How to do a 'skill stocktake' in your workplace
During these times of staff cutbacks, employers are trying to do more with less. It is a great time to ensure every staff member’s skills are being utilised 100%. So much skill, experience and knowledge is tucked away and dormant. To identify and nurture your workers’ full skills do a “skill stocktake”.
What is a skill stocktake?
A skill stocktake involves mapping people’s history, getting them to remember, realise and use all of their life skills. It allows you to learn more about your staff and how to engage and fulfill them. Sometimes something so tiny can uncover talents useful in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Why should you do one?
Skill stocktakes reveal previously forgotten (or infrequently used) skills, help foster communication and can be a real laugh. You may have 10 people with the same job title but…
- One may really excel at customer service
- Another is a creative thinker and problem solver
- One may enjoy the paperwork others find a real yawn
- Another is great at public speaking
- One can whip up a killer chocolate cake
- While another can write a top press release
Maybe you will find out that….
- A person on your team used to teach rock climbing in Colorado (so they are the first person you call on when organizing a team building day in the outdoors).
- A softly spoken, timid female staff member built her own bookshelf from scratch, and knocked up the bench and pantry in her kitchen (she could solve the mystery of the “hard to assemble desk”!)
- The tough as nails, bigger-than-Jonah-Lomu guy from your office used to teach massage with essential oils (could be useful after the outdoors day!).
Armed with this information you will be able to understand your workers better as individuals, allocate tasks more efficiently and keep the team happier as they get and see more opportunities to use their favourite skills.
No life experience is wasted if we figure out how to use it well. Ask how experience as a:
– Firefighter can help in a childcare role?
– Lawyer can help in coffee shop business?
– Mediator can help drive a tractor?
– Pole dancer can help orchestrate a huge building project?
Even past painful experiences can be turned into a positive if you identify and use the skills you gained from them.
First things first…
Figure out why you are doing a skill stocktake – what would you like to achieve?
– An increase in staff happiness and engagement?
– Identify ways to increase productivity?
– Deeper self knowledge for staff about their capabilities?
– A better team bond?
How to action a skill stocktake
1. Write out the questions your skill stocktake will ask.
2. Figure out what method you will use.
It can be done as a team exercise, one on one with the manager, or individually. I think a team exercise or individually is best – one on one with the manager is too formal, too personal and won’t bring about strong results.
Team method suggestions:
– At a team drinks hour after work (maybe close early?)
– Offsite morning tea with great coffee
The benefits of doing it in a team environment is the chatter and laughter can help facilitate a more thorough response from staff. For example if someone remembers that they can say the alphabet backwards while walking around in a handstand it may trigger someone else to remember all the skills they learned and used while coaching a gymnastics team a million years ago when they were sixteen.
Individual method suggestions:
– Give each individual an hour off to complete in a private space, maybe give them a coffee and muffin voucher.
– Don’t make them do it in their own time!
The benefits of an individual session is the privacy and thought it allows. This approach is particularly good if people are pondering the skills they learned while dealing with some very painful past experiences. You could have everyone do it individually and then have a team brainstorm where people can share their craziest, funniest, cleverest etc skills which could trigger others to remember things to add to their skill list. This method gives you the best of both worlds.
3. Explain to your staff:
– What a skill stocktake is
– Why you decided to do one
– What you are trying to achieve
– What they will personally gain from it
– That it is for their records only – they do not hand this paper in or show it to anyone, so they can write info as personal as they like.
What questions should you ask?
Personal skills
1. List major events in your life and the skills you learnt from them
It could be your parents separating, a house fire, moving out of home, having an abusive partner, becoming a parent, buying a house or travel. You may have learnt skills such as how to cook, how to be thrifty, self belief and confidence, how to change nappies, time management, typing, multitasking or DIY. Think in great depth about every aspect of the events, what you learnt, and what skills it gave you.
Event: ______________________________________
Skills I acquired from this: _________________________________________________
2. List minor events in your life and the skills you learnt from them
It could be getting A’s in school, playing a sport, being bullied, getting an injury or doing charity work. You may have learnt focus, teamwork, self belief, assertiveness, how to write with both hands or how to get blood from a stone. Think in great depth about every aspect of the events, what you learnt, and what skills it gave you.
Event: ______________________________________
Skills I acquired from this: _________________________________________________
Professional skills
3. List every professional role you’ve ever had and the skills it gave you.
Maybe you had a lemonade stand, were a babysitter, dancer, team leader, retail assistant, call centre or massage therapist. Perhaps you learnt mediation, posture, sales techniques, questioning skills and relaxation techniques. Think in great depth about every aspect of the roles, what you learnt, and what skills it gave you.
Roles: ________________________________________________
Skills: _________________________________________________
4. Looking back over all of the roles you’ve held in your life, what skills from them are your favourite to use?
5. Which of these skills does your current role require?
6. Which skills doesn’t your current role require?
7. How could you incorporate the skills you’d like to use into your role? You are only limited by your imagination when answering this question. Perhaps you could restructure your role – let go of some current responsibility to take on new ones that allow you to really use your favourite skills.
What should you do with the results?
A lot of this exercise is very personal as people are being very honest about how they see themselves. Also some may write of past experiences that are very painful which they may not have thought of for years such as abuse or neglect. Allow people to talk about their results amongst the team as much as they are comfortable. If you do a team meeting keep it quite light. The purpose is to simply exchange ideas about the skills people remembered to trigger others to add to their list. Maybe others interpreted the questions differently so got a bigger variety of ideas. Perhaps just facilitate discussion by asking people to tell you (if comfortable) the:
– craziest skills
– funniest skills
– unique skills
– most surprising skills
– new twist on an old skill
they uncovered and write them up on the whiteboard. You should start the ball rolling by being open with things you uncovered about yourself. Hopefully this is a really fun meeting that increases the teams bond as they hear funny stories (and serious ones) from each others childhood and early working life. This should give you (as the boss) some fresh ideas about how to liven up your workplace and achieve what you set out to.
The next step
Meet with staff one on one to discuss any ideas, insights and revelations they are happy to share. Give them plenty of notice about it, and the kinds of things you could discuss. If they have come up with ideas about how to improve their role or their performance they should be prepared to discuss them. Also:
– What skills they’d love to incorporate into their job and how
– What jobs they’ve had that they didn’t realise helps them in their current role
– Any topics they’d like to run a team meeting on/write an intranet article on to help increase team performance i.e. “how my experience as a fireman helps me sell TV’s”
How will it impact your workplace?
– Staff will have got to know each other a bit better and increased the team bond and understanding.
– Staff will have a better understanding of themselves and how to use past (including bad) experience positively.
– Everyone should be thinking more widely and openly about their roles, performance and the workplace.
– You as the boss should have new ideas about your teams skills and how they can be used positively. Think about everything you learnt from this exercise and how it can be put to good use. Make sure you regularly discuss ideas with the team to keep building on achieving the goal you set in the beginning.
Allison O’Neill is the New Zealand based author of The Boss Benchmark – a book about how to be an amazing boss that has been endorsed by some great CEO’s. Allison can be contacted at www.thebossbenchmark.com