Numerous companies across the globe have come to realize that there is a shortage of talent and skills in their industry and even closer to home, in their companies. Despite this stark reality, many companies are ill-prepared to rectify this issue, which has the potential to adversely impact their revenue streams. “Bridging the Skills Gap,” an article written by American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), Public Policy Council in the fall of 2006, reinforced this concept by noting that “Too many workers lack the right skills to help their employers grow and succeed.” The article goes on to say, “At the same time that the global, knowledge-based economy places an ever-growing premium on the talent, creativity, and efficiency of the workforce, business leaders talk of the widening gap between the skills their organizations need to grow the current capabilities of their employees.”¹

Prudent and business-savvy companies need to be cognizant of their bench strength for both short-term and anticipated long-term needs. This begins with an understanding of the nature, quantity, and depth of their employees’ expertise, which enables the organization to quickly identify experts who can move the organization forward by delivering rapid solutions to clients.

The inclusion of expertise requirements in business plans and forecasting is critical to the success of any company. An organization’s expertise portfolio and talent management should be under constant evaluation to determine whether or not the company is poised to meet client needs, market demands, and market volatility. This expertise portfolio encompasses a diversity of requisite skills, subject matter knowledge, and personal attributes such as leadership competencies and characteristics that are essential for near- and long-term deployment when and where necessary. The keen attention that an organization pays to its expertise portfolio puts it in a ready mode to deliver solutions and services to its clients and enables it to win in the marketplace.

Expertise assessment is the process an organization uses to compare the current skill and competency levels to the tactical and strategic needs of the business and is a critical element in managing talent, particularly in multinational companies. Factors such as demographic changes, cultural differences, learning preferences and styles, as well as the diversity of needs and state-of-the-art learning tools all have an impact on a company’s expertise management. These factors should be given much consideration when developing expertise assessments and business projections. These factors dictate that leaders who are responsible for the management of expertise must have the foresight to move away from the traditional “one–size-fits-all” approach in deploying learning options and resources, to a simple but blended and flexible approach to learning.

To put IBM’s expertise management approach in context; it becomes necessary to know how the company defines the term. IBM defines expertise as “the sum of indicators of proven ability and experience which includes IBM competencies, functional and technical skills and subject knowledge.”² As we progress further into the chapter, the term “expertise” will refer to this meaning.

In short, these are some of the compelling reasons why IBM makes it a practice to constantly assess, refresh, and revitalize its employees’ learning practices, using practical and flexible approaches in delivering learning to its global workforce. This chapter focuses on the importance of expertise forecasting and assessment as one of the first critical tasks required to build individual employee and organizational capability and emphasizes the importance of linking business strategy with expertise development and learning needs. Also it provides a view of how IBM approaches expertise assessment. The intent is to develop and maintain a robust portfolio of the right expertise that enables IBM to respond quickly to the needs of its global clients.

A normal business practice of assessing levels of expertise helps organizations better anticipate and plan for unforeseen marketplace needs, rather than being surprised by them. Identifying skill and competency gaps in a timely manner enables the company to rapidly and creatively design plans that can bridge those gaps. Using this approach helps companies become agile in response to their clients and remain strong contenders in the global marketplace.

In order to improve the employee experience, as expertise assessments are done, consideration must be given to an array of learning options, such as tools and techniques that increase the speed of learning, overall expertise management, personalized career guidance, and creation of an atmosphere where collaborative learning is commonplace. IBM’s approach to assessing organizational learning is predicated on an integrative, blended, and work-embedded process that takes into consideration the variety of employee needs and interests. It is critical to the assessment process that the company not only defines which skills are important to the business for the near- and long-term, but also to ensure there is clear understanding of the demand for and supply of such skills. This process includes the mapping of an external talent recruiting strategy, which is balanced with an internal skills and talent development plan to identify specific gaps, as well as the magnitude of the challenge that the organization faces in resolving these skill gap issues. Typically, a skill gap is the comparison of the current and projected future supply of talent that will position the organization to deliver solutions and services to the marketplace in a quality and timely manner. Once skill gaps are determined, a necessary next step is to do a thorough analysis of the nature of these gaps. The analysis ensures that the necessary training, systems, tools, and support are in place to rapidly close the identified gaps. A plan to help employees gain the required skills in a timely manner is included in the analysis, thus improving employee performance and contribution to the organization. This process requires a certain amount of rigor that should help the organization answer the following questions during the expertise assessment phase:

