay structure to Community™ – To implement any Community™ solution in your organization, we must start with your jobs. Through Community™ Jobs, we will evaluate and align your job structure to our fourteen Birches Group job levels which will be the same levels used once you carry out your Community™ Skills assessments. Once your job levels have been aligned, our five Skills stages can then be arrayed against the pay range at each grade and the corresponding pay increments can be tailored to follow your organization’s policy on pay movement and frequency of skills assessment rounds.

Community™ Skills training with managers – Now that you’ve aligned your jobs and pay structure to the fourteen Birches Group job levels and five Skills stages, managers will need to be trained on the concepts behind the Community™ Skills approach and a briefing for them to use the tool. Birches Group is on hand to organize this for any organization to ensure that there is a shared understanding of the principles of each skill stage and the six indicators among all supervisors.

Conducting your first Community™ Skills assessment round – Once all managers have been trained on the methodology and platform, HR is now ready to conduct the first skills assessment round. Managers will assess each of their staff according to their evaluated job level and all results will be collated and stored in our Community™ system. Birches Group can assist in generating individual and overall reports. HR can then calibrate the results to ensure alignment in the assessments before presenting recommendations to management.

Tailoring learning and development plans – Simultaneously, managers can also begin tailoring individual learning and development plans for each of their staff. Each development plan should focus its activities to help the employee advance to the next skill stage or grade level, their assignments and metrics should align with each of the six indicators, and the timeframe in between assessments should also be determined.

Communicating assessment results to staff – once assessment recommendations have been approved and respective movements in pay have been taken into consideration, it is time for managers to communicate the results to their staff. At this stage, it is crucial for managers to be clear about how each employee was assessed, the impact on their salaries, and their follow-up development plans. At the same time, employees can also take equal ownership and provide suggestions to supplement or refine their development plans further. This way, assignments and metrics can be more attainable for staff in between assessment rounds.

The first round of skills assessments for any organization will, indeed, be a period of adjustment. HR has a role to play in making sure that the process that went into the assessments, creating the development plans, identifying promotion readiness, and pay movement are all being communicated clearly to staff. But with the structure and transparency our Community™ Skills tool provides, staff discussions around these critical talent management activities can now be done with ease. We hope that enumerating these five steps to implement Community™ Skills gives a clear pathway on how to get started. Contact us to see a demo of our Community™ Skills tool and how your organization can get started.

Want to know if your existing compensation practices have the elements of a good compensation program or if there are areas that could use some improvement? Take our quick Compensation Program Assessment Quiz to know your score!

Bianca manages our Marketing Team in Manila. She crafts messaging around Community™ concepts and develops promotional campaigns answering why Community™ should be each organization’s preferred solution, focusing on its simplicity and integrated approach. She has held various roles within Birches Group since 2009, starting as a Compensation Analyst and worked her way to Compensation Team Lead, and Training Program Services Manager. In addition to her current role in marketing and communications, she represents Birches Group in international HR conferences with private sector audiences.

COMMUNITY™ SKILLS – THE HR SWISS ARMY KNIFE

Written by Kai Donesa on March 23, 2022. Posted in Resources.

Birches Group’s Community™ Skills is a groundbreaking solution that radically changes the way organizations manage human resources. Like the well-known Swiss Army knife, Community™ Skills is so versatile that it can support different human resources activities using one simple and integrated approach.

In a previous overview of our Community™ Skills solution, we described how our methodology, with its five Skills stages and six indicators, can easily be adapted to an organization’s pay ranges and facilitate pay movement based on actual skills growth of staff, measure the capacity of its entire workforce, and help managers tailor learning and development assignments to enable movement of staff deeper into their grade or to the next skills stage.

Because Community™ Skills links the pay movement of staff with their growth in skills and experience, this approach can also be readily incorporated into other areas of HR from recruitment to succession planning. Here are other ways where Community™ Skills can support your HR program:

Establishing Fair and Equitable Hiring Practices

During recruitment, Community™ Skills makes it possible for managers to target the right candidate they need by allowing them to define the appropriate skill level required for a role. From the five Skills stages, managers can select from the first three skill levels, Basic, Proficient, or Skilled, depending on the level of skill they need. And because assessments are purely based on the candidate’s skill level, setting starting salaries during the recruitment process becomes simpler, more objective, and easily justifiable.

Aligning Skills to Pay

With the five stages of knowledge mapped across the different points in the salary range, Community™ Skills makes it possible for organizations to fully utilize their salary ranges and manage pay clearly and objectively. As staff build skills, they move across the stages driving movement in pay within their salary grade. Personal biases such as gender, race, etc. will have no impact on the increase that an employee receives.

Community Skills- The HR Swiss Army Knife

The illustration above can be applied to most grade levels.

Staff development can be tailored at every job level to be able to push out more of the work that is essential to the organization’s success.

Tailoring Learning and Development Assignments for Employee Growth

Through Community™ Skills, tailoring learning and development plans become a collaborative effort between the manager and staff. Because each skill stage is explicitly defined, employees can equally take ownership of their progress by providing feedback or suggestions that will tailor their initiatives to advance their skills growth.

Prepare for Career Pathing

Skills ratings inform managers about promotion readiness, providing objective criteria for succession and promotion decisions.

Never has there been any other solution that can address so many HR needs with just one approach. Community™ Skills not only seamlessly connects what used to be separate HR functions, but also links each of them in a way that any organization can adapt and design their respective strategies around. Contact us to learn how Community™ Skills can work for your organization.

Want to know if your existing compensation practices have the elements of a good compensation program or if there are areas that could use some improvement? Take our quick Compensation Program Assessment Quiz