Why Skills are like Oxygen: Ericsson’s Vidya Krishnan + Peter Sheppard
May 8, 2024
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Vidya Krishnan and Peter Sheppard from Ericsson discuss the importance of skills in the workplace, their systematic approach to skill development, and the shift towards a skills-based organization. They emphasize the connection between skills and corporate strategy, the evolution of skill requirements, and the significance of recognizing unique skills for individual success.
Identifying and visualizing skills is crucial for leveraging their potential within organizations.
Erickson's culture supports continuous improvement and agile approaches to skills development.
Erickson's strategy involves defining global critical skills while empowering job role owners to update specific skills, ensuring alignment with business goals.
Deep dives
Skills as Oxygen
Skills are compared to oxygen by Vidya Krishnan, representing the invisible yet vital nature of skills. Emphasizing the need to identify and visualize these skills to leverage their potential and impact within an organization.
Cultural Support for Skill Development
Erickson's culture is highlighted as a key factor aiding their skills strategy, particularly due to their continuous improvement and agile approach. This cultural mindset facilitates easier adoption and understanding of the importance of skills throughout the organization.
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Skill Approach
Erickson's unique approach involves defining global critical skills aligned with their business strategy, while also empowering job role owners to continuously update and refine specific job-related skills. This dual strategy ensures a comprehensive global view of skills, supporting both strategic objectives and individual job role needs.
Skills Adjacency and Intelligence in Career Fairs
Understanding the relationship between skills and their adjacency adds intelligence to career decision-making. An example from the podcast highlighted how using skills adjacency helped identify potential attendees for a cloud-related careers fair. By mapping the closeness of skills, valuable insights were gained to select the right participants, showcasing the importance of a structured approach to skills architecture.
Establishing an Integrated Architecture for Skills and Job Roles
Creating a cohesive architecture with a single source of truth for job roles and skills is crucial for enhancing employee experience. The podcast discussed the significance of having interconnected systems that provide a unified view for employees. By partnering with external entities like TechWalk, the company ensured consistency across HRIS, talent marketplace, and learning systems, facilitating a seamless experience for employees across different applications.
“Skills are like oxygen, invisible but necessary.”
This mindset shift is the brainchild of Vidya Krishnan, the Chief Learning Officer, and Peter Sheppard, the Head of the Global L&D Ecosystem at Ericsson.
Much of their job is identifying the oxygen and making it visible so they can do something with it. To do this, they’re taking a top-down and bottom-up approach. They’ve worked with senior leadership to define seven key skills they think everyone in the organization needs. They also work with the job leaders who own the skills to make sure their skills taxonomy is continuously updated.
Vidya and Peter are passionate about what they do. They’re working tirelessly to systemize learning to take care of and serve the individual. Because, ultimately, systems-first means people-first.
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