Constant market analysis and trend analysis must be done to understand the emerging skills needs within the industry that the company serves. Parallel activities should be taking place to include skills needs—what will your company’s talent and expertise profile look like in a year, five years, or even ten years? IBM Global Business Services conducted The Global Human Capital Study in 2008 and summarized its findings in the article, “Unlocking the DNA of the Adaptable Workforce.” Participants in the study included more than 400 organizations that extended across 40 countries that represented a cross section of company size, industry, and geography. The study revealed that “Only 13% of the organizations interviewed believe they have clear understanding of the skills they will require in the next three to five years. While some organizations believe they understand the needs of their current businesses, they are less sure of their ability to predict the skills needed in new or emerging markets.”³

Expertise management has become an increasingly complex exercise for many organizations, particularly those that are multinational and competing in multiple arenas, such as mature, growth, and emerging markets. All of these markets are dynamically unpredictable and very difficult to read, due to the speed of change and the demand for more sophisticated and complex skills across several geographies. Consequently, the assessment of skills within organizations has to be constant and on-going—not just the once-a-year activity to which many companies are accustomed. In his book, Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage, Edward Lawler III underscored the complex nature of skills assessment when he noted that “Acquiring the right talent is becoming an increasingly complex and challenging activity. The workforce itself has become more global, virtual, and diverse than it ever has been. Increasingly, a surplus of investment capital is chasing a scarcity of talented people. The future is more of the same; thus, organizations that excel at talent management will continue to enjoy competitive advantage.”⁴

Multinational organizations must take added measures to ensure that their expertise assessment model is an integrated end-to-end process that takes into consideration varying skills needs by geographic regions. This process affords the organization the capability to deploy the right skills to the right place in the right time to respond to the needs of their global clients. Such a practice builds agility and adaptability in responding to clients anywhere and at any time.

The issue of expertise management will continue to require companies to find simple, affordable, and innovative ways to develop the necessary talent and capability of its workforce. As organizations create their business strategies, it is imperative that they include expertise assessment and talent development as core components of the strategy. When the business strategy is developed, there should be a built-in plan to periodically assess whether the necessary skills are being developed at the right pace and whether there are ample opportunities for employees to apply these skills in innovative ways. To stay consistent and focused on expertise management, some suggested tips and questions to determine the status of the strength of the organization’s expertise portfolio are listed here:

Figure 5.1 summarizes the various talent and expertise processes, which are intricately linked to the company’s forecasting priorities and strategy. When an organization has the right levels of expertise available by making this linkage between talent/expertise planning and strategic business priorities, it is proactively focusing on all the elements that help to achieve its business goals.

Figure 5.1. Business strategy and forecasting: a critical link to talent management.

Generally, employees derive a sense of value if their career goals and interests are important factors in a company’s business strategy and skills forecasting process and when there is a clear line of sight as to how they can achieve their personal and career goals while contributing at a level commensurate with their potential. Organizations cannot overlook the importance of including stated or perceived employee career interests, personal goals, and professional aspirations when they are assessing and defining current and future skills needs. Employee career interests should be included in the forecasting process to signal to them that their growth and desire to acquire new skills are essential factors in helping to build organizational capability that translates into competitive advantage in the marketplace. When employees perceive that their interests to grow within the organization are taken seriously, it allows them to see that they are part of shaping the future success of the organization, instilling meaning and purpose both for them and for the organization. Employees are more motivated to learn when they see how their knowledge and skills can make a difference for the organization. Inevitably, this establishes a learning culture in which people become focused on acquiring new skills, and as they do, they are energized by helping others grow.

