How do you define a skilled employee?

One who is skilled to do the required job, simple isn't it?

Problem is that increasingly, most job requirements are changing rapidly. Growth, competition, pivoting, talent movement, open positions, whatever may be the reason, the fact is that today you need team members who can do much more at work. 

Absence of clarity on required skills both at enterprise level and then at each job level leads to accumulation of bad hires in an Organisation. Another contribution to bad hires comes from untrained hiring managers who are both unaware of required skills and incapable of evaluating skill levels even if the skills are defined. Most hiring manager we meet haven't undergone any training around evaluation techniques, we wonder how a good hire happens at all.

Let's drill down a bit on the skill (or ability) at enterprise level so those who want to get started, can.

What are the top level skills that you want all (or most) team members to possess? 

• To be able to talk to your customers whether formally or by chance and explain your offerings well.
• To be able to guide a visitor or caller to the right person in the Organisation.
• To understand your business process as it moves from production to delivery to usage.
• To be able to give a demonstration of your product to a customer or a curious soul.

Now see how these fit into functional skills of an Accountant or Customer service or Service Engineer who might have been assessed purely on functional skills.

Its interesting to considering another aspect of skill development at work. Not all skills would be used as hiring filter but you must have a skill stack that is a must acquire before a team member hits ground on work. Most people would come with static skills and you'd need to work on the dynamic ones. Its the dynamic skills that will require constant change to keep your teams ready for today's challenge and probably tomorrow's.

• Can you Accountant make a sales pitch?
• Can the receptionist effect change of address on your website?
• Can HR Manager add the resume capture form to career page of the site?
• Can sales person handle an irate customer?