Let's take a deep dive into the seniority systems that are in place in current jobs.
In 1943, Edward Hay created his company "HayGroup" and his partner Dale Purves developed the famous guide charts for employee skill assessments. Using "Hay's method" helps in grading job positions with two profiles, also known as short and long.
Long profile helps access all aspects of the job with detailed scores. A short profile correlates with a wide group of positions and also serves as a verification tool for scores in a long profile.
There are three main factors which are used to evaluate jobs in this system:
Know How
Problem Solving
Accountability
In due time, Hay's method evolved into the systems we know now. In the IT-industry, grading system is based on a classic 3-level model "junior → middle → senior" and most of the time companies form specific sets of skills for different grades.
There are lots of junior, middle and senior specialists across the market and each of them possess a unique set of skills. It's hard to grade a person into a specific frame without any competency metrics.
The grading system is not perfect; it's actually really far from that.
Imagine a QA specialist in a team who's been working on a single project for a long time. That speсialist gets his middle grade but doesn't level up different skills aside from the ones he needs for this single project. Will this specialist get a middle position on a new project?
Problem with the grading system is that it doesn't reflect the knowledge level and skills of a specialist and makes workforce management harder. Companies often use it to align salary to job experience, but the time spent on a position doesn't equate to better knowledge levels.
Grading doesn't reflect the real scope of employees' skills. But there's another way.
We want to introduce you to the concept of skills matrix. This is a framework that employers can use to map employees skills and their levels. It is used to manage, plan and monitor existing and desired skills. With a good skill matrix, your project is completed efficiently and by the most qualified team members.
Skiloope offers skill matrix software for organizations.
We make getting into this framework really easy. This is how it works: we feature different pre-built skill matrix templates for a variety of expertises. Building on a foundation is always easier than starting from zero.
There's also a learning element built into Skiloope which features articles and practical tasks. Focusing on mentor-mentee relationships is key to advancing your team as a whole.
Add automated flow on top of that and you have a transparent growth plan that yields palpable results. We invite you to start using organizational performance management and level up your team with Skiloope.
