It’s Not About Skills; It’s About the Work

Episode Summary:

On this episode, AGS Vice President of International Markets Simon Bradberry joins fellow AGS thought leader Cat Halliwell, executive director of service excellence to examine how skills-based hiring is misunderstood and improperly implemented. They are sharing insights on how it’s not just about skills; it’s about getting the work done.  

Transcript:

Allegis Global Solutions (AGS) presents the Subject to Talent Podcast, a hub for global workforce leaders to unleash the power of human enterprise. Listen in as we explore the most innovative and transformational topics impacting businesses today.

Cat Halliwell: Hi, I'm Cat Halliwell, the executive director of service excellence at AGS, and your guest host of this episode of the AGS Subject to Talent podcast.

Today, I welcome author, thought leader and international global workforce expert Simon Bradberry. Simon is the vice president of international markets for AGS, and the co-author of the Universal Workforce Model book. A pioneer in skills-based thought leadership, he joins us today to share why it's not just about the skills and how businesses can more effectively refocus their hiring and talent-sourcing efforts.

So welcome back to the Subject of Talent podcast, Simon.

Simon Bradberry: Thank you, Cat. First time you and I have been on this together. I know we've both been on it separately previously but appreciate the introduction and it’s great to be here.

Cat Halliwell: Perfect. Well, as you mentioned, this isn't your first time. Normally, we would start the podcast with asking our guests about their background in the workforce industry, but like you said, since you're a returning guest, I was hoping you could start with a bit of background about the Universal Workforce Model and how that has evolved into the conversation of where we are today saying it's not about skills.

Simon Bradberry: Yeah, great, thank you very much.

So, Universal Workforce Model was a theoretical concept from about three years ago that we launched when we launched the book, Bruce Morton and me. And essentially, that was saying we're not really going about getting work done in the right way, and it was challenging consensus thinking around traditional ways of hiring effectively. And that was saying that there's a number of things that we need to try and do differently, and one of those was to have different roles in terms of having a harmonized approach to the workforce. Have we introduced the concept of workforce business partners who are there really to advise the business? Rather than start off with business leaders being asked, "What sort of person do you want to hire?” “Do you want to hire permanent?” “Do you want to hire non-permanent?” “Do you want to go to a services provider?" We felt that the business really needed an advisory approach.

So, the Universal Workforce Model, was basically saying look at workforce holistically, break down those barriers and those silos between the different categories of workforce, have an advisory approach so the onus is not on the business. And also crucially, the Universal Workforce Model said start with the work. Don't start with, for example, the job spec. Understand the work that needs to get done and then have a holistic approach about what's the best way of getting that work done? Now, that's a whistle-stop approach to what Universal Workforce Model, as we say, was all about.

You asked what's been the kind of progression and development of that over the last few years? Well, we felt that when we were talking to organizations about that and there were a number of talent leaders, talent acquisition leaders, thought leaders that we were speaking to, the thinking was that no one disagrees. It's very theoretical. One thought leader in the industry said to me, "You can be right too early," and felt that the thinking was aligned with where the industry was going, but the organizations’ realistically were just not ready for that.

So, we developed the Universal Workforce Model into something that we then called the Target Operating Model. Now, the Target Operating Model was intended to be a practical manifestation of what Universal Workforce Model was all about. And in the Target Operating Model, we broke it down into what I called five boxes initially and then there's a sixth box. So that is the workforce business partner who is the advisory role, the workforce acquisition manager who is the execution role, that's the people who go out and find talent. Both of those roles are across the full spectrum. The workforce business partner transcends the transactional and basically is there to deliver that advisory role. The workforce acquisition manager delivers the transactional. The change manager, because we appreciate that there's going to be change going through consistently, but change manager in relation to the workforce and then sourcing.