As expertise forecasting is taking place, the leaders of the organization must be mindful of the characteristics, qualities, and personal attributes employees need to develop. These characteristics include an on-going thirst for knowledge as well as a willingness to share knowledge along with the desire to constantly seek innovative ways to apply their knowledge. The application of acquired knowledge is a key aspect of the learning process, and organizations should reinforce the importance of the learning-and-doing approach. To this point, the Society of Human Resource Management in their 2008 first quarter research paper, “A Gateway to Organizational Success,” supports this learning in stating that “Another key model regarding training is the cognitive theory of transfer, a process model of learning. In training programs, training transfer is further enhanced through application assignments that create simulations to apply learning in the work setting (e.g., identification of work problems and situations), thus linking learned capability and real world application.”⁵ As employees’ interests in learning new skills are met, the organization should create opportunities to help them transfer learning theory into meaningful practical application. Organizations must be open to the idea that mistakes will be made as employees apply their newly acquired skills, and when such mistakes occur, they must be treated as learning opportunities. The practice of treating mistakes as learning opportunities is an important way to analyze why the mistakes occurred in the first place and determine what could have been done differently. Doing a root cause analysis of organizational mistakes is essential in forestalling the recurrence of the same mistakes. Over time, if the same organizational mistakes continue to take place, it will prove to be costly to the organization.

Given the high premium placed on intellectual capital, it is necessary for companies to create an environment that fosters continuous learning, intellectual stimulation, and on-going support for the development of their employees. Consistent with the business strategy, a plan must be defined to identify the necessary learning tools and resources available to employees. It is highly recommended that companies examine their current learning tools and resources to determine whether or not they are outdated. Outdated learning tools generally are unable to meet the constantly changing demands of the workplace; some of the indicators include slow response time and not having enough capacity and functionalities to facilitate the necessary learning needs in a timely manner. Organizations must also establish methods and plans for upgrading learning tools to keep abreast of the changing learning needs. Having tools with the right capabilities that simplify the learning experience for employees will make the learning experience a rewarding one. Making the available tools user-friendly and clearly mapping out the learning process signals to the employees that their development is important to the success of the business.

As an illustration, IBM’s employee development approach is to invest in making it possible for employees to acquire, develop, and apply their expertise to deliver business results, while allowing them the opportunity to advance and attain their career goals and aspirations. The IBM approach to skills acquisition and career development is predicated on a simple, integrated, “one-stop” method to learning, made possible by the enhancement of the learning tools available to employees. The step-by-step process IBM uses to develop employees takes the guesswork out of the system and thereby reinforces the importance of employee development. This simplified process promotes and accelerates the development of expertise. Here is the learning model that IBM uses in developing their employees:

To fully engage them in the learning process, IBM tells employees why skills assessment is important in achieving their career goals and shows them how to increase their value to the business. The learning plans that employees receive are tailored to their specific growth needs. While this process allows employees to take responsibility for their development, managers also play a pivotal role in partnering with and supporting employees in the learning and development process. The ultimate goal is to provide employees with the necessary tools, support, and clarity regarding performance expectations. As employees develop new expertise, the expectation is that they will perform and increase their value proposition to the business.

The employee development process holds managers responsible for identifying new leaders within their departments in order to create organization succession plans. This exercise is forward-thinking and positions IBM to develop a pool of future leaders so that easy and smooth transitions can be made.

Succession planning is a vitally important process that consists of the development of leaders who have the necessary skills, attributes, and depth to execute important business ventures across a global market. As companies make projections for the future, building organizational capabilities is high on the list. Equally important is the need to continually renew the diverse pool of new leaders. Succession planning generally focuses on highly visible leadership positions that are of critical importance to the business. Positions such as this play a role in shaping the current and future success of the business, and when staffing changes occur in these positions, replacements must be made thoughtfully and quickly. Making rapid replacement decisions results in minimal disruption to internal operations and will be seamless to customers. The January 2008 McKinsey Quarterly, Making Talent a Strategic Priority, noted that “Our experience during the past decade shows that companies must do much more to ensure their access to a sufficient supply of talented people. Demographics, globalization and the characteristics of knowledge work present long-term challenges that reinforce the argument for putting workforce planning and talent management at the heart of business strategy and for giving those issues a bigger share of senior management’s time.”⁶

A systematic approach in succession planning should be taken, one in which the organization has a blueprint that identifies new potential leaders on a continual basis. As these future leaders are identified, they should immediately have mentors and role models available to them to speed up their development. In 2002 Pepperdine University Graziadio Business School published an article, “Choose Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,” which reported that best practice companies like Sonoco, Dow, and Dell, to name a few, focus on “monitoring future needs, talent assessments, use of technology to integrate data, developmental activities, and performance measurements as key components of their succession planning best practice methods.” The report cited that “Dow has moved from having different competencies for each global business to a common set of seven used throughout the corporation. Dell focuses on a “global corporate talent,” which consists of individuals who have the capability to “run significant portions of a...business...on a global basis. They also track functional high potentials.”⁷

