SMEs and management of their workers’ skills
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- Category: SME toolkit
- Written by with Bridget Olotu
- Hits: 574
The modern workplace, whether SME, MSME or a large corporation, is dependent on the combined skills, strengths, abilities, knowledge, capacities and capabilities of workers.
There is no greater time in the history of mankind that there has been a sheer explosion of ideas, ideologies, technologies, scientific discoveries, management systems, principles and theories and product innovations as this time. The adoption of information and communication technologies, including the Internet, has further given birth to the revolution experienced in the today’s workplace. Nevertheless, as much as this situation becomes the norm in the workplace today, workers’ contributions cannot be wished away, replaced or deemphasised, hence the need for an effective management of workers’ skills for SME success.The importance of employees’ skills can be appreciated better in service-based organisations. For instance, in a management consulting firm, what they sell to clients are not physical/tangible products but intangibles like ideas, knowledge, information, time, expertise, research ability, and so on. To understand the importance of workers’ skills in such an environment, the organisation would need to undertake a skills audit of its staff. By examining the existing skills portfolio in place, the organisation would not just find areas that need an upgrade, it would also discover the pool of skills it has at its disposal, the value of such skills and how such skills can help it compete in the marketplace. I know a small finance house that survived a trying period by examining its existing skills portfolio and creating a new business through it that later helped it survive hard times.
This small finance house started with great dreams and prospects. The chairman of the company was a successful banker with years of experience. He had been able to poach the best of financial experts who had worked in management positions in several blue-chip organisations to start off the business. These were professionals who had multidisciplinary skills, training and exposures. The top management team could be considered “tight”. However, they hit a rough patch when the major shareholder in the business suddenly felt it needed to divest and redirect its investment into other channels. The business was at the verge of closing down. What had started as a dream was about vanishing into thin air. The senior manager of the company and the vice-president spoke up during a decisive meeting the top management team of the company had which incidentally was to decide the fate of the business. He made the members to see the present challenge as an opportunity in disguise for them to put their thinking and inspiration caps on. He suggested several ideas which could help them build up funds for the finance house and also the creation of a management consulting outfit where they could write business plans, feasibility reports, offer training programmes to company staffs, and allied services to clients.
The ideas caught on with the rest of the team. A new burst of energy was fired into the team. They regained their composure, zest and zeal to forge ahead. Need I say more? A little over two years, the company, that had been in a loss position, bounced back into profitability through the initiatives raised by the vice-president. The consulting firm became so successful and popular that it handled many briefs that raked in millions for the organisation. But it’s important to stress that the combined skills of the staff were needed to run it.
What I’m trying to say is this: the ability to manage the skills of the workers at your disposal will determine to a large extent how successful your SME becomes, what opportunities it can take advantage of during crisis situations and how it can deploy these skills to generate further income for the organisation. In the story I just shared, the company I mentioned might not have thought of the possibility of creating a whole new service delivery system different from the core business until they were up against the challenge of survival. The saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” was actually true for them as they rallied round to come up with innovative ideas that not only sustained the company but also helped them to tide over that difficult period.
As an SME, have you ever conducted a skills audit of your staff? If you have, can you quantify these skills in monetary terms, hence having a value attached to them? If you have, what opportunities are in your chosen markets or other markets that these skills can help you address? How would you go about deploying these skills?
Understanding the existing skills your workers have can be the ultimate decider for the success or failure of your business operations. These skills must not just be restricted to the core operations of the business, but they can and should also find vent in the area of spotting and seizing new market opportunities, generating extra income for the business and increasing the company’s competitive advantages and even offerings.
Ability to manage workers’ skills is important and indispensable in this period of intense global business rivalry, multidimensional globalisation, ICT explosion and shrinking markets. SMEs that will survive will be those who recognise their workers’ skills, mobilise and channel these skills for their core operations and even divert these skills to create new products, enter new markets or take advantage of opportunities in their chosen markets.
Therefore, business success goes beyond writing a business plan. It includes getting the right skills for your business, interpreting the right roles these skills should play in the organisation and how they should be deployed, maximising these skills for the core operations and using them when new opportunities emerge in the modern workplace.