Those four boxes around a common skills taxonomy so people are understanding a common language, and then the sixth box being the technology ecosystem. So we see a technology ecosystem where you've got internal systems of record across various workforce variables, including things like finance, but that will include an ATS and a VMS and so on, and then an external ecosystem with all the technologies that are delivering those bits that your internal ecosystem and systems of record can't deliver. So that, for example, might be a great digital candidate experience, collating data from multiple sources, and providing that external perspective as well as an internal perspective.

So that was the Target Operation Model. We brought that down a level from the theoretical into a practical thing that organizations could actually go, "Okay, that's something that I can point at and could deliver."

I would say that now, and we're now going to get into what this podcast is all about, we see a further development. And again, you and I, Cat, it feels slightly weird that you're hosting and I'm talking. We work so much on this stuff together – and no doubt you'll want to share your opinions as well, but we're now getting into what we would call a Getting Work Done Model. When we launched the Target Operating Model, we called it the Target Operating Model for Skills-Based Organizations. But one of the things that we've observed is that a skills-based organization is something that we would call an unhelpful title for organizations to get work done, and that's because it's leading to an over-focus on skill.

So, we're now getting... And that's not to say skills are wrong. They're a step in the right direction but focusing on skills at the expense of other elements of a model that's required to get work done can be unhelpful and therefore that's where we feel that we are today. It's another challenge to consensus thinking and therefore we're talking about what does getting work done looks like?

Cat Halliwell: Yeah, and are you able to, I guess, give us an example of what getting work done really means and how we can bring that to life a little bit more for people?

Simon Bradberry: Yeah, great, okay. Now, I'm just going to give you a pre-warning. I'm going to bring you into some of this as well.

Cat Halliwell: Okay.

Simon Bradberry: So, I don't do all the work and all the talking but let me start by answering your question in terms of what's an example. So again, it's a development of the theme that was originally brought about in the Universal Workforce Model. And an example of a similarity would be the starting point is it's not about a job spec, it's about the work. So, a traditional recruitment process, you'd still start with a job spec and you would match that to a CV. You then might say, "Okay, we're becoming skills-based, skills-first, skills-based organization, that kind of thing." That might lead you to say, "Okay, well, let's add skills into our job spec and let's add skills into CVs that we're seeing in from candidates," normally using some kind of tool, assuming what kind of skills they've got or self-verified skills. And then you've got a development in terms of, well, it's not just job spec-to-CV, which is backgrounds, but you've also got a skills approach as well.

Getting work done doesn't start there. Getting work done, the starting point is what are we trying to achieve and what does success look like? And so I'm going to go into an example which I think really helps bring it to life to people, which is I'm going to move away from work for a second and I'm just going to talk about someone, like a life partner, because this is something that anyone can relate to. So, imagine that you are looking for a life partner. Now, that's something that you definitely want to be successful. It's a match that you really want to be successful. So, you would therefore be thinking, "Okay, how do I make that a success?"

And the way that we help people think about this is we break it down into four categories. The first category would be what have they got? What is it about them? What has that person got? And in that scenario, you'd be saying, "Okay, well, so what could that include?" Well, that could include are they arty? Are they sporty? Can they cook really well? Are they hot, attractive? That kind of thing. They're the kind of "what have they got" type attributes.

And where I'm going to build with this is that you could weigh each of these four categories in terms of importance for you personally, no right and wrong answer. So, what have they got? We're just going to say it could be a one to five. You might say, "Well, that's only a one for me." You might say, "That's a five." More about that in a moment. So, the first category is what have they got?

The second category would be how are they going to be in important scenarios? So, lots of life partner scenarios. So a life partner scenario could be a wedding, could be dinner party, could be a work event where partners are invited along, could just be going out for a drink or dinner with friends, that kind of thing, but scenarios where life partners, you want them to show up in a particular way, that's important to you.

The third category would be background. So, the background might be what's their upbringing. What's their work history, maybe. Could be religion. Religion's a really good example actually, Cat, in this because for some people, religion's a five out of five in terms of mission critical. It's a starting point. For other people, it's a zero. It really doesn't matter at all. So that's a good example of how you might rate an individual category.

