Where for art thou capabilities?

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What’s in a name? Surely a capability by any other name would smell as sweet?Capability, competency and skill are increasingly discussed phenomena in the world of business. But what are they exactly, and are they fundamentally different from each other? In the context of Strategic Workforce Planning and forecasting the future supply and demand for [...]

What’s in a name? Surely a capability by any other name would smell as sweet?

Capability, competency and skill are increasingly discussed phenomena in the world of business. But what are they exactly, and are they fundamentally different from each other? In the context of Strategic Workforce Planning and forecasting the future supply and demand for them, it is unlikely. The crucial part of the discussion in terms of capability forecasting, is determining which of the desired attributes, regardless of the label will contribute to the achieving of organisational goals, and consequently, which of these attributes or lack thereof represents a risk to the organisation.

According to Wikipedia,
1. Capability is the ability to perform actions. As it applies to human capital, capability is the sum of expertise and capacity.
2. Competence is the ability to perform a specific task, action or function successfully and
3. A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both

The reason there is such focus on capability forecasting in Strategic Workforce Planning is that the workforce required to meet the demands of tomorrow are determined by more than the number of people that work for the organisation. It is determined by the expertise and capacity of said workforce numbers to engage in the work of the future and deliver organisational outcomes. Given the strategic nature of Workforce Planning, it is recommended that the forecasting in this space should be done with broad application at its origin, the term capability will be used to this end, recognising its nature as being the sum of expertise and capacity.

Therefore, as a Workforce Planning practitioner, it is critically important to recognise that the framework from which to forecast the desired abilities of the future workforce is immaterial. Any framework or lexicon used by the organisation with which you are working could and should be used to form a robust forecast of future workforce needs.

What then should a Strategic Workforce Planning exercise focus on in the capability space?
Logically, the reason there is a focus on capability in Strategic Workforce Planning is in order to quantify and mitigate risks to the organisation derived of a gap between the supplied and demanded capabilities of the future workforce. Understanding the capabilities required to deliver on organisational goals adds depth and colour to a forecast that numbers alone cannot provide. It’s tied to that old adage, having the right people, in the right jobs with the right skills and the right motivation at the right time. Knowledge of capabilities and how they are forecast into the future articulates far more clearly the nature of the risks to the business and aids businesses in developing strategies specifically designed to mitigate risks left open by gaps in capability.

Further, forecasting on capabilities assist an organisation to understand whether their designed future workforce is real or imagined, and given that at the highest level, capabilities are what are used by organisations to achieve their goals, it’s critical to understand not only how many people you will have but also what they will be doing to achieve said goals. Forecasting on capabilities enables an organisation to plan for the strategies they will employ to ensure that the capabilities they require in the future in time for them needing to be in operation. Some capabilities take a long time to acquire, and thus depending on the criticality of the capability and the time in the future that it will be required, organisations may be forced to buy or build different capability sets that they may not have had the capacity to plan for had capability forecasting not been conducted.

In essence, forecasting of those capabilities that are identified as being critical to the success of the organisation should be engaged in, just as the forecasting of numbers of critical job roles is a must in successful workforce planning exercises. Whether or not the organisation is possessed of a robust capability framework, the development of and organisation wide agreement to a capability framework is an essential part of the workforce planning process, just as the development of and organisation wide agreement to critical job roles is a critical piece of work before embarking on a workforce planning project. In the same way that critical job roles are identified as being those most critical to the execution of organsiational strategy, the process of forecasting on capabilities should focus on establishing the capabilities most required in delivering organisational goals and the gaps in them that form a risk to the business.

So, in the eternal words of the bard, “Capability, Capability, cast forth thy name and deny thy father…” whatever the organisation calls it, capability, competency or skill, what is important is that it has a direct impact on the productivity of the future workforce and delivers outcomes that achieve future focussed organisational goals.



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