Leading Via a Workforce Skills Readiness Check  

Your project is on schedule until the Customer Service team reports that it cannot complete its design review tasks on time: those assigned lack the required skills. Up to this point, you have relied on functional group leaders, supported by a centralized training organization, to manage skill development. This gap catches you by surprise, and none of your available responses will keep the project on schedule. You now have to submit a status report you would rather not write.

Automation, layoffs, reorganizations, and AI-driven process changes can make it more likely that workforce skills no longer match the needs of your project. Assuming available resources are ready increases delivery risk. You need to understand what causes readiness gaps and prepare your project to manage them.

Some examples of causes of capability gaps

• A reorganization has reassigned responsibilities across business units, leaving employees without decision-making authority, process knowledge, or cross-functional skills required by their new roles.
• Technology development has transitioned to using AI-assisted coding, but not all developers have received training and gained practical experience with the new process.
• Automation has changed customer service roles, but some employees lack the skills to handle the complex cases that automated systems escalate.
• Layoffs have removed experienced specialists who held critical operational or institutional knowledge.
• Team members lack training and practical experience in the hybrid project methodology your project uses.

Reduce that risk by checking workforce readiness during initiation. Confirm that resources are both available and able to perform the required work when it is scheduled.
 

Add a Workforce Readiness Check to Your Initiation

Start checking for capability gaps during initiation, in conjunction with your existing resource availability checks. Complete the readiness check before committing to timelines, budgets, and the business outcomes your project must deliver.

• Check whether the needed resources will be available when scheduled and have enough capacity to complete the work. At the same time, confirm that they have the required skills.
• Record workforce risks in your risk register, including capability-relevant criteria such as insufficient technical expertise, obsolete functional skills, and limited change management experience.
• For longer projects, functional work teams may not be identified for more than six months. In that case, first ask whether any known risks could prevent a capable team from being assembled. Schedule a team-specific readiness check closer to the assignment date.

Delegate Readiness Analysis to Appropriate Functional Leaders

Your job is to confirm project team readiness, not to conduct organizational workforce planning. Delegate the readiness analysis to the functional leaders and managers who normally oversee their teams’ readiness. Explain why they need to check for capability gaps and, if participation in your project process will be unfamiliar, describe how the team will work within it. You can incorporate this as part of routine stakeholder interactions.

• Prepare for your meetings. These factors are relevant when delegating:
• Roles and capabilities that are essential, and whether those skills exist within the group
• Capabilities that require development, recruitment, or external support
• Confirmation of team availability and readiness prior to project onboarding
• For each gap, agree on a specific response with the responsible functional leader as part of your risk management: develop skills, recruit, or obtain external support. Record who owns the response, when it must be completed, and how readiness will be confirmed before the affected task begins.
• Build a six-to-twelve-month capability forecast tied to project timing. Review roadmaps, upcoming initiatives, and strategic priorities. Consider how emerging technologies, regulatory developments, customer expectations, and planned operational changes could affect the skills required.
• For automation initiatives, which can bring a lot of unknowns from the chaotic marketplace, anticipate needs in data analytics, AI governance, process redesign, and change management. Identifying these capability needs early allows talent development to begin before skill shortages threaten delivery.

You may very well be doing stakeholders a favor here. In a changing, confusing organization, functional leaders may not have a firm grip on what skills their workforce needs. Your discussions can add focus and clarity to this problem. They might benefit in other areas beyond your project. This is the type of influence that project leaders can have. The more prepared you are for these discussions, the more impact you can have on the organization as a whole.

Position Yourself as an Adaptable Leader

Tracking schedule, cost, and scope performance alone does not tell you whether the workforce can perform the work ahead. In today’s volatile organizations, make workforce readiness a project success factor by integrating a readiness check into initiation. This adaptation helps you distinguish yourself as a project leader who prepares projects to succeed even in difficult circumstances.

A future post will cover how to manage readiness problems during execution.