The new trend of skills-based hiring is H-O-T.
With good reason.
Hiring for skills is 5 times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education and over twice as predictive as hiring for work experience.
And if you’ve embraced the mantra of “competence over credentials,” it only makes sense you’d also adopt skills-based staff scheduling.
In this more holistic approach to scheduling, you account for employee availability, specialized skills, and required job roles for each shift.
This goes beyond scheduling. It’s high-level workforce optimization.
When you ignore your workforce’s unique skillset, you’ll likely experience a plunge in motivation and a revolving door of employees.
Employees who feel their skills aren’t being used effectively in their current jobs are 10 times more likely to hunt for a new job than those who get to apply their skills at work.
How well is your organization utilizing your staff’s unique skills?
You're not alone if you know you need to step it up.
Only 14% of business executives agree their organization uses the workforce’s skills and capabilities to their fullest potential.
Today, we’ll show you how to gather, manage, and use your employees’ skills to create schedules that honor their strengths, well-being, and workload.
- 1. Assess Your Workforce
- 2. Create a Skills Matrix
- 3. Match Shifts with Skills and Roles
- 4. Plan Training and Development
- 5. Balance Flexibility and Availability
- 6. Compliance and Fairness in Scheduling
- 7. Get on Board With Communication Innovation
1. Assess Your Workforce
Do a deep dive to determine your staff’s skillset.
And in case you didn’t know, your employees are itching to tell you about their skills.
58% of workers believe their skills aren’t clear from their qualifications or job history, and 46% feel employers focus too much on job history and too little on their skills.
To gather this info, conduct a skills inventory. Try a few of these methods for gathering data on staff skills and roles:
- Self-assessments — Employees evaluate their own skills
- Manager assessments — Managers evaluate employee skills
- Peer assessments — Coworkers provide feedback on employee skills
- 360-degree assessments — Employees are evaluated by managers, peers, and subordinates
- Employee interviews — Can be used to expand on a spreadsheet of critical skills
- Employee surveys — Sogolytics has a variety of employee survey templates to get the ball rolling for you.
Manage employee skills digitally
A centralized employee database with skills allows for quick and accurate staff-to-role matching, enhancing efficiency. It also ensures that skills data is always up-to-date, facilitating better workforce planning and development.
Once you’ve gathered in-depth info on your team’s skillset, MakeShift lets you store the data in each employee’s profile. It’s a breeze to input and update skills.
How easy breezy? Here’s a quick walkthrough:
1. Select the Users link from the top navigation bar.
2. Next, choose the employee whose skills you’d like to manage by finding and clicking the desired employee’s name.
3. Click the Positions, Job Sites and Skills tab.
4. Add skills by typing them in the box and then hit Enter.
Any skills you’ve already added for other employees will show up on a dropdown list for you to choose from. To remove a skill from an employee, click the small X next to the name of the skill.
If your employees’ list of skills is stored in your core HR or LMS, like SAP® SuccessFactors® Employee Central or SuccessFactors Learning, MakeShift can automatically sync these skills over.
No need to duplicate your effort or have disjointed, out-of-sync info. MakeShift ensures seamless integration for a cohesive experience.
2. Create a Skills Matrix
A skills matrix maps out employees' skills and competencies, helping you identify those best suited for specific tasks and roles.
Examples of skills categories:
- Technical skills
- 2nd language
- Communication skills
- Leadership abilities
Examples of roles could range from customer service rep to project manager (don’t forget: upskilling can make an employee qualified for more than one role).
Build a skills matrix
- List all necessary skills & roles — Identify all the skills required for your organization and the roles to be filled.
- Rate employees on each skill — Assess each employee's proficiency in the listed skills using a rating system like beginner, intermediate, and expert.
- Create a visual — Map the skills and roles to represent your workforce's capabilities.
Use tech to maintain & utilize your skills matrix — automatically
- Simplify creation & updating — MakeShift allows you to update employee skills and roles, then automatically uses the info to create staff schedules based on this information.
- Automate skills-based scheduling — ShiftMate AI's suite of generative AI-powered modules automatically creates schedules for employees based on strengths and availability when you ask it to.
3. Match Shifts with Skills and Roles
Matching shifts with skills and roles ensures employees are scheduled where they can be most effective. This leads to higher productivity, better service quality, and boosted employee engagement. Your team will feel more confident when their specific skills are put to good use.
So how do you do this?
Align shift needs with your team’s skillset
- Match skills with shift requirements — Identify the specific skills needed for each shift and ensure employees with those skills are scheduled accordingly.
- Rotate staff to balance skill development — Implement a rotation system that allows employees to work in different roles, promoting skill development and preventing burnout.
MakeShift’s intelligent scheduling does the matching for you
MakeShift uses advanced algorithms to optimize shift planning based on employee skills, availability, budget constraints, union agreements, and operational needs.
The result? You reduce the time it takes to fill shifts by 80%.
