Skills-Based Development: In Conversation with Sue Parcells

CommLab Podcast with Sue Parcells

0:10
Welcome to the eLearning Champion pod hosted by CommLab India, where we discuss the ins and outs of eLearning, training trends, learning technologies, and more that impact corporate training. Your success matters to us, and that's why we bring you what matters to you. I'm your host, Shalini, and today we're going to focus on the exciting topic of corporate skill-based development, a critical driver of organizational success.

In the next 30 minutes, we'll navigate through the intricate landscape of skills development, exploring nuanced aspects and practical strategies for implementation.

Allow me to introduce you to our guest speaker.

Sue Parcells is a senior Learning and Development partner for the Global Learning and Development Centre of Expertise at Caterpillar. As part of her role, she partners with the business to identify, develop, and implement L&D and organizational development solutions for professional skills development across the enterprise.

Most recently, she led the learning and development workstream for an enterprise-wide transformation project to become a skills-based organization, collaborating with functional leaders across 16 functions and 90 sub-functions to create functional skills grids and development thought starters to enable employees and leaders to have a timely clear view of job roles, skills, and proficiency levels for their roles, to have effective carrier aspiration and development discussions, and developed tools for functional teams across the enterprise to effectively develop their supported employees.

Welcome to the podcast, Sue.

2:12
Thank you for having me.

2:15
Let's dive right in. So my first question to Sue is why is skill-based development gaining increased attention in the corporate world?

2:29
I'd like to start by saying that the business landscape has been changing in so many ways, not just for Caterpillar, but for companies of all sizes and all industries. We have new technology, new regulatory requirements, even pandemics, and they can sometimes result in a new market or new markets emerging. And we have new competitors emerging, challenging companies to continuously assess what other competitive landscape or advantage is. And as the business landscape changes, there are talent implications as well. We've all seen the headlines of having attracting and retaining talent being a major challenge pretty much everywhere. So just like the business landscape has changed, the way people are understanding what roles can fit them has changed. And on top of that, roles exist today in the market that didn't even exist a year ago. And with so many different roles, it's critical that we're very clear about the skills the job needs. The clearer we can be about what skills the job needs, the easier it is telling them if the role is a fit for them.

So there is certainly an opportunity to improve our talent strategy by making sure we are clearly articulating the skills needed for different jobs using the language that is market-based.

I'd like to pause for a moment to reiterate what we mean by skills.

We think of skills at Caterpillar as the abilities and knowledge, the capabilities needed to do a particular job. And while an individual may have many skills, we do focus on the core skills required for success in any given role. And this includes development of both functional or job role based skills and core or transferable skills, creating a well-rounded professional.

So we're seeing that skills-based development is gaining prominence as organizations recognize its impact in multiple connecting talent processes such as recruiting, development, session planning, career mobility. And in an era of rapid technological evolution, fostering a workforce equipped with relevant skills is essential for adapting to change, and maintaining competitiveness and just future proofing the organization.

The increasing complexity of tasks requires a shift from traditional job centric training to a focus on continuous learning and skills acquisition. And weaving skills into our tools and processes and vernacular gives Caterpillar a common currency across the company for development and a means that employees could use these skills as a guide, understand and leverage so they know where they may plug into other roles that they may not have considered in the past.

5:53
Right. Thanks for sharing that, Sue. I recall reading this industry report recently where the focus of most organizations, the top priority continues to be upskilling and reskilling. And this was a trend last year as well. And I think it's safe to say that this is going to continue to be a trend because as you mentioned, the skills-based organization is really what we need, the skills-based development. And I love that bit about weaving skills into your tools and processes and establishing a common currency across the company for development. And with that, I come to my next question.

What are the key elements of a successful skills-based development strategy?

6:46
Thank you. And I agree with that trend and as we continue to look at how skills are evolving and how some of them become obsolete. So you need to continue to upscale and reskill to just move along with the different changes that we have in the different industries and job roles.

But to your question on key elements, I would say it all starts with having the right foundation established from the beginning.

So for our enterprise wide skills transformation project, we focused on updating our job library in Caterpillar where each job role within a function and sub-function now lists key market and industry competitive skills. And building that skills framework was key to ensuring we provide the talent we need to implement that enterprise strategy.

Visibility to these skills across the organization is achieved through updated job descriptions listed within each employee's profile, as well as through skill scripts, which consist of a summarized view by function and by sub-function of all of the job roles, the critical skills for each job role and proficiency levels so that it could drive a better understanding of what is needed now for successful performance and for potential career aspirations.

