The problem

When clearly scoped and staffed with the right people, committees and project teams provide organizations with efficient methods to distribute work while creating opportunities for staff to deepen collaboration skills. 

However, finding the experts with the right blend of relevant skills (technical, interpersonal, collections, or subject knowledge) to staff a new effort can be time-consuming or prone to error without up-to-date information about staff expertise, product experience, and interests. 

Large or distributed organizations may need help understanding or balancing workloads among staff, resulting in over or underutilizing essential staff resources. 

Similarly, communities of practice can be a powerful tool for engaging staff in development activities such as building skills to experiment with generative AI or advancing services focused on a previously underserved user community. 

While an organization may canvass managers for nominees or survey staff to find interested parties, these methods may not reveal a broad or diverse set of participants as staff come and go from the organization. 

Associations or vendor user communities seeking to identify potential committee participants, emerging leaders, speakers for meetings, or experts willing to lead workshops face similar challenges.

The solution

Skilltype equips organizations with up-to-date data about their staff capabilities, experience, and interests. Skilltype will automatically reveal staff in an organization (library, association, vendor user group) with the desired skills or product experience to lead or participate in committees, projects, or communities of interest by searching Skilltype’s Directory or Inventory. 

Skilltype’s Talent Audit provides a holistic overview of capabilities as members join or leave, enabling organizations to keep a pulse on the expertise available now and in the future. 

A differentiating aspect of Skilltype’s data model is including “interests” within individual skill profiles tied to the standardized vocabulary. Members are invited to self-select the skills and products they use today, alongside the topics they wish to upskill, reskill, or the horizon issues in the field of libraries and information that they want to keep up with. 

Each organization’s global Talent Audit makes staff interests recognizable in real-time so that leaders can identify emerging leaders and individuals with a strong motivation to engage with a topic. Experience and motivation can be key ingredients for committee formation. Skilltype data helps leaders develop inclusive, effective, and engaging groups.