Talent transparency: Getting high-res visibility on skills in a hybrid world

The workplace landscape has undergone a radical makeover post-pandemic. After tasting the benefits of remote teams, businesses are now favoring hybrid work as we move towards the next era. The numbers speak volumes: a jaw-dropping 86% of leaders are expecting to implement hybrid work models for their companies.

Even with all their allure, hybrid workplaces come with their own set of challenges, especially concerning skills visibility. Managing a workforce spread out between home and office is an entirely different ball game — and managers are concerned about accurately assessing employee performance in a workforce that is not always physically present.

As hybrid models continue to gain popularity, we must adapt the way we approach talent management and development to these new off-site realities.

Why skills visibility is non-negotiable for hybrid models

Skills visibility, having a clear understanding of the range of skills available in your organization, isn’t just a nice to have — it’s core to performance management. When managers have a transparent view of employee competencies, skills gaps, and individual ambitions, they can more effectively manage their teams to get the best out of them.

In a hybrid environment, visibility becomes even more crucial. Where managers could once rely on physical presence to observe actions and intervene right away, off-site teams are a different story.

Skill mapping is a comphrensive approach to identifying and displaying the skills across the entire workforce. It is fast becoming a strategic asset for hybrid models, not solely for supporting performance evaluations but to help better manage teams, keep engagement and productivity strong, and avoid skills gaps going unnoticed.

⭐ Providing team visibility for better management

Managers need to have a solid lay of the land to lead the pack. By knowing where employees stand in terms of skills and competencies, managers can make better decisions — from delegating tasks, allocating projects, or even assigning additional training. With a clear view of collective strengths and weaknesses, they can also form the best-suited teams and maximize harmony depending on the needs.

⭐ Spotting engagement and productivity opportunities

Skillset clarity means recognizing everyone’s unique strengths and contribution potential. This is empowering for employees in any setting. In a hybrid world, where in-person opportunities to give kudos are lacking, skill recognition is a powerful morale booster. And by aligning the right skills to different tasks, employees have a better chance to excel. Who wouldn’t feel proud of that?

⭐ Catching skills gaps before they become problems

Skills gaps going unnoticed are an issue in all types of workplaces — but this problem looms larger in a remote or hybrid environment. The lack of in-person presence increases the risk of missing red flags. With a clear skill inventory visibility, managers have a much better chance of avoiding poor management decisions due to overlooking critical skills.

Skills visibility is where it’s at. So what’s today’s manager to do?

Workleap Skills: Designed for the modern HR toolkit

One thing is clear: the intricacies of hybrid work, from employee isolation to miscommunications, call for innovative solutions. This is where Workleap Skills stands out.

With AI-powered capabilities for skill mapping, career plan building, and progression tracking, it’s a tool made to tackle the modern HR challenges of hybrid skills visibility. Plus, it’s got all the fixings to integrate with most HRIS and ATS systems, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — only improve it.

How technology enhances skills visibility

Workleap Skills empowers managers with insights into individual and collective skills. It brings together multiple strategies to enhance skills visibility, even when dealing with a dispersed team:

1. Facilitates accurate skills assessment: Strategic skills visibility goes beyond passive observation. Workleap Skills helps managers actively assess skills to make sure their team’s combined abilities align with the company’s big picture. Analytics provide real-time data so managers can be proactive and better manage skills development plans and training programs.
2. Provides clear insights on skills: Accurate data is great, but managers need to make sense of it. Skills provides a clear, visual representation of both individual and collective skills — quickly identifying skill gaps and strengths and proposing improvement plans.
3. Makes the virtual experience more dynamic: Physical offices are full of opportunities for seamless and organic interactions — communication, morale boosters, support, and so on. Hybrid employees miss out on these, so the virtual space needs to compensate. The Skills experience is user-friendly, interactive, and assisted — making the skill management and development journey fun, impactful, and stimulating.

Implementing Workleap Skills in a hybrid workplace is a pretty straightforward process. As a cloud-based software, it’s fully accessible to everyone, anywhere — home, office, or both. From initial setup to ongoing usage, the platform empowers managers and employees along the skill-mapping journey.

Skills visibility for long-term success

At Workleap, we simply don’t do things halfway. Beyond skills visibility, our software addresses the entire employee development challenge. Irrespective of geographical location, Skills’s collaborative nature ensures that a hybrid workforce remains connected and on the same page at all times.

With Skills, managers and employees can more easily flag concerns and share feedback on career progression plans. And being equipped with real-time tracking and up-to-date data allows for better support and decision-making.

Having a connected environment is also key to fostering engagement and satisfaction at work. A shared mission and sense of belonging keeps employees engaged — and engaged employees are almost 60% less likely to look for a job elsewhere .

Skills visibility is also a critical component of career progression planning, one of 2024’s most valuable HR assets for reskilling, upskilling, and succession planning.

Investing in Skills is an investment in talent transparency. It ends cumbersome and hard-to-track (or non-existent) skills mapping and assessment, highlighting gaps and strengthening your teams. It becomes an indispensable tool for everyone — hybrid teams, managers, and HR leaders alike.

Getting future-ready with Workleap Skills

Workleap Skills isn’t just about facing today’s hybrid challenges — it’s a tool for future-proofing your workforce, too. Yes, it provides visibility on your team’s current state, but it also spots patterns, predicts emerging skills needs, and anticipates solutions so you can always be ready. The digital workplace is constantly changing, and Workleap tools are designed to help you evolve with it.

In the shuffle of the hybrid transformation, it’s not uncommon for managers to look for new footing. Gaining an accurate understanding of your employee's skill sets and being able to put them into action is crucial for effective team management. Book a demo with our product experts today and explore how Workleap Skills simplifies skills mapping, streamlining your approach to managing hybrid teams.