And then so you've got your first three, and the final, the fourth one would be values match. What are they like? Values could be prioritization of family, could be ambition and success, that kind of thing.

So, in each one of those four categories, you can see how a life partner would fit in. You could weight each of the categories on a zero-to-five basis, and that there's no right or wrong answer. It's a very personal answer.

Now, I use that as a warm-up because your original question was what does getting work done look like? Well, I'm just going to use project manager as an example because it's something that everyone understands. Imagine that you've got... And listen to my words carefully here, the distinction between getting work done and traditional recruitment. I'm not going to say, "We're hiring a project manager." I'm going to say, "We've got some projects that need to be completed, and we want them to be successful." So, we're going to ask ourselves the question, what does success look like? This is an ongoing requirement that we need. Well, that might mean that we're looking for a permanent hire, but we're looking for a permanent hire because it's an ongoing requirement. We might say, "Okay, it's one project at a time," so that's giving us an indication of maybe seniority that we're looking for or skill level.

But you can apply those same four categories I just outlined for the life partner in a very, very similar way for hiring. As I said, I'm using project manager, but you can use this for anything. So, what have they got becomes skills. And in the case of a project manager, that might be things like attention to detail, document production, that kind of thing.

The important scenarios, you could substitute competencies for important scenarios, but it's really, really easy to think of, in any particular role where you want someone to make a success of, in this case, managing projects, you can think of what those important scenarios might be. Tight deadlines, managing senior stakeholders in that scenario, decision-making, communication in those sorts of environments. You can interview around those, and you can score that, and you can make a judgment as to how, in those important scenarios, people are going to perform.

Background is background. Have they been a project manager before? Have they got a project management qualification? Education maybe might be a thing. And then values is organizational. Are they one of us? How do they fit? Organizational fit, culture, values, that kind of thing in whatever way that you assess that.

So that's a very long answer, but essentially, we've started in a different spot there. We've started in a position whereby we wouldn't hire against a job spec in that scenario in terms of getting work done. We'd understand what success looks like. What I've just built is a four-box success profile. It's very hard to think of something that doesn't fit into one of those four boxes, and you can use that as your starting point for assessing success.

So Cat, let me come at you with a question because I know that this is a passion of yours as well, but just elaborate a little bit more on where you've [experienced change.] Because I know that you've personally done a bit of hiring along this basis, so bring to life a little bit your experience of this kind of approach. Any angle that you've got on it or anything that you think that you might see a little bit differently to the way that I've laid it out?

Cat Halliwell: Yeah, I think before I talk about the specific examples, I think for me, you mentioned in their weighting about how the weightings can vary dependent on what the work is. And I think that's really important as it relates to the question, “Does this work for every role?” Because I think we had a number of conversations with people within the industry and within the business of, "Well, it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario." And what the four-box success profile allows us to do by changing the weighting is actually make the principles the same but be able to flex for the different areas.

And you used a project manager as an example, but I think when we're looking at the four quadrants of what that looks like, it is going to vary because I think when you are looking at hiring a lawyer or a professional or a doctor or something like that, the background and qualifications are probably going to be a little bit more important than maybe some of the other areas where it might be more of a generalist role or an entry-level position. And so, what the weightings allow people to do is to have the freedom to decide what's important to them.

And again, just like when you're talking about religion in the life partner scenario, for some people that's important, for some people it isn't. And so, I think that the four-box success profile just allows people to go, "Okay, I understand the concept, and this is how it can apply to what I'm trying to do."

And the reason I mentioned that is because you're right, I'm using this to switch up how I'm hiring for my team right now and this is a whole new function, and I spent some time really understanding the work that needs to happen. So really deconstructing the work and going, "Okay, what is it that we need in order for this to be successful? And therefore, what is it in the person or team," because at the time, I didn't really know, "that I need to be able to do?" And be able to produce something where I can then assess all of those four quadrants, and actually, I'm assessing them in multiple different ways.

