Request a Demo
Blogs | Featured

Why Skills Assessments and Mapping Are Critical for Effective Succession Planning

HR Strategy and Planning

Why Skills Assessments and Mapping Are Critical for Effective Succession Planning

Are you prepared for the inevitable day when one of your organization’s key leaders steps away? Identifying and preparing future leaders through succession planning serves to safeguard business continuity and drive innovation and employee engagement. 

At the heart of effective succession planning are two critical components: skills assessments and skills mapping. By integrating these tools into your talent strategy, you can more effectively prepare for the future. Here’s everything you need to know about these tools.

What Is a Skills Assessment and Skills Mapping?

A skills assessment involves systematically evaluating a person’s current skills, competencies, and performance levels. It’s about identifying what employees can do today while gaining a glimpse into their potential growth in future roles.

Skills mapping visualizes skills across the organization. By creating a comprehensive map of existing skills, you can better understand gaps and areas that need development to meet future demands.

Together, these processes provide a clear picture of your organization’s talent landscape. They highlight where you are today and where you need to go to ensure the continuity of your leadership hierarchy.

Why a Skills Assessment and Mapping Are Essential for Succession Planning

Skills assessment and mapping are also critical for general HR planning. Your human resources team can use these tools to better understand both short- and long-term talent needs. 

By integrating these tools into your succession planning process, you can:

Identify Skills Gaps and Opportunities

There’s no denying that employee training programs are valuable. However, blanket training sessions can be wasteful. Inevitably, certain team members will be subjected to sessions that don’t align with their professional goals. That’s where skills assessment comes in.

By evaluating employees’ abilities, you can pinpoint gaps in your talent pool that may hinder smooth transitions into leadership roles. You can also identify which team members are poised to step into management positions.

Skills mapping provides a broader view, helping you visualize critical areas that need strengthening. This allows you to proactively develop these skills within your workforce, ensuring that when key positions open, you have prepared employees who are ready to step in.

Focus on Potential and Development Needs

Succession planning isn’t just about filling roles, though. You will also want to focus on having the right people primed to step into critical leadership positions when needed. 

Skills assessment allows you to identify employees with the potential to grow into leadership roles, even if they’re not there yet. You want to nurture and invest in these team members for a few reasons. For example, in addition to preparing them for future opportunities, your development efforts can also demonstrate that you want those employees to stay around for the long term. 

By focusing on the potential of your most talented team members, you can also create holistic development plans, such as mentoring programs or leadership training. These programs should be tailored to bridge the gap between where employees are and where they need to be to take that next step in their careers.

Align With Organizational Goals

Every organization has unique goals, and aligning skills development with those objectives is vital. skills mapping allows you to see how each person’s talents align with business priorities. For instance, if your organization is gearing up for a digital transformation, mapping can identify employees with sufficient tech skills as well as those who need upskilling. 

Think of a skills assessment as a granular tool that allows you to better understand the individual capabilities of each team member. On the other hand, mapping enables you to create a focused talent strategy that supports the big-picture goals of the organization.

Role of People Analytics in Skills Assessment and Mapping

People analytics is transforming how organizations approach skills assessment and mapping. People analytics platforms collect and analyze data from various sources, such as performance reviews, skills inventories, and employee surveys. They combine information from these and other sources to provide a holistic look into your workforce’s capabilities. 

These platforms, like PeopleInsight, allow your HR team to visualize skills gaps and create winning strategies that cultivate a more well-rounded workforce. Our analytics tools can also highlight top-performing employees and those with high potential, making it easier to create a succession plan you are confident in.

PeopleInsight also features user-friendly dashboards and reporting tools. You can slice and dice data on your terms to see how skills are distributed across teams, departments, or the entire organization. For example, you might use analytics to identify which teams are strong in innovation but need better leadership development.

Benefits of Effective Succession Planning Through skills Assessment and Mapping

Why use skills assessment and mapping to guide your succession planning? For starters, these tools can help you ensure business continuity. When leadership roles suddenly become vacant, unprepared organizations can face disruptions. Skills assessment and mapping reduce such risks by identifying and preparing future leaders. 

Succession planning also gives you an opportunity to identify and nurture your most talented employees. According to an MIT Sloan survey, 67% of participants want to advance their careers. Skills assessments and mapping allow you to pinpoint which workers are a good fit for which roles. In turn, you can satisfy your team members’ desire to advance professionally. 

Additionally, skills assessments encourage employees to take an active role in their development. Team members may be more engaged when they see clear paths for advancement.

Practical Tips for Implementing Skills Assessment and Mapping in Succession Planning

Not sure how to get started on implementing these tools for your business? Here are some tips to help you effectively integrate skills assessment and mapping into your succession planning process:

Regularly Update Skills Inventories

Your company evolves, and so do its skills requirements. Conduct regular assessments to keep your skills data current and relevant.

Get Employees Involved

Make skills development a collaborative process. Encourage employees to identify their own strengths and areas for growth. Offering tools like self-assessments and personalized development plans can help them take charge of their career paths.

Leverage Tech for Continuous Analysis

People analytics platforms like PeopleInsight are invaluable for maintaining a real-time view of your talent landscape. With this technology, it’s easy to track individual employee progress and identify emerging leaders.

Align Skills Development With Business Goals

Make sure your skills assessment and mapping efforts support your organization’s strategic objectives. For instance, suppose that you’ve got your sights set on international expansion. In this case, you’ll need to identify and develop leaders with cross-cultural competencies and bilingual skills. 

Inform Your Skills Mapping Journey With HireRoad

Skills assessment and mapping are the building blocks of effective succession planning. These tools can provide the clarity and structure needed to identify future leaders and address skills gaps. However, you’ll also need a means of interpreting and leveraging the data gleaned from your skills assessment processes. Enter HireRoad.

HireRoad delivers powerful people analytics insights through our proprietary solution, PeopleInsight. Our user-friendly platform is loaded with features designed to make data-driven insights a foundational part of succession planning.

Book a free demo with PeopleInsight today.