Skills Management System as a Tool for Strategic Workforce Planning

Finding and retaining the right talent is an important issue for organizations worldwide. The definition of what is the right talent for the organization should be created first to make sure we recruit the right people and then the next question is what should be done after the right talent has been recruited? Skills Management Systems try to answer these questions by providing skills library and skills inventory for the organizations, thus the gap analysis between the available skills and ‘missing' skills for the organization can be produced. This analysis accompanied with the prediction of skills demands in the future is a good base to develop a hiring policy and also development plans for the current employees. This paper describes the implementation of Skills Management System in a world-class research and development organization.


INTRODUCTION
Globalization, the rapid changes of global economy, and the shortage of talents led to the importance of strategic workforce planning in an organization. Strategic Workforce Planning is a proactive approach which plans to provide the right number of people with the right skill sets, in the right location, at the right time and the right cost [1]. Hay Group [2] further mentioned that having the correct ZRUNIRUFH LQ SODFH DV DERYH GH¿QLWLRQ LV WKH FULWLFDO gap between success and failure for an organization, thus a strategic plan should be delivered to address

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This situation is even worse in Europe and some developed countries like Japan, where aging workforce is one of the concerns of the governments and organizations. According to the US Census Bureau [2], the retirement of "baby boomers" in Europe and the low birth rate mean that the active workforce will decline by 29 per cent by 2050. Retirement of these employees means that the company has to deal with the depletion of corporate memory, knowledge base, and supply of mentors. Furthermore, the critical loss RI H[SHULHQFHG SHRSOH DOVR QHJDWLYHO\ DIIHFWV WKH VNLOOV QHWZRUN LQ ZKLFK LQGLYLGXDOV LGHQWLI\ H[SHUWV provide referrals for those seeking answers and facilitate knowledge transfer among groups [3].
The knowledge and the competence of employees of an organization are substantial success factors in the world-wide competition. A new method LV QHHGHG WR LGHQWLI\ DQG GRFXPHQW WKH XQLTXH knowledge of the organization. Employees also need easy access to this knowledge and have the visibility of his or her own colleague's knowledge by what is called the organization's "Yellow Pages" [4].
6NLOOV 0DQDJHPHQW LV GH¿QHG DV WKH PDQDJHPHQW RI WKH TXDOL¿FDWLRQV H[SHULHQFHV DQG knowledge of the employees. The objective is to allocate the appropriate skills at the correct place, at the right time, at optimal cost [5].
Skills Management Systems (SMS) is a webbased and dynamic system to identify, maintain, and utilize the knowledge of employees' skills. Skills PDQDJHPHQW GHDOV ZLWK LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ PDLQWHQDQFH and utilization of knowledge of employees' skills [6]. The basic component of a Skills Management System LV D VNLOOV LQYHQWRU\ 7KH PDLQ EHQH¿W RI WKH VNLOOV inventory implementation is to locate the knowledge/ skills carriers faster. It also provides the company LQIRUPDWLRQ DERXW WKH FULWLFDO VNLOOV UHTXLUHG 6NLOOV grading is also provided by this skills inventory V\VWHP WR TXDQWLI\ WKH OHYHO RI VNLOOV SRVVHVVHG E\ WKH employees [7].
There are several case studies on Skill Management Systems, including Swiss Life's content-driven knowledge management tools [6], and a software consultancy company's skills management system [8].

METHOD
Literature study and intensive interview sessions to management and employees were conducted before the development of the skills management system in this research intensive organization. The initial study was followed by the development of the so-called 'skills tree' -which LV ZKHUH WKH VNLOOV FODVVL¿FDWLRQ LV FRQVWUXFWHG 7KH skills tree consists of an ordered list of skills and competencies that can be broken down into sub-skills and sub-competencies until a certain level of detail is reached. It is basically a skills library to capture all VNLOOV UHTXLUHG DQG DYDLODEOH LQ WKH RUJDQL]DWLRQ $IWHU a skills tree is agreed and approved by the subject PDWWHU H[SHUWV LQ WKH RUJDQL]DWLRQ D VNLOOV LQYHQWRU\ for employees is developed. Skills inventory is a FROOHFWLRQV RI VNLOOV SUR¿OHV RI HDFK RI HPSOR\HHV RI the organization.

Skills Management Systems
7KH ¿UVW VWHS WR EXLOG D VNLOOV PDQDJHPHQW system is to build the skills tree. From the skills tree, a skills inventory for all employees is collected.  These three parameters of current skills level, IUHTXHQF\ LQ XVH DQG HPSOR\HH ¶V LQWHQWLRQ JLYH D WKRURXJK SLFWXUH RI WKH VNLOOV SUR¿OH RI D SDUWLFXODU employee.
7R PDNH VXUH WKH REMHFWLYLW\ RI VNLOOV SUR¿OHV the assessments are performed both by the employees and their supervisor(s). This assessment is ideally conducted during the annual performance review together with the creation of Employee Development Plan.

Output of Skills Management System
The  An advanced development plan, which leads to integrated succession planning, is the result of integrating the future demand, anticipated departures, and general development plan with the selected candidates list. With a simulation to accommodate the stochastic nature (e.g., learning curve, turnover rate), we obtain an overall skills review, which predicts ZKLFK HPSOR\HHV DUH H[SHFWHG WR UHDFK D FHUWDLQ OHYHO of skills at a certain point in time.
This succession planning area also includes a "what-if' analysis tool to get the new skills review based on a certain integrated succession plan. The development of Skills Management System serves two major purposes.
7KH ¿UVW SXUSRVH LV WR DVVLVW WKH PDQDJHPHQW with a tool to determine hiring and development needs and to source work to third parties (in this case, universities, contractors or research institutes

CONCLUSION
There are several conclusions that we can provide: 1. Skills Management System is a tool to identify, maintain, and utilize the knowledge of employees' skills. In the implementation, Skills Management System also gives additional functionality as a base of an integrated tool for performance review system. Thus, all the performance review tools used at the company (e.g. employee's intention form) are centralized in one system. 2. Skills Management System is capable to identify the strong points of human resources in the organization, but also the areas that need further attention.

The implementation of the basic Skills
Management System with its skills inventory shows skills that are available within the RUJDQL]DWLRQV DQG WKH VNLOOV UHTXLUHG E\ WKH organization. The gap analysis is used as a