So that's the foundation. And once that foundation is laid, then we can fully realize that learning and development strategy. It's important to know that a successful skill-based development strategy goes beyond mere training sessions. It begins with a comprehensive skills assessment to identify assistance trends in areas for improvement in each function, looking at personalized learning paths to ensure that individuals receive targeted development opportunities. Continuous feedback mechanisms whether through mentorship or technology driven assessments also play a crucial role.

Having collaboration opportunities such as cross functional projects or knowledge sharing platforms enhance that practical application of those acquired skills. And lastly, a supportive organizational culture that values and rewards skills acquisition is the glue that holds the entire strategy together.

And here at Caterpillar, we're fully leveraging the learning model for this purpose where employees own their growth while being supported by leaders in the L&D community. They leverage opportunities to develop through experiences, which is the practical application of skills through on the job stretch projects or assignments and rotations. Just experience.

They also learn from others through mentoring, coaching, peer-to-peer social forums. And they also participate in education opportunities, what we call the formal training, classroom, online training courses, workshops, as well as self-paced learning. They leverage all these different ways of learning to build those critical skills for their current and aspired career goals.

We did this through functional development thought starters, which are a starting point to guide development conversations that are unique to building skills in a function or sub-function. These guides are intended for employees to leverage during development discussions with leaders to agree on specific opportunities and to create a development plan. They would all result in their development plan in using that guy, those development thought starters and specific discussions looking at particular developmental opportunities for the employee to then create a plan that's specific or targeted towards that employee’s development.

11:14
Yeah, very interesting, Sue. And may I congratulate you on successfully creating this learning culture because I think all that you've shared points to the fact that you have a healthy learning culture in place. And I'm sure that's come through a great deal of painstaking groundwork. And the groundwork that is laid through the skills framework is indeed instrumental to the success of any learning that aims at plugging skill gaps. So that brings me to my next question.

How can L&D professionals ensure alignment between skills development and organizational goals?

11:58
We at Caterpillar want to ensure that we have the right talent, with the right future focused skills, at the right time. To enable our enterprise strategy and to ensure alignment between skills development and organizational goals, a deep understanding of the organization's strategic objectives is required.

So L&D professionals must conduct regular skills gap analysis to identify the current and future needs of the workforce. Then by aligning skills development initiatives with these insights, L&D can directly contribute to achieving the organizational goals. This involves not only addressing immediate skills gaps, but also anticipating future requirements, ensuring a proactive rather than reactive approach to upscaling, to rescaling. One of the practices we've adopted at the Center of Expertise is to analyze the most frequent skills across functions and sub-functions, especially as part of the enterprise wide skills transformation project. And that allows us to identify potential gaps in our current L&D solutions and address them accordingly.

Recently, and as an example, we leveraged this process to launch a new learning program focused on effective communications, which was identified as a critical skill for the enterprise.

And communication has certainly been a key to ensuring alignment both across functions and segments as we need to constantly partner with business and talent development leaders to understand both common and unique needs and to ensure there is an array of L&D solutions that can address those varying needs.

14:00
Right. So I'm just curious about how you went about gaining a deeper understanding of your organization's strategic objectives so that the skill development could be aligned to your organizational goals.

14:22
It starts with understanding the enterprise strategy. We do a lot of cascades, from the CEO’s regular addresses on what our strategy is, what our priorities are as an enterprise to ensure that we meet our customers’ needs, that we're focusing on services, on our customers, and also our people.

So having a deep understanding of that, looking at the quarterly results, seeing how it evolves, where the gaps are, what customers are saying, and the challenges that we're experiencing across the globe in the different industries that we serve. And then taking that information and connecting with the different groups to try to understand how they're functioning. How those results or strategies are impacting them directly? What are their priorities based on that and their challenges?

And how can we as a global or a central L&D team support those developmental needs?

It is certainly challenging because we are in a decentralized and matrix organization. So we have our verticals with the major segments in different divisions under each segment, but we also have our functions that cut across all the segments and divisions. And those are the base for our skills transformation. They're all based on the different functions and sub-functions. So you need to partner with different individuals, different teams, each group has their L&D team.

It's quite complex, but just getting to connect with them on a regular basis and just see how things are going, how we're continuing to provide value, if there's anything else that we can assist with, and at the same time take that information and identify common themes across the different groups is really helpful for us as a central team to identify potential solutions that would support the entire enterprise and not just a particular group.

16:55
Right. Thank you so much, Sue, for sharing those best practices and insights. And I can imagine the magnitude of that initial groundwork that you had to lay. And yeah, I think communication, as you mentioned, has certainly been the key in ensuring alignment. So now coming to the more technical side of this conversation, my next question is what role would you say technology plays in optimizing skills-based development initiatives?

