The 4 pillars of writing competency definitions   What is a competency definition? You have discussed and finalized the different skill levels for your competency evaluation. But how to accurately classify your workforce on the scale you have zeroed in on? Employees have a hard time deciding what skill level they currently are at if […]

How to best Implement a Competency-Based Training Program To stay on top of the competition, organizations need to keep evolving. They need to keep unlearning and relearning. Their employees in turn need to be in a constant cycle of improvement. Competency-based evaluation and training are the need of the hour. Simply buying a solution, however, […]

Skills & Competencies, Similar but Different It is a known fact that for any organization to grow, its workforce needs to grow as well. But organizations usually focus on developing just the skills of their employees. In today’s day and age, it has become clear that our focus needs to shift towards competencies. Only then […]

Competency Management and its role in aligning competencies to values How can you create a winning corporate culture? What values do you want to impart in your workforce? How is all this related to competency management?  Values identification is important.  You need to make sure that the values fit your organization’s culture. You also need to […]

Good people will leave you! How can a good succession plan help?   Organizations ignore the need for a robust succession plan at their own peril. Having one will greatly impact the short and long term health of any organization. Further, it will help reduce many of the costs while increasing the overall competence of […]

Best Practices for Skills Based Management Phase 1 Pre-Implementation – Prior to the Start of the Program.   Best practices for skills based competency management involves a series of refined methodologies, techniques, processes, and procedures.  In this article we will explain how to implement them during the implementation and execution phases of a competency project. […]

How To Create A Competency Definition For Your Organization. Helping clients write out competency definitions is one of the most important roles I play, while helping clients automate their talent management strategy.  Below are some of the tips and tricks I have learned along the way. What is a competency definition? A competency framework is […]

SWOT ANALYSIS IN SUCCESSION PLANNING Talent Management as seen through a really interesting client. One of my great pleasures in my job as being a salesperson at Skills DB Pro is to learn from my clients. Recently during a demo, a super smart head of HR explained to me how he uses Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, […]

How To Create New Hire Training Programs New hire training the startling truth for companies: 20% of all employees, as wells as 40% of those who receive bad (or no) new hire training leave inside the 1st year of employment. When personnel leave, it costs you. In this article we are going to talk about […]

How to Develop A Skills Matrix – Step by Step Precisely what is a skills matrix? A skills matrix, or competency matrix, is an instrument to map essential, as well as preferred, skills for a team or project. This can be a grid which visualizes readily available capabilities along with competencies inside of a workforce. […]

Succession Planning in 8 Easy Steps   Could your employees answer the question, “Just what is the succession planning strategy at your business?” They could, if you have discussed the idea. And you could, if you have developed one for your information technology team or business. Succession planning offers benefits for your employees, by providing […]

Creating a Skills Competency Framework Demystified A skills competency framework allows your company to determine the skills, behaviours, and attitudes that employees must possess to be successful in their job. Can you be sure they are competent at the tasks for their job? Put simply, how can you know what you should measure? Many people […]

EMPLOYEE GOAL MANAGEMENT-5 THINGS YOU MUST KNOW! WHAT IS GOAL MANAGEMENT? Employee Goal management is more than simply determining goals and analyzing employee effectiveness. The reason for having employee goals is to build out your staff’s talents, abilities and knowledge, while helping your business meet its overall objectives. HOW CAN GOAL MANAGEMENT AFFECT STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT […]

Competency Management Missteps Competency management missteps can sometimes be daunting. Implementing a new system in your organization can be a tedious process. There can be setbacks along the way, but have no fear, not only can we guide you in simple steps to set up your system, but we want you to learn from the […]

How Talent Management Software Can Benefit Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Times are good in the U.S. economy and in the workforce. It’s hard to imagine there could be any downsides to this boom, but for many small and medium-sized businesses competing with large enterprises and corporations, attracting, retaining and investing in talent becomes a big […]

How to Define Employee Skills for Your Organization How many employees does it take to change a lightbulb? Don’t worry, there’s no bad punch line coming because the answer should be simple: one. The employee with the most qualified light bulb changing skills should be the go-to. Management should know who their light bulb changer […]

  How to create employee development plans that really work I was chatting with a client last week, they are spending lots of money on training and not really sure about the actual effectiveness of their spend. This conversation ended up with us spending a lot of time dissecting how to create employee development plans […]

  Employee Training Tracking Software: 3 Steps to Ensure a Successful Implementation Every month during client calls, we get dozens of questions about best practices for creating a successful training program. Employee Training Tracking Software implementations make up a large part of this number. In this article I will give you some tips for implementing a […]

Developing Your Competency Framework – Linking Skills to Company Objectives Imagine a world without measurement scales. Where you cannot know your height, weight, the temperature, how much you have or need to spend, etc. – because well, there are no scales to measure any of that. That would be a confusing world no doubt. Gladly, […]

New Feature – Fully Automated Competency Based Training Framework A while ago, we discontinued our training tracking system because, among a few other factors, it was not a competency based training framework. This was a hard decision for us and we almost went back on it a couple of times. In fact, just when we […]

