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I started my career over 28 years ago in Sainsburys in North-West London stores as a Personnel Manager, as we were called then!

Being responsible for over 600 employees at the time in Ladbroke Grove Store, one of the stores I worked in, I used to periodically carry out an exercise that looked at employees’ skills the ones we knew about and the ones we didn’t! Hence - “What we know and what we didn’t know”.  This information I then used in conversations with line managers and employees around succession planning and their career.

Every time I carried out this exercise it amazed me about what we found out, the other skills, qualifications, training and experience people had, which were often unknown and untapped.

I am aware since the first lockdown that people have learnt new skills, whether initially what they wanted to do (peoples’ ability to master the virtual classroom, being one!) or by their choice when furloughed (possibly doing something that they have always wanted to do) and so again people could have skills that their employer may not know about.

If you are a leader or people manager, how do you capture this? Do you have career conversations with your employees and team members?

I believe in this new world of work that roles will be dynamic; roles cannot remain static, therefore having regular conversations about skills, experience and aspirations will allow for the ability to respond and adapt quicker to meet these dynamic roles.

What will be the roles that will be needed over the next few years? As my colleague Russell Harvey mentioned recently in a quote by Christopher Kenna “today’s key workers were yesterday’s low skilled and low paid workers”.  How will this change in the future? What will be the impact on your early career thinking?

Now is the time to lead that change.  As leaders and people managers are you “tapping in” to all the talent within your teams? This starts with a conversation as soon as someone joins your team about their development and aspirations and then continues on a regular basis.
 

Realise that you may not be fully aware of all the skills, experience and knowledge each of your team members/employees could bring;

Aspire to make that change and get to know on a regular basis; and

Do make the statement “what you know!”