Practical and actionable insights on the SBO journey

On 7th June, we welcomed almost 100 senior HR leaders to our twice yearly SKILLS /by TechWolf event, this time taking place at the iconic Searcys at The Gherkin in London. As our CEO Andreas mentioned in his welcome, TechWolf has been ‘SBO obsessed since being founded’, and we are delighted more and more organisations are joining us on this journey.

We started the evening with a lively panel discussion led by David Green, Executive Director at Insight 222, who shared that ‘skills’ is the biggest topic of the moment in the HR and learning space. He was joined by three experts in the field: Oliver Drury, Senior Manager, People Strategy and Delivery at Booking.com, Angela Le Mathon, VP, People Data and Strategy at GSK and Freneka Mumford, Director, People Consulting at KPMG, who shared their insights and experiences on the SBO journey.

Some of the key takeaways from the evening included:

On the Technology ecosystem:

• The importance of building a strong relationship with IT and a good governance structure - particularly in relation to data privacy

• The focus on how all of the pieces fit together in the larger ecosystem, working smarter with what you have, rather than layering on new solutions or “shiny new tools!”

• The realisation that “no one has this figured out yet!” No one vendor has all the answers. Organisations should focus on partners that listen and help you with the processes and problems you’re trying to solve iteratively

On lessons learned on becoming an SBO:

• Take your time - don’t just focus on the end state, and understand it is a process. Keep a learning mindset!

• “Let’s stop talking about skills, talk about use cases!” Question how skills are going to solve the problem

• “My manager will never go for this!” Work on alignment with the business, get the right stakeholders on board and ensure you continually update and engage with them. It’s a sustained marketing effort!

• “Can’t wait to get back to the spreadsheet!” Be honest about the readiness to take the first steps on this journey

On getting started with skill data:

• There are different ways to get started - you can start with your organisation’s use cases or start with the challenges you’re trying to solve with it

• “Skills are the best thing that happened to HR!” People data is a huge asset, and how it is handled is really important and requires a mindset shift, not just an operational one

• Make sure you’re aligned and understand the role of data and how it will be used

• Think about why it is important rather than jumping to solutions - will skills address the real people or business challenge you need it to?

Above all, there was a recognition that a skill-based approach represents a real opportunity to personalise an experience for an employee and create more agility for management. However, building trust in the process and outcomes within the business is an essential foundational layer.