In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Lesley Sears says she loves the commercial in which “Polly Pratz wore many hats.” While the commercial is for an online university, Sears loves the many hats idea as it relates to having an organization-wide skills taxonomy—a system for deeply understanding the skills of each employee and the organization overall. 

Having a skills taxonomy can help an organization not just think about their people within the boundaries of their position or role (such as teller or chief marketer) but rather think broadly about what they can or could do—their current and developable skills (such as accuracy or setting marketing strategy), explains Sears, , CUES’ VP/consulting services who heads up CUES Consulting.

In the commercial, the female protagonist “has on a firefighter’s hat and the coach’s hat and … all of these different things that she has done in the past,” Sears says. “The skills taxonomy really begins to identify that for the organization, … so people really understand who their workforce is and what they’re bringing to the table on any given day.”

In the show, Sears says a skills taxonomy is like a biological taxonomy that classifies plants or animals into kingdom, phylum, class and so on. The difference, of course, is that a skills taxonomy organizes people’s skills.

Having an organizational skills taxonomy opens the door to being better able to address skills gaps both in the organization overall and in individual employees; understand the skills big picture when hiring new team members (e.g., what additional skills would we like in the new loan officer to fill out our organizational taxonomy?); and knowing how to build better cross-departmental teams, Sears explains. Skills-based talent strategy built on a skills taxonomy can help streamline people processes, saving both time and money.

“So, you, the CEO, the CFO, … everybody within the credit union, understands what the objectives are, … the mission, the vision, … the objectives and anything that the people strategy can do to make that work better, or … make your resources go further,” she says. “You've got a team of people that want to move toward that objective.” In other words, focusing on skills helps to align the organization and move it toward its overall goals.

Sears acknowledges that developing a skills taxonomy might seem overwhelming at first. But fortunately, talent development research has illuminated a set of common skills that your organization might have—or might want to have. So, it’s just a matter of finding out. And again, research has helped refine effective ways to dig in and find out, Sears says.

Links for this show:

• Transcript
• CUES Consulting
• More content from Sears, including her monthly Purposeful Talent Development blogs 
• TalentNEXT, for HR, talent and people execs