Articles
SMEs and management of their workers’ skills
Category: SME toolkit Written by with Bridget Olotu Hits: 574
The modern workplace, whether SME, MSME or a large corporation, is dependent on the combined skills, strengths, abilities, knowledge, capacities and capabilities of workers.
There is no greater time in the history of mankind that there has been a sheer explosion of ideas, ideologies, technologies, scientific discoveries, management systems, principles and theories and product innovations as this time. The adoption of information and communication technologies, including the Internet, has further given birth to the revolution experienced in the today’s workplace. Nevertheless, as much as this situation becomes the norm in the workplace today, workers’ contributions cannot be wished away, replaced or deemphasised, hence the need for an effective management of workers’ skills for SME success.The importance of employees’ skills can be appreciated better in service-based organisations. For instance, in a management consulting firm, what they sell to clients are not physical/tangible products but intangibles like ideas, knowledge, information, time, expertise, research ability, and so on. To understand the importance of workers’ skills in such an environment, the organisation would need to undertake a skills audit of its staff. By examining the existing skills portfolio in place, the organisation would not just find areas that need an upgrade, it would also discover the pool of skills it has at its disposal, the value of such skills and how such skills can help it compete in the marketplace. I know a small finance house that survived a trying period by examining its existing skills portfolio and creating a new business through it that later helped it survive hard times.
This small finance house started with great dreams and prospects. The chairman of the company was a successful banker with years of experience. He had been able to poach the best of financial experts who had worked in management positions in several blue-chip organisations to start off the business. These were professionals who had multidisciplinary skills, training and exposures. The top management team could be considered “tight”. However, they hit a rough patch when the major shareholder in the business suddenly felt it needed to divest and redirect its investment into other channels. The business was at the verge of closing down. What had started as a dream was about vanishing into thin air. The senior manager of the company and the vice-president spoke up during a decisive meeting the top management team of the company had which incidentally was to decide the fate of the business. He made the members to see the present challenge as an opportunity in disguise for them to put their thinking and inspiration caps on. He suggested several ideas which could help them build up funds for the finance house and also the creation of a management consulting outfit where they could write business plans, feasibility reports, offer training programmes to company staffs, and allied services to clients.
The ideas caught on with the rest of the team. A new burst of energy was fired into the team. They regained their composure, zest and zeal to forge ahead. Need I say more? A little over two years, the company, that had been in a loss position, bounced back into profitability through the initiatives raised by the vice-president. The consulting firm became so successful and popular that it handled many briefs that raked in millions for the organisation. But it’s important to stress that the combined skills of the staff were needed to run it.
What I’m trying to say is this: the ability to manage the skills of the workers at your disposal will determine to a large extent how successful your SME becomes, what opportunities it can take advantage of during crisis situations and how it can deploy these skills to generate further income for the organisation. In the story I just shared, the company I mentioned might not have thought of the possibility of creating a whole new service delivery system different from the core business until they were up against the challenge of survival. The saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” was actually true for them as they rallied round to come up with innovative ideas that not only sustained the company but also helped them to tide over that difficult period.
As an SME, have you ever conducted a skills audit of your staff? If you have, can you quantify these skills in monetary terms, hence having a value attached to them? If you have, what opportunities are in your chosen markets or other markets that these skills can help you address? How would you go about deploying these skills?
Understanding the existing skills your workers have can be the ultimate decider for the success or failure of your business operations. These skills must not just be restricted to the core operations of the business, but they can and should also find vent in the area of spotting and seizing new market opportunities, generating extra income for the business and increasing the company’s competitive advantages and even offerings.
Ability to manage workers’ skills is important and indispensable in this period of intense global business rivalry, multidimensional globalisation, ICT explosion and shrinking markets. SMEs that will survive will be those who recognise their workers’ skills, mobilise and channel these skills for their core operations and even divert these skills to create new products, enter new markets or take advantage of opportunities in their chosen markets.
Therefore, business success goes beyond writing a business plan. It includes getting the right skills for your business, interpreting the right roles these skills should play in the organisation and how they should be deployed, maximising these skills for the core operations and using them when new opportunities emerge in the modern workplace.