So from a skills perspective, I have a full skills testing suite that I've been able to do where I get reports and these are the skills that me and the team – because we did it as a collaboration – identified as actually this is going to be really important for the person to be successful, and specifically around the leader, the leader of the function. We know from a background perspective what the peoples' CVs look like, and they know I can see where they've worked before and what they've done.

From a values perspective, I found this really interesting actually because one of the things that I hadn't necessarily realized going into the process was the fact that actually I could get a really good view of their values alignment from our internal TA team because they were speaking to the candidates and deciding whether they were going to be a good fit.

So that now for me becomes, at an interview stage, that becomes a verification of something. So I've already got a good idea of where their skills are because I can see the test results, I can see the CV and they've been screened to make sure that they're matching from a background and experience perspective, the values fit, I've got a good idea because of the great jobs that the TA team were able to do, which now means from an interview perspective, I've just got one quadrant to fill in. I've got one thing that I really need to focus on and it just allows me to really go, "Okay, I'm focusing on those scenarios, things that is going to be really important and all of those behavioral aspects because the rest of it, I've now got a comfort level."

And I think I was talking to you about this specifically. Once I had the test results and all of that kind of stuff, I just felt like I had a much more well-rounded view and a higher comfort level that whichever decision that I took post-interview and post-the-scenario piece, I already felt like the person was going to be good. And I've never really had that before pre-interview. Going into an interview, I'm confident that I'm going to have good candidates, and I think that, to me, is a game-changer, and something as someone who's been hiring for my teams for a long time, I've never had that.

Simon Bradberry: Yeah. And one of the interesting points, we headlined this conversation around it's not about skills, which is a little bit provocative and obviously we are talking about skills here. The reality is what we're saying is it's not just about skills, right? Skills are one piece of the jigsaw. Don't over-focus on skills at the expense of other elements. We've talked about the four-box success profile of which skills is one of the boxes.

One of the things I also notice though, Cat, when we're talking to clients and companies and customers at various stages on the journey, many of them have an objective to be a skills-based organization. The way that you've described the skills element is that you've prioritized testing of skills. So, you deconstruct a role, you identify what skills you really need, then you test those skills. Then you've got those skills observed and tested before you even do an interview and you're saying how valuable that is.

Even organizations that are going down the skills route, my observation is they tend to use technologies to assess what skills they've got based on their experience. They're doing less skills testing. And one of the reasons for that is that they're saying, "Well, we're a bit worried about what candidates might not want to do the actual tests."

What's your experience been of that? Have you had difficulty getting candidates to actually complete tests? Does it depend on what the tests are? Just bring to life a little bit about what your experience is of candidates doing tests upfront because that's a prerequisite for getting where you are at the moment.

Cat Halliwell: Yeah, and I've had no resistance whatsoever. I think the really important thing is to work with a skills testing platform that has a great user experience so that the candidates feel like it's a good thing that they're doing. And to keep the test itself less than 45 minutes, that's kind of the ideal. And something that a lot of the testing platforms that are out there, they recommend that. And so, I followed all of the guidelines from the people that know, and so far, the uptake of all of the people that we've asked to complete the test, they've done that within a 48-hour period and we've got the results.

The really good thing, and this is something that is from a candidate perspective, candidates are often saying that they don't get feedback after interviews, they don't hear anything, and it's a frustration that's been in our industry for a really long time, the candidates can see how they performed. And I think just in the same way as the hiring manager, you get results and you get a full view of this is where they performed well, these are the areas that maybe were lacking, the candidates also get a copy of that.

And so, I think there is a candidate experience piece about it as well where currently there's sometimes a bit of a hole, this black hole post interview where they don't really find anything out. They're getting real-time feedback of areas where they maybe need to develop if they do want to move into a position like that, which is something that doesn't really happen today.