- Reduce scheduling conflicts and improve the quality of coverage by:
Avoiding overstaffing & understaffing — MakeShift helps balance the number of employees with specific skills on each shift to avoid inefficiencies.
Ensuring critical roles are always covered — ShiftMate AI, our AI-driven scheduling solution powered by large language models (LLMs) and large graph models (LGMs), automatically prioritizes essential skills to ensure key positions are filled with the most highly skilled employees for each area.
4. Plan Training and Development
Scheduling based on skills and roles keeps you apprised of where training is most needed.
What’s the importance of ongoing training?
- Keep skills sharp — Regular training ensures employees stay updated with the latest industry practices and technologies.
- Enhance career growth — Providing development opportunities boosts employee morale and retention.
- Plug skill gaps — Offer continuing education opportunities to reduce skill gaps in your workforce. (New tech, communication skills, etc.)
- Employees with access to professional development opportunities are 15% more engaged.
- Retention rates are 34% higher in organizations that offer employee development opportunities.
- Employees who are satisfied with their employer’s career development and training are 1.7x more likely to stay than those who aren’t.
Spot your training needs with MakeShift
- Use data to pinpoint skills gaps — MakeShift’s analytics highlight areas where additional training is required, helping you make informed decisions about training.
- Ask AI to find skill gaps — SmartInsights turns analytics into conversations. Ask SmartInsights to identify skill gaps in your workforce and use that information to develop appropriate training options.
5. Balance Flexibility and Availability
Creating employee schedules requires balancing shift requirements, skill sets, and your staff’s work schedule preferences.
Schedule flexibility is today’s top demand for most shift-work employees.
40% of deskless workers (mostly shift workers) say they’d rather have a flexible schedule than a pay raise, and 30% say they’ve left a job due to a lack of notice in scheduling changes.
Flexibility leads to higher job satisfaction and retention, while you benefit from a more adaptable and motivated workforce.
Skill and role-based scheduling doesn’t mean an out-of-whack work-life balance for employees. You can achieve both.
MakeShift’s people-first scheduling balances flexibility with scheduling functionality
- Set & manage staff availability — Employees can input their availability into the MakeShift app, making it easier to schedule shifts.
- AI-powered scheduling balances for you — Our AI-powered scheduling platform automatically respects preferred shifts and availability while offering scheduling suggestions based on skills, budgets, union agreements, and compliance.
6. Compliance and Fairness in Scheduling
Availability and skills-based scheduling are only 2 pieces of the scheduling puzzle. You must also factor in compliance and fairness to stay legit and keep your team happy.
Keep it legal
Ensure you understand your industry’s (and your state’s) labor laws — laws covering max working hours, mandatory breaks, and predictable scheduling.
MakeShift’s scheduling tools help ensure compliance by automatically considering these regulations when creating schedules. Simply feed in any compliance requirements (HIPPA, union agreements, fatigue rules…, etc.), and MakeShift will use these requirements as guidelines.
Keep it fair
Every industry has shifts most employees don’t want. Other than your night owls who thrive on night shift vibes, implement a rotation policy so all employees get equal opportunities for preferred shifts and overtime.
MakeShift’s data-driven algorithms can distribute shifts fairly based on predefined criteria, reducing biases and making schedules as fair as possible.
7. Get on Board With Communication Innovation
Communication is the cornerstone of an exceptional work environment. Whether distributing schedules or broadcasting announcements, use a single communication channel to avoid scheduling misunderstandings and keep everyone well-informed.
Your team values good communication and transparency.
According to a Truth Decay study, 86% of employees want more truth, trust, and transparency at work.
Often, companies attempt to use social media messaging to communicate with their employees. And while the idea of communicating with staff via their phones is in the right ballpark, it typically ends up being a swing and a miss.
Because without 1 communication channel, you’ll end up in and out of random social media DMs, trying to cover your bases. And try as you might, messages will still be missed — by you and your employees.
Using scheduling software that fits in your pocket and allows employee communication is much more professional.
Slide out of those DMs for good
MakeShift is collaborative by design. Employees can access schedules on their phones and see real-time updates on the fly. You'll simplify team communication by using MakeShift messaging for all internal communication.
- Automated notifications — Employees receive instant notifications for schedule changes, ensuring they’re always up-to-date.
- Direct communication tools — Managers can use MakeShift to send messages directly to employees, facilitating quick and efficient communication. Post an available shift to the whole team or send a direct message to one employee.
Employees get notified on their phones, wherever they are.
Scheduling Based on Skills and Flexibility is the Future
Today’s leaders know that allowing people to work in the areas of their strengths promotes productivity and engagement and entices staff to stay.
When you schedule staff based on work preferences and skill sets, you show them how much you value them by acknowledging their strengths AND well-being.
Ready to elevate your scheduling to encourage your staff to shine? That’s our specialty. Schedule a FREE demo today to experience smarter scheduling.
Ready to Make the Shift?
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