Given the complexities, ambiguities, volatility, and dynamic nature of the twenty-first century global workplace, the need for new leadership competencies has never been higher. Companies such as IBM are investing heavily in developing current and future leaders to master such qualities as

As part of the succession planning process, future leaders must be given the opportunity to acquire a versatile set of experiences across the organization and not be limited to gaining experience only within one organization. IBM makes it a practice to create opportunities for employees to develop broad cross-organizational leadership and business experience throughout the company. Thus, it stands to reason that programs such as rotational, temporary, and global assignments are essential to the development of new leaders within IBM. Career development and succession planning are critical components of a thriving business. Every effort should be made to identify those difficult-to-replace employees who have knowledge that is essential to the business, and furthermore a strong retention and engagement plan must also be implemented.

The investment in succession planning helps the organization to “construct a leadership, knowledge and experience repertoire,” which can be used as an organizational arsenal against competitors in the marketplace. David W. DeLong, in his book Lost Knowledge, reinforces the importance of putting in place a retention plan that compliments succession planning. To this point, DeLong states that “While succession planning can help preempt knowledge loss for the organization, career development processes may be one of the most effective retention tools for key employees. Career development processes can increase retention in the tight labor markets by signaling to individuals that the organization is interested in their personal development.”⁸

Critical to the issue of succession planning is the challenge that companies face regarding the aging of the workforce and the imminent loss of intellectual and human capital through the retirement of Baby Boomers. The attention that is given to the development of an organization’s leadership and knowledge bench strength is consuming the time of many Human Resources organizations across the globe. It is in this perspective that the notion of “leaders building leaders” has become an expectation in IBM, and it is part of the robust knowledge transfer system that has helped to stem the impact of retiring Baby Boomers. In short, Robert Gandossy and Marc Effron in their book Leading the Way, reported that during the Gerstner era, “A comprehensive approach to building great leaders was crafted, including careful selection, development, and rewards for IBM’s best talent. Leaders were held accountable for growing other leaders, and good leadership was viewed as a critical asset to be carefully managed for the best possible return.”⁹ Current leaders are expected to play an integral role in the development process of the generation of leaders that are behind them. Sharing their experiences, which include career setbacks, recovery from setbacks, career choices, career decisions, and successes, are important topics to discuss in helping to develop new leaders.

With the changing demographics of the workplace, companies are grappling with the issue of creating an environment that supports collaborative learning and the critical requirement of transferring knowledge as Baby Boomers retire. These issues also come into play as companies retrench their workforces when economic times turn sour and resources leave the company—voluntarily or involuntarily. When adverse business conditions begin to turn around, companies might find they no longer have the key skills required to grow again. To create this learning environment, companies must address the varying needs of each generation that is present in the workplace. For the purpose of clarity and consistency, as noted in Chapter 4, “Selecting the Best Talent and Developing New Employees,” individuals born between 1946 and 1964 are considered the Baby Boomer generation, and Gen X and Gen Y were born between 1965 and 1975 and 1976 and 2001, respectively.

The twenty-first century has heralded a number of challenges that are germane to the changing demographics of the workforce, and many organizations are strugling to address these challenges. Organizations that do not make an earnest effort to put plans in place to address the imminent impact of demographic changes will experience severe difficulty retaining the collective knowledge of those leaving the company. Furthermore, organizations that fail to plan for demographic changes will be caught flat-footed when it comes to developing a variety of learning options for today’s workforce, that is made up of multiple generations. This issue becomes complicated because each generation has a different set of skills needs, coupled with varying career development expectations from the organization.

To underscore the challenges of the demographic changes that organizations face, The IBM Global Business Services, in partnership with the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), coauthored an article that speaks to the “shifting workforce demographics and the learning function.” The article stated that “Changing workforce demographics are having a notable effect on organizations across a variety of industries and geographies. While the learning function has significant opportunities to help companies address issues associated with this shift, it needs to reorient its focus and capabilities. To help mitigate the challenges of retiring workers and their subsequent replacements, the learning function needs to play a role in areas such as determining critical skills and capabilities, transferring knowledge and reducing time-to-competence for newer employees.”¹⁰

We previously noted that skills forecasting has to be aligned with business forecasting and assessments in order to build the talent base and the intellectual capital of the organization. Interestingly, forecasting must also encompass the demographic trends of the workforce, including a direct link to the diversity and inclusion strategies of the organization.