Simon Bradberry: Yeah, interesting. So, I see the benefit and obviously the candidates know they're going to get that. And also, because skills are portable and transferable across other areas, they might not have to keep redoing the same tests. You can utilize tests and results across more than one role, but what you're saying is your sub-45 minutes. For that particular role, you might identify typically four or five skills that you're going to test, and they get all of them done in that one and they get the results back themselves and that's a fantastic result. Positive for all of them.

I wanted to just go into, just share a little bit more with the audience about where we've got to with this. So, we've been road testing the thinking around success profiles. Obviously, there's more than one version of a success profile. We're advocating the four-box success profile that we've outlined. In front of some quite large audiences, I did it once in front of an audience of about 100, another time in front of an audience of about 300, ran through the four boxes, actually got people to score. So, we got average scores in terms of the weightings in terms of importance.

What I noticed was most striking, and I've done it in front of some of the smaller audiences, by the way, as well, in front of individual customer teams, maybe five to 10 people and also some internal teams, but what I noticed was every single time, of the four boxes, the one that came out weighted lowest, i.e. least important, was background. And that's really instructive because we've painted a scenario where we're hiring and background is actually the most commonly used, in the form of a CV, way of determining whether we're going to interview someone and ultimately we're going to hire. And even interviews are often constructed around, "Tell me what you've done in the past. Have you been a project manager before? Have you been whatever the role might be?" So, it's really easy for me to say, "Well, people were just doing this wrong, aren't we?" So, I feel that that's directive along those lines.

Cat, you're also a massive advocate for change and change being done properly. And it feels to me, again, when we're talking to whoever it may be that we're talking to, it's very, very rare that someone goes, well, in fact it's never happened, "I disagree with you. The way we recruit today is definitely better than that. You're talking nonsense." But the issue is much more change and actually going through, and I mean as an industry, globally, we're stuck in our ways. Just share a little bit about what you think about that. How do we actually get change to happen?

Cat Halliwell: Yeah, and I think that the reality is change is hard. Right? Everyone knows that. It's hard, it's complicated, but I think there has to be a view that it's got to be worth it. What is the cost of change? Is it worth the price at the end of it? And I think this is where organizations are struggling right now.

And I think that the first thing that I would say is it's going back to your point where people were moving to skills-based organizations and they were tagging skills onto CVs and job specs and then expecting different results from being able to do that. But like you've just said, background is generally viewed as the least important. So actually, they're not getting those results, and so I think some organizations are becoming a little bit disheartened by the attempt to move to skills based.

So, I think firstly is actually understanding the kind of strategy around it and making sure that it's tagging the CVs on and using inferred skills and stuff like that, it is the path of least resistance because there isn't as much change. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get the results. So, it's about really understanding what that is and what that means within your organization and finding advocates within the organization.

If an organization is going to go through a change that is of this extent, because we're not saying this is a small little tweak here or anything like that, we're talking about something that could be quite significant for an organization, it's really important that it's led by the business, that it's advocated by the business and the business sees the value and understands what's going to be required and what the kind of outcomes will be.

And so, I think there's a number of different places where you can start. There are going to be parts of the business that are open to change, that are really wanting to do something different and open to piloting something new, and then there are other areas that aren't. So, there's a number of different things. I think having an advocate is really important, finding a business that's open to change and letting them be the driver for that, and then finally, just understanding as well that you need to speak the business's language.

I think the worst thing that us in talent, workforce, whatever industry we want to call it, the worst thing we can do is label this as HR/procurement/workforce project because the moment that that happens, people become disengaged. It has to be a business-led project that's helped and facilitated by talent, workforce, HR, procurement, and I think that's really important.