17:38
We do leverage technology quite a bit. It does serve as a powerful enabler in several ways. We have technological learning platforms that offer flexibility, accessibility in catering to diverse learning styles and modalities. We also leverage data analytics from the platform to provide personalized insights allowing L&D professionals to track individual progress or a group’s or division’s progress, adapt learning experiences accordingly.

So we do that by division, we could do it by region, by function, by topic. So we leverage that data in order to make those strategic decisions.

We also work with virtual collaboration tools and that facilitates remote learning, global knowledge sharing and just breaking down those geographical barriers as this part of being a global company with a footprint across multiple countries and regions.

And then leveraging artificial intelligence where we could work towards getting to predict future skills needs, leveraging that technology, aiding in strategic planning for skills development.

We do all this at Caterpillar through our HCM learning experience platform, and that allows for skills development to happen just in time within the flow of work.

19:23
Thanks for sharing that. Sue, I was wondering if you could share a little about what modalities or formats do you typically use for your learning solutions?

19:38
We do use several. There is some in-person learning happening, workshops, training courses. We leverage virtual instructor-led training, self-paced eLearning, especially with trying to reach global audiences or production workforce, we need to have something that's accessible. Video based learning is really good and has been widely used across different groups. There is knowledge sharing opportunities from having our internal forums for discussing learning. We have live learning events where we focus on a particular topic, invite a panel of experts and leaders in that topic, and just discuss and allow the audience to ask questions and interact on a particular topic. So leader panel discussions.

We also work with course clubs, similar to book clubs, where you read a book or go through a course and then facilitate a discussion around their takeaways, questions, and just learnings from that particular course.

We're trying to experiment with some learning challenges where we have teams just go through bite sized learning, just snippets of learning, or video, and have discussions through a virtual collaboration forum on what they learned, just asking questions, seeing how that applies to their job roles, and learning from each other that way.

So different modalities to cater to those styles, especially with focusing on the learning models, laerning experiences, learning from others, and our formal training or education.

22:02
Right, right. It's very interesting that you've weaved it all together, not just the formal training aspect of it, but the social and collaborative aspects and also the sharing of best practices and those communities of practice, which come up even around the concept of those course clubs, which I found really interesting. And since you also mentioned that this mix of modalities actually helps you cater to diverse learning styles. And with multiple generations we have working alongside at any typical workplace, I'm sure a blend of all these has contributed a lot to adoption of these learning experiences. With that, I think it's very clear that a lot of effort goes into building the skill-based framework based on which the skill-based development effort happens. So that is one part of it.

Now that brings me to the second part of this whole skill-based development initiative, Sue, which is to do with the measurement of success.

So my question to you would be how can organizations measure the success of their skills-based development efforts?

There are different ways in which you could measure that success in skills development depending on the talent or the people process that you're looking at. So for example, within recruiting, you can see greater success in time to fill indicators with quality hires because you're widening the pool of diverse talent that possesses the right skills for success in the role. Not just looking at experiences, but what transferable skills that talent could provide to the role. It just widens the pool and allows hiring managers to consider talent from different areas that they might have not considered in the past.

You could also look at improved employee performance and measure that through key performance indicators aligned with skills development goals. There is increased retention rates to indicate that the employees value the investment in their growth.

We have successful adaptation of industry changes, and you could evidence that by the application of any newly acquired skills in real world scenarios.

Just seeing that a performance is coming through those upscaling efforts, just having a culture that not only encourages but prioritizes continuous learning reflects in the integration of a common skills language within the organization's DNA.

When you're seeing that leaders and employees are leveraging that common currency, when they're having discussions related to the growth, to their performance across the different groups, that's where you finally see it might not be as measurable, but you can observe it across the different groups and regions and just seeing how you continue to embed that skills language across the organization.

26:06
Yeah. Thank you so much, Sue for sharing those insights with our listeners. In fact, this whole conversation has been very insightful. And as we wrap up this discussion on corporate skills based development, just want our listeners to remember that the journey doesn't end here. Continuous learning and adaptability are key in this dynamic landscape. So whether you're a leader, an individual contributor, or an L&D professional, implementing these best practices will undoubtedly contribute to a more agile, competitive and prepared workforce. So thank you once again for joining us today. I'm sure our learners have our listeners have benefited a lot from all that you've shared. And thank you, dear listeners, for listening to us today.

Feel free to head out to our website www.comlabindia.com, where you can browse for more information, watch the related videos, or use the Contact Us form on the top right to reach out to us.

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Also find us on your favorite social media channels to stay in touch. We look forward to seeing you at the next podcast soon. And until next time, keep investing in your own growth and the growth of your organization. Happy learning and thank you once again, Sue, for sparing your time to join us today to enrich our L&D fraternity. Thank you so much.

28:07
Thank you for having me.