As an illustration, the organization must have a sense not only of who might leave the business through retirement, but also the concomitant impact of the intellectual capital that would also be exiting the business. There has been much discussion about the fact that due to the large numbers of Baby Boomers who will soon be eligible to retire, companies are going to incur a severe knowledge and expertise drain. Unfortunately, however, many organizations are having difficulty to harness and transfer that knowledge quickly enough to avoid an adverse impact on the business. In essence, the organizational plans to “pass on the torch of knowledge and experience” to the generation behind must be a priority in the assessment and strategy planning phase of the organization. The alignment of skills and talent strategies to diversity strategies is an essential process in the quest to capture organizational knowledge. This is due primarily to the critical need to bridge generational differences and conflicts that typically occur when the four distinct generational groups work together.

These differences may originate from the contrasting styles and approaches to doing work or from the perception that what a new Gen X or Gen Y hire values may be totally different from what a Baby Boomer values. There are also differences from generation to generation in the way that decisions are made, career needs and aspirations are met, excitement and fun are generated, and purpose is created. Through diversity education and awareness, it is possible to move the generations from conflict to collaboration, and once collaboration is achieved, it then creates and fosters a healthy climate where knowledge transfer becomes a focus of the generational groups.

Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman, in their book, When Generations Collide, reinforced the point that “In general the generations tend to have a pretty narrow bandwidth of tolerance for one another. We give our peers much more leeway than we give someone from another generation.” To create meaningful learning opportunities, fun and excitement must be a part of the process. To this point, Lancaster and Stillman add that “Fun deepens the learning and deepens the bonds, especially among people of different generations who might normally never encounter each other on that level.”¹¹

To overcome the generational divide and bring cultural understanding, learning events and functions must elucidate topics related to workplace demographics and other diversity dimensions. Once these gaps are closed, it influences the opportunity for employees to learn together and to collaborate in more meaningful and productive ways. If this can be achieved, a climate of collaborative learning ensues, and the easy flow of knowledge and information is transmitted among the generations that are present in the workplace. This level of skills assessment and creating learning tools to address these issues makes it relatively easy to “pass on the torch of experience.”

In 2008, IBM conducted its third biennial Global CEO Study with more than 1,000 participants from both the public and private sectors. One of the cornerstones of the study was to focus on the “Enterprise of the Future,” in which there is a demand to integrate capabilities globally to differentiate the organization of the past from the one that is being designed for the future. The Enterprise of the Future searches worldwide for sources of expertise, resources, and assets that can be easily and readily deployed to deliver service and solutions. “Finding the right capabilities is much more important than finding the cheapest ones. These centers of excellence are integrated globally so that the best capabilities, knowledge and assets can be used wherever required.”¹² As a practice, IBM makes it a priority to constantly assess the skills and capabilities of its global workforce and uses this information to refresh, identify, and catalog the portfolio of expertise and talent that exists within the company. The intent is to be able to unleash this portfolio of skills anywhere in the enterprise whenever it is needed and at a moment’s notice.

IBM has a longstanding history of developing its people with the right skills, not just for the moment or for the current job, but for the future success of the business. As early as 1961, T.J. Watson, Jr. asserted that “IBM’s future is in the hands of its people. Our future is unlimited.”¹³

The development of talent continues to be of utmost importance to IBM, and employees are given resources and support to develop a diverse set of skills that are not only relevant to their development, but are also relevant to the company’s growth and success. The skills that employees possess represent specialization and depth along with broad knowledge in other important, related areas. At the same time, these employees are given the opportunity to apply both the specialized and broad skills that can help the business deliver integrated solutions to its global clients. A basic tenet of IBM’s concept of the Globally Integrated Enterprise is that the company is making it a business necessity to develop a supply of high-value talent and expertise that can be located anywhere in the enterprise. This approach has created renewed excitement about skills development and the desire for continuous learning, and if it becomes necessary, employees are willing to re-invent and re-tool their skills portfolio. Employees realize that the business benefits by helping them retool their skills to align with the company’s strategy of reinventing the way business is done in order to meet changing marketplace demands. To substantiate the importance of investing in employee development, IBM defined its learning strategy, which articulates how its people can play a role in the future success of the business. The IBM Learning Strategy clearly states that “Our people are a critical factor to achieving long-term profitable growth. Supporting our learning strategy is an investment in the future of IBM. The Learning function’s role is to help our company learn, adopt, adapt and grow.”¹⁴

