If you ask your learning platform which courses exist, you will likely get a quick answer. But if you instead ask which skills the organisation has, which are missing and where development needs are greatest, it often goes much quieter. That difference is exactly why more and more organisations are moving from administering courses to working with skills in a structured way.
What is the difference, really?
A course catalogue shows which training programmes the organisation offers. A skills map shows which skills the business needs, which employees already have and which are missing. When that map is in place, training becomes a deliberate way to develop the right skill, instead of a buffet where employees are expected to find the right thing themselves.
How to do it in practice
Start with one role, not the whole company
Choose a business-critical role and define 8–12 key skills for it. A map for one role that is used beats a map for the whole organisation that never gets finished.
Define levels as behaviours
"Can with support, can independently, can teach others" are levels everyone understands and can assess. A 1–5 scale without definitions becomes just an opinion with decimals.
Connect the content to the map
Tag each module with which skill it develops and at which level. Then the course catalogue automatically becomes part of the skills map. Employees with an identified skills gap can easily find the right training, while you see which skills completely lack training content.
Measure capability, not attendance
A completed course is not the same as skill. Knowledge checks, practical assessments and traceable data (xAPI) make the map credible. Without measurement it is a self-assessment exercise.
Start simple and develop over time
Many skills-mapping initiatives become unnecessarily complex from the start. The ambition is to create a model that covers the whole organisation, is perfectly anchored and finished before it is put into use. A better approach is to start small, for example with a single role, and then develop the skills map step by step. Skills change over time, and therefore the skills map also needs to be updated regularly.
We help you define skills and levels, produce training content that develops the right skills and follow up that the training initiatives deliver the desired effect. Want to start with one role and build from there? Contact us.