4 Things You Didn’t Know About Creating A Skills Management System About a year ago, Skills DB Pro was at a very important point in its history. At that time, we noticed we were losing clients because they wanted a feature we did not want to implement. The feature was “permitting employees to define skills […]

How To Handle Change To A New Boss I find it strange that one of the most constant things in life is also one of the things humans resent the most, and that is “change.” Usually, when we are comfortable with something, we don’t want anything to change that. This is probably why there are […]

A Sneak Peek Into Skill DB Pro’s Revamped Interface, Features, and Pages A few months back, I was chatting with our CEO when mention of our plans to revamp Skills DB Pro was first made. And I am very excited to inform our dear clients that these changes have started rolling out. We put a […]

How To Manage Close Relatives At Work A few days ago, I was informed my department would need a new employee, and I was asked to find and introduce this person to the company. Of course the first people I thought about were my friends and relatives (maybe that’s natural, maybe I need to become […]

New Feature – Main And Training Needs Analysis Dashboards For Administrators For some time, we deliberated on creating an informational dashboard for our users, and we recently went ahead and implemented not just one, but two dashboards. The first is the main dashboard which keeps you updated on your people’s skills and activity in the […]

6 Outdated Interview Practices That Make You A Horrible Recruiter There was a time when floppy disks were the rage. You could throw a few floppies in your bag and get access to 5 megabytes of storage, and that was great, even high-tech at the time. But if you hold a floppy in public today, […]

Solving The 6 Major Challenges Of Managing Remote Teams Few people could have imagined how much the internet would transform our activities. Probably not even Robert Kahn and Vincent Cerf, the guys who invented the internet. One area that has seen the most change is the way we work. It didn’t take long for people […]

Does Anyone Really Benefit From Working With A Bad Boss? A while ago, I walked into a bank hall to perform some transactions. While waiting for my turn, I saw a man walk towards a couple of workers and then start liberally handing out criticisms, right there in front of everyone! From the look on […]

How To Handle A Coworker Who Bosses You Around Have you had to deal with a coworker who somehow got confused, forgot their position in the company, and started bossing you around? Such employees may feel they are more capable than you are, and so they want to check every task you handle, manage all […]

The Impact of Skills Management on Business Performance In our modern business climate, companies are made or broken by the amount and kind of information they use in guiding business decisions, and each day, new ways to gather data and new applications for available data are explored. Since there is a general consensus that a […]

Why Every Company Should Embrace A Culture of Positive Feedback Two weeks ago, I gave a task to my graphic designer. I explained some of the specifications and asked him to come up with a stunning design. After discussing other necessary issues, I reminded him once again that I wanted it to look amazing. The […]

11 HR Blogs That Can Improve Your Career In our modern, fast paced business world, few things are more powerful than information. Business trends, processes, activities, and policies are constantly being updated. Those that were the rage before you signed off for the weekend may be seeing their final moments when you resume the next […]

5 Things That Make Employees Hate Coming To Work Jokes about bad days at works are abundant on the internet. Time and again, employees complain about how they watch the time go by as they pray for the day to run out. Many also joke about their hatred for Monday mornings, and how much they […]

Feature Upgrade: Skills Lists Can Now Be Imported We’ve been working hard for a while now to produce features that are aimed at making your job a lot easier. Late last month, we completed the skills import module and have tested it rigorously since then. We are thus very excited to inform you that this […]

8 Tips For Awesome Skills Management There was a time when a skills management system was simply a nice tool to have around; that time has passed. As early as 2003, HR professionals at IBM realized that the rapidly changing business landscape meant that companies had to inventorize the skills of their workforce if they […]

New Feature: Live Walkthroughs For Administrators You may have noticed a new widget at the bottom right of your screen each time you access Skills DB Pro. Article Update: We moved this widget to the top right of the screen as it seemed to cover some functions in its previous position. If you have been […]

Poor Recruitment Practices You Should Absolutely Avoid Recruitment candidates are customers too. A poor recruitment process could thus mean loss of customers in the form of candidates who are pissed off, and friends and relatives of such candidates who learn to avoid your brand in sympathy. Just as you wouldn’t want to go back to […]

Feature Upgrade – Employees Can Now Create Categories, Skills, and Qualifications. We’re excited to announce that we have implemented a new feature that many of you requested. You can now enable employees to add skills, qualifications, and categories. We initially had reservations about implementing this feature, and here’s why. When employees are enabled to add […]

10 Tips For Becoming A Successful Personnel Manager Ask any CEO what they consider their most important resource and the response you are likely to get is “people.” This viewpoint, which cannot be more correct (in my opinion), implies that personnel managers who are tasked with managing this most important resource can greatly impact a […]

Feature Upgrade – Notifications Just Got More Noticeable Early this month we started testing some exciting upgrades to our notification feature. Our aim was to make it more easily accessible so admins can keep all personnel skills and certifications current without digging through menus for the different notification functions. In the process, we also made […]