To cultivate new talent and build on what already exists within the organization, IBM developed an integrated expertise management system that brought all the disparate and disjointed learning components into a streamlined, one-stop-shop portfolio of learning options. The structure of the expertise management system is adaptable and flexible, and the primary intent is to ensure that adjustments can be easily made according to country and geographic regions. IBM is in a never-ending mode of assessing skills needs and finding ways to effectively manage global talent, and thus the prediction and assessment of skills remain a priority for the company. The assessment is carried out in a rapid manner in order to meet the needs not only of the mature markets, but even more importantly in the emerging markets, where talent is typically scarce. The IBM expertise model is constructed on speed to recruit the right skills into the business and speed to help current employees acquire, master, and apply critical skills in ways that help IBM to remain relevant in a competitive global marketplace. According to Frank Persico, IBM Vice President, Workforce Learning and Development, “Having built a complete suite of enduring capabilities for Learning Leadership, Expertise Management and the provision of Personalized Learning and Career Guidance, we are now positioned to deliver significantly higher levels of business value to IBM.”¹⁵

The IBM Expertise Management System is aligned very closely to its career framework, and this connection begins with the definition of a common and consistent “taxonomy” for job roles and skills all across IBM. This process introduces a high degree of clarity to the IBM workforce, which has resulted in enabling employees to take a more active role in identifying and articulating the expertise and skills they need to develop in their current jobs. In addition, with this understanding, employees are equipped with the knowledge of how to do their skills and competency mapping to meet their future career goals and aspirations. Personal career guidance is given to employees to help them balance their current skill set with the skills they will need to fulfill future job roles. Employees find this process empowering because it gives them the tools and resources to act responsibly about their development and helps them better engage in more substantive and higher quality career discussions with their managers and mentors.

The IBM Expertise Management system is a centralized career development hub that offers employees across the enterprise recommendations on options and tools to assess their skills. Employees are also given learning recommendations that are relevant to their unique needs. IBM paid particular attention to designing a career development program that is integrated and links all the relevant components of the learning process. This approach has notably improved the employee learning experience and in essence encourages expertise and talent development across the business. Because all the learning components are integrated and it is easy to use, employees are taking charge of their own development with the support of their managers.

Here are some of the learning components connected to the Expertise Management process:

The IBM workforce is characterized as high performing and highly skilled. The company maintains this posture by developing detailed career models and is vigilant in adjusting these models based on changing marketplace demands, simplifying learning processes, and providing employees with clarity on ways to achieve their career aspirations. The McKinsey Quarterly January 2008: “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” cites that “Companies like to promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating and retaining capable workers as they were a decade ago.”¹⁶

IBM has a history of reinventing itself according to the dynamic and volatile nature of the clients they serve. As the company reinvents itself, it has to quickly assess the skills that are required to support the success of the new business structure because IBM understands that investing in talent development is an on-going priority that is aligned with business strategy. IBM realizes that its intellectual and expertise bench strength are predictors of how it competes in the global marketplace. People are IBM’s future and IBM’s success. In 1974, the CEO of IBM endorsed the value IBM places in its people by asserting that “Our investment in education is large, and the reason is plain: We cannot hope to run the IBM of tomorrow on yesterday’s knowledge. It is vital for each of us to keep abreast of new knowledge, whatever our job.”¹⁷ The enduring skills that IBM has enabled its workforce to develop have been a key factor in helping the company to maintain its brand as an “employer of choice” and a “solution provider of choice.” Developing its people has been a historical practice for IBM; the only change in this regard is that a more dedicated focus has been given to better integrating skills assessments and forecasting in the overall business model and strategy planning. In addition, the process for development is streamlined, the approach is holistic, and employees are given tools to do their own skills assessments. As employees acquire new skills, they are held accountable to improve performance and add value to the business.