What is Skills Intelligence?

The right candidate for any job will have a mixture of experience, work ethic, and at least an aptitude for the work. Once on your team, however, employees need a multitude of skills to successfully complete a job. In essence, skills are what keep any business running.

If an employee doesn’t know how to perform their job-related duties, you have a big problem. Knowledge gaps within your workforce lead to lower productivity and costly mistakes.

Fortunately, skills intelligence offers the perfect solution to close the knowledge gap.

But what exactly is skills intelligence? Read on to learn about this method and its function in the following sections:

Skills intelligence in a nutshell
Benefits of tracking skills intelligence
Implementing skills intelligence in manufacturing
AI-driven skills management with Augmentir’s connected worker solution

Skills intelligence in a nutshell

Skills intelligence is one of the most valuable methods for building your workforce. It’s the process of learning who has which skills, analyzing how they are applying those skills on the job, and making decisions on how you can better cultivate them through learning opportunities.

This technique starts with recording and tracking which workers have which expertise. This knowledge lets management ensure that the right person is assigned to each job, and to better leverage and cultivate talent from within.

From there, organizations can extend this value by analyzing data from actual job performance to help optimize employee training and upskilling or reskilling opportunities. Skills intelligence solutions typically leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze and find hidden insights in workforce data, resulting in numerous opportunities to improve your operation. AI-driven skills intelligence helps you:

intelligently closing skills gaps
assigning work based on employee skills and proficiency levels
giving employees personalized on-the-job support based on their skills and proficiency levels
making data-driven people decisions

For example, a maintenance operator may be an expert on HVAC repair, but due to staff shortages are required to assist with a lubrication program that they are not as familiar with. A skills intelligence approach would identify this knowledge gap and provide personalized step-by-step instructions, or perhaps micro-learning videos on how to perform the task and what to watch out for. Doing so will ensure that the machine is well maintained and that the worker has an opportunity to expand and apply their skillset.

It’s a win-win for the company and workers alike. Employees want to feel like their boss cares. Creating training and upskilling programs to that target the areas of greatest need can lead to better worker morale, reduced human error, and better job output.

Benefits of tracking skills intelligence

Knowing and documenting your workforce’s strengths and weaknesses can provide a host of advantages.

Some of those benefits include:

Boosting worker productivity
Helping close skills gaps
Ensuring work is done safely, correctly, and error-free
Promoting workplace learning
Increasing employee morale

Implementing skills intelligence in manufacturing

Whether for assembly line workers, machine operators or technicians, effective skills intelligence implementation requires consistency.

We recommend using skills intelligence software to outline how to conduct certain tasks and to track employee skills. This will help you get a better understanding of your team’s assets and how to use them within specific roles.

For example, a production line worker may be preparing to put together a new product. They must know how to read measurements, verify specifications, measure components, and assemble parts.

Meanwhile, a machine operator might be working on installing a piece of equipment that was just brought in. They must be aware of any safety regulations and know how to operate the new mechanical or computer-operated machinery.

That’s why it’s important to document instructions on software with both reporting and tracking capabilities. This ensures that workers are given up-to-date digital work procedures to complete any task. At the same time, workers have a chance to advance new skills and progress in their fields.

AI-driven skills management with Augmentir’s connected worker solution

Thankfully, our industry-leading suite of AI-based connected worker tools help industrial businesses with smart skills management. We allow companies to effectively track and manage skills for frontline teams, schedule and assign work based on expertise, and leverage real performance insights.

We help close the loop between training and work execution to deliver tailored solutions to improve operational excellence day-over-day, year-over-year.

Why wait? Contact us for a live demo.