Workplace Violence – 6 Things You Can Do To Keep Your Workforce Safe Keith Little, a hospital worker in Montgomery, Maryland, wanted a raise. Instead, he got a bad performance review from his boss Roosevelt Brockington Jr. In a rage, Little went into Roosevelt’s office wearing a ski mask and gloves to give the impression […]

7 Important Interview Questions You Probably Aren’t Asking Asking the right questions will help get the right talents into your company. But with so many possible interview questions available, how can you narrow down on some of the best. Recruiting and training new employees costs a wad of company dollars and resources. Add the fact […]

Why Do Companies Use Skill Management Systems? (Exploring Skills DB Pro’s Top Use Cases) “What are you trying to accomplish with our system?” If you ever plan to book a demo with us, you can be fairly certain this is one of the first questions we will be asking you, hopefully after pleasantries. We often […]

Wearable Gadgets Invade Offices Wearable gadgets are fast finding their way into offices, eliciting diverse reactions depending on whose point of view you consider. While employers view it as a useful tool, employees consider it an ankle bracelet. Employees already resent micromanaging bosses to the extent that articles, several of them have been written to […]

How To Address The Lack Of “Ready Now” Candidates For Leadership Positions   If you are in human resource management or serve in a related capacity, the issue of whether to promote or hire to fill a leadership position is one you have likely faced. And it is viewed in a good light when an […]

  Into The ‘Outer Space’ of Company Dynamics – Companies Without Managers   I was searching the internet for new trends in business management a while ago, and as often is the case, my search turned up a few good reads. But nothing caught my attention as much as the story about a few companies […]

With the invention of the internet and the endless and ever expanding list of business tools it has come to support, virtual workers have become a very important part of the job market. As one would expect, a good number of business savvy entrepreneurs saw the potentials that this opening held and quickly invested in […]

Last week I was on the phone with a potential client and they asked me to explain in one page the advantages and practical steps to implementing a skills tracking system in their company.  Here it is I hope you find it useful. The benefits of a skills tracking system are considerable. The enterprise receives […]

I needed to get out of my office for a bit.  For a small town, Bozeman, Montana has an incredible library.  It is often my place to hide when I need to get a bunch of uninterrupted work done. I got up for a stretch and there it was in front of me in big […]

So there I am with my wife.  We have the stereo on pretty loud, I am rocking out and jamming around the house.  My wife looks at me and asks “Are we listening to the same song?” Unfortunately, I was born with a disability. For whatever reason, from the day I came out of my […]

After posting my blog on December 1st 2014 titled “Skills Retention – The Baby Boomer Crisis” a colleague sent me the below video.  This video from Ted Talks is the perfect add on to that blog. Rainer Strack explains that workforce skill gaps are certainly coming in the near future because of a quickly retiring […]

Bad hires cost businesses a great deal of income in training time, reduced effectiveness, and aggravation suffered by colleagues that have to bear the responsibilities for a marginal employee. In a lot of companies, supervisors perform staff interviews by presenting their go to questions to candidates. For example, what can you offer us that someone […]

The baby boomers generation is reaching a state of crisis. For the next twenty years, an average of 10,000 people each day will reach age 65. As a result, creating a nightmare for HR professionals who are trying to replace their aging staff.

Figuring out the Return On Investment (ROI) For Performance Management Systems is at best a difficult proposition. If you have at least some experience resolving HR dilemmas, you certainly know how much time and effort it takes to hire prospective and fire unproductive personnel. If your organization is medium or large, then you probably spend […]

Are you an effective worker? Almost everyone has to answer this question at least once in their life. Workplace effectiveness has become a buzzword in organizations and businesses, but not everyone can boast being ideally effective at work. The thing is that no one is 100 percent effective. We have talents and skills, but we also display weaknesses and […]

Do you have the answers to the questions below? • Is our focus and investment in training aligned with our business goals and objectives? • What skills gaps are preventing us from achieving or exceeding our objectives? • What are our core competencies and are we leveraging them? If you don’t have the answers to […]

Welcome to the third part in this series of implementing a skills audit. Part one covered ensuring that leaders, managers, and employees are aware of, and buy into, the importance of a skills audit. Part two showed how to implement a skills audit step by step. In the third and last installment of this series […]

How to Conduct a Skills Audit In the first part of our talk about skills audits, we created a  picture of  what is a skill audit, ant the benefits of a skill audit for organizations and leaders. Now it is time to provide more detailed recommendations as to how a skills audit should be conducted. We must say […]

Persuading leaders, managers, and employees that a skills audit is necessary. Part 1 of 3 in how to Implement a Successful Skills Inventory Audit Today, skills management has become an indispensable element of an organizations’ performance. Employees are expected to possess a diversity of skills and capabilities, but not all organizations know how to manage […]

We want to be competent in everything we do. We spend years, trying to get a degree in one or more disciplines. However, one day, we suddenly realize that something is wrong. We fail to cope with even the simplest workplace tasks, and the employer does not look very satisfied with our work. This is […]