Shape Development Initiatives with Purpose

What do you want to accomplish through development?

Our clients are asking what skills they should prioritize within their recruitment and talent management initiatives. The answer varies based on the specific objectives of their business.

Many organizations are currently undergoing some form of transformation and require support to ensure its success. Through SHL Labs, we were able to use this scenario to illustrate the power of objective skills data combined with a scientifically grounded approach.

Top 10 Essential Skills for Business Transformation

Our research investigated the top 10 skills critical to success across different types of business transformation. Broadly the skills required for success are similar across many types of transformation including organizational transformation, management transformation, cultural transformation, and digital transformation.

Considers strategic vision

Thinks in terms of long-term vision, goals, and strategies, inspiring and guiding the organization through the transformation process.

Thinks broadly

Takes a big picture view that considers different angles and issues, aligning the transformation initiatives with the company's overall strategy.

Motivates and empowers others

Inspires and motivates others within the organization to achieve the vision of a transformed business.

Monitors markets and competitors

Stays up-to-date with developments in own field and is aware of external factors impacting the business transformation.

Considers financial impact

Understands the financial implications of transformation initiatives and focuses on activities that will maximize financial or business benefit.

Drives Improvement

Pursues opportunities to improve current ways of working and implements changes by understanding change management principles and how to manage complex projects.

Applies functional expertise

Understands digital tools and technologies that can drive business transformation, such as cloud computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation.

Gains agreement

Negotiates agreement among stakeholders on a clear course of action to mobilize transformation efforts.

Demonstrates empathy

Shows compassion and support for others impacted by difficult and stressful changes.

Learns quickly

Absorbs a high volume of new information quickly throughout the transformation effort.

Prioritize Strategic and Commercial Thinking

These top 10 skills emphasize the importance of broad and strategic thinking to drive organizational change and the value of mastering new techniques. Commercial thinking is also a strong theme, as decisions during the transformation process must consider revenue, cost, and risk factors that drive performance and optimize resources.

Map Critical Skills Across Your Workforce

Knowing the skills required to reach your business objectives is just the first step to aligning your talent strategy. Next, you must understand whether your workforce possesses those skills to uncover skills gaps.

To spotlight areas where you can develop employees at scale, we looked at assessment scores for each of the Top 10 Skills across all individuals who completed an SHL skills assessment. Using SHL's Skills Development Solution, we visualized the data to reveal the relative strengths and development needs of this population. Keep in mind that each organization is unique, and having this insight for your workforce will fuel your own strategies.

Develop Needed Skills

In the spider diagram, the center represents the lowest average skill levels, while higher average scores extend towards the outer edges.

Our analysis indicates that employees typically exhibit below average ability in "applying functional expertise," "learning quickly," and "demonstrating empathy." While developing functional expertise on a large scale is challenging due to its specialized nature, agile learning and empathy can be effectively cultivated through broad development initiatives.

These development initiatives can take your workforce from being able to cope with business transformation to thriving amidst change.

Using SHL’s Skills Development Solution, you can see this view of your talent at the individual, team, or entire workforce level.

Featured Solution

Progress Careers with Intention

With SHL’s Skills Development Solution, employees receive personalized reports and tips to enhance their skills where needed, empowering them to take charge of their own learning paths.

For instance, if there is an opportunity to improve the ability to "think broadly," the report might suggest meeting with people from different functions and departments throughout the business to learn how their work impacts and is impacted by yours.

SHL’s Skills Development Solution

Get objective skills insights – at scale – to support your ‘build or buy’ talent strategy, and make smarter, more targeted development investments. All while equipping employees with personalized recommendations to leverage existing skills, develop new ones, and progress their careers with intention.

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Research Methodology

We analyzed scientific research, news, and media articles to pinpoint the skills required for successful business transformation. We then sorted the skills into common categories and translated them into the language of SHL’s Universal Competency Framework. The 10 skills that were most critical to business transformation were those that were mentioned most often across the variety of sources.

The data came from a subset our assessment database, which includes 560,270 respondents for all 96 skills in our Universal Competency Framework. We computed mean scores for each skill to get a rank ordering of skills, and then rescaled them to understand how common they are by standardizing them against all 96 means.

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