So often, when we're talking about this, talk about leaving your ego at the door because the reality is this is a monumental change that could have monumental impacts on businesses. So of course, people want to be involved, but I think it's about seeing the greater good and knowing that sometimes you might not be the best person to lead the conversation. You might need to rely on other people within the organization that have a bigger voice and more influential seat at the table to be able to drive this type of initiative.

So, I mean, there's a lot in there. Change is a very complex subject, but those are the highlights, I would say.

Simon Bradberry: Yeah, no, I know you're going to want to wrap things up in just a few minutes, but I've got two or three points I wanted to make and then I'll hand it back to you to wrap up the session because we've taken enough. We could talk about this all day, I know.

Cat Halliwell: We could.

Simon Bradberry: But we've taken up enough people's time probably already.

So, a couple of observations from what you were saying just there. First of all, you talked about organizations being a little bit disheartened. I absolutely would emphasize that. I've spoken to people whose job title is head of skills-based organization or they're very, very senior managing directors or senior directors in charge of transformation with HR and their responsibility is delivering skills-based organization. And they're saying to me, "We're not seeing the results that we expected we were going to see in terms of delivering skills-based organization. We need to pivot a little bit." But I mean, there is something. There is something boiling here. There's something in it.

I would also say that you made a really, really good point there that I want to emphasize, which is don't try and do this across a whole organization. Find your advocate, find an area. I was talking to someone senior internally recently, more senior than me within our organization, and they were hiring for a very senior job. And I said to them, "Can you think..." I'm going to use competencies versus scenarios as an example of don't make it an HR project. So I said, "Can you think of three examples of scenarios that you need this person to be really good at in doing this job?" And they went, "Yes." They literally had one, two, three without thinking about it. And I then said, "Can you think of the top three competencies that you want to interview against our competency profile?" And they said, "I need to speak to HR about that."

And that is just to emphasize it's about the accessibility of making it easy because ultimately being able to have an objective view of predicting how someone's going to perform an important scenarios is both of those two, having something which is the perfect competency-based interview approach may be great, but you're probably limiting your audience that's going to successfully achieve that. So that's just an example of how you make it accessible. You find it easy to pick an advocate, and then you can try it on one job with one senior person as an example, and then you're off.

What I wanted to say is I think we're on a mission here. We want to pull people into our mission. We want to get some people on our side who agree with us, and this is the starting point for that. You're going to see more from us as the year goes on. Let's see where we get to. But Cat, let me hand it back to you to wrap things up.

Cat Halliwell: Yeah, perfect. And you're absolutely right, Simon. We could talk about this for hours. In fact, we do talk about this for hours, for sure.

So, I guess the last thing, last question to you is what should people do if they do want to join our mission, if they do want to find out more about and agree that it's not just about the skills?

Simon Bradberry: Yeah. So look, I would start by reaching out to one of us. If you know how to get ahold of us, great. If you don't, you can reach out to us on LinkedIn. Then we're going to put our details on here as well, so you can email us directly. But we're passionate advocates and we love the conversation, and we have only really barely scratched the surface today, but we are going to be doing a series of other things that we've got planned during the course of the rest of this year. We have a series of talks planned. We've got some round tables, there's going to be some in-person, there's going to be some virtual as well. We have got some thought leadership articles, which are around this topic and diving into some of the topics that we've touched on into a little bit more detail.

And then later on in the year, we are working on a bigger project, which is a bit more than an article, a bit longer version of that, which is something that we're buried in at the moment that's going to be coming out a bit later on in the year as well.

So there's a series of things that can happen, but please feel free to reach out to either Cat or I directly. Like I said, we've provided our details. Otherwise, you could do so on LinkedIn. We'd love to have the conversation. And then there's a whole series of things that we're doing to drive this conversation forward. But if you agree with what we say, think there's something in it, reach out to us, join the mission, we'd love to take it forward with you.

Cat Halliwell: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Simon.

Simon Bradberry: Thank you, Cat. Always great to talk to you. See you soon.

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