MySkillCenter

When embarking on a culture reliant on skill-based pay and structure, the following should be kept in mind during development and deployment so as to increase the positive impact on criteria, culture, and compensation.

Criteria:
Criteria for skills and assessments can be established through focus groups of “experts” within the organization and external to it.

Establishing criteria:

• Executives and/or strategy group will create a list of grouped competencies for each level of organization
• Executives and/or strategy group will determine the percentage of time spent at each competency grouping
• Executives and/or strategy group create a base list of skills, knowledge, and experiences that they believe increase the performance of individuals based on the identified competencies.
• Review list with groups of people from the following teams:
  * Compensation
  * Human Resources
  * Other senior leaders
  * Front-line leaders
  * Group effected by skills approach

Initial testing development:
In order testing to be acceptable and defendable in court for employment purposes, it must possess the following forms of validity:

• Face Validity – Do the questions read well? Can they be understood?
• Content Validity – Can this be learned somewhere? Is the content of the test within the training?
• Construct Validity – Can the content of the questions be used in the working environment?
• Criterion-related validity – Do those who are successful in the organization do well in the areas being tested?

If organizations use an outside agency to create the assessments, they will mostly cover the first three levels of validity and can provide documentation to that effect. This documentation should be requested. For the last piece, organizations can conduct it on their own, usually over a one-year period or contract an outside organization to do so.

If organizations use an outside agency to create the assessments, they should also look to that organization to establish a recommended proficiency level for each assessment.

Future testing implementation:

Allowing individuals to test for a skill after joining the organization may cause the following questions to arise within the effected group:

• Will I have an opportunity to learn this skill here?
• Will I need to learn this skill on my own?
• Will I be compensated for my labor while learning this skill?
• What level of competency will I need to demonstrate in order to prove proficiency within this skill?
• Who determines whether I pass or fail?
• How often can I take the assessments? (Recommendation would be every 6 months but no more than three times within a 2 year period.)

If an organization chooses to construct the assessments internally, the following criteria must be in place in order to complete the levels of validity mentioned above:

• General and specific learning objectives
• Sample and population sizes large enough to conduct a statistically valid analysis from the data.
• Time in which to conduct pilots and revise questions based on the four levels of validity. This could take between 3 to 12 months.
• Team of 2-3 analysts who create assessments and analyze training evaluation data based on the following:
  * Satisfaction
  * Knowledge
  *Application

More later on culture and a skill-based organization…

Culture:
Culture will be impacted by a change itself. As the criteria and compensation change, so will the culture.

Progressing through Change:
The progression of a culture is determined by the ability of the organization to manage change effectively. In order to do so, the following items are recommended prior to implementation and even some points of development:

• Class for leadership on change management
• Discussions with leaders around impacts of change to the individuals, teams, and partnerships
• Class for leaders on communication
• Opportunities for the leaders to demonstrate the ability to adapt to change and lead their teams through change while managing resources

Initiating Continuous Learning:
While criteria for pay and employment may change, one piece should remain constant, the employees ability to learn. As the criteria expands to include skills outside the current expectations, new learning opportunities should be developed or researched in order to accommodate a continuous learning process. The following is a recommended path to facilitate this process (we are already headed here):

• Conduct a needs analysis of organization to determine:
  * Learning styles (Complete)
  * Commitment to organization (Complete)
  * Commitment to learning (In progress)
  * Desire of individuals to advance within organization (In progress)
• Provide a learning plan for each individual that covers the grouped competencies within each role
  Measure success of initial implementation through focus groups with specialists, leaders, leader-of-leaders, and executives.
• Share impact of set learning plan with organization
• Provide training and facilitated discussions to leaders helping them create individual learning plans for themselves. (This is a partnership between our organization and OD…OD started down this path during the last Leadership Summit.)
  Request leaders share plans with their teams and have individuals create plans using the leader plan as an example.
• All training/learning events and assessments should be tracked through a common system (i.e., OnTrack). This would include all new hire, reinforcement, and leader training events.
  * Naming conventions for classes are needed for each Competency and location
  * Responsibility for class creation, tracking, and reporting should be assigned to one member of the local teams and a global resource
  * Rosters for each class should be generated prior to class and closed within 48 hours of the event.

Compensation:
Compensation has a bigger impact on culture than it does on performance. Professional compensation analysts and Human Resource professionals, skilled in budgeting, research, and the current job market should be used to determine what will:

• Encourage applicants to apply
• Provide candidates the opportunity to advance
• Allow for the most effective labor budgeting to occur
• Increase internal transfers
• Decrease external attrition