HR leaders should treat skills as a "living system" in order to address the visibility gap that is holding back organisations from leveraging the skills of their workforce.

This means tracking and using skills more frequently as they evolve, and as the pace of change at work accelerates, according to Dimitris Tsingos, CEO at Epignosis, the parent company of TalentLMS.

"The organisations that move faster are the ones that treat skills as a living system. Something you track, evolve, and use every day—not once a year, and not only under pressure," Tsingos told HRD.

Poor skills visibility

Tsingos offered the advice as new research from TalentLMS revealed that organisations have poor visibility of their employees' skills.

As a result, they're missing out on the hidden skills of their workforce because they can't see them properly.

"That gap is where the problem begins," Tsingos said. "When you're operating with that kind of blind spot, adding complexity only makes things worse."

According to Tsingos, the gap comes as most skills data is "fragmented" in organisations.

"A bit in performance reviews, a bit in managers' perception, a bit in disconnected systems," he said. "Only 18% of companies have a centralised way to track skills. That means most decisions are still based on incomplete information."

Addressing the skills visibility gap

To address the problem, organisations should find a way to make skills visible and usable.

"The first step is clarity: Build a shared, structured view of the skills across the organisation. A centralised system makes skills visible across teams and creates a shared source of truth for managers, HR, and employees," Tsingos said.

The second step is to connect the identified skills to outcomes that actually matter so they turn into action.

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