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How to Design a Skills Academy for Results

Deep dives | 04.04.2023

Let’s close the skills gap

According to McKinsey & Company, 87% of companies recognise that they have a skills gap or expect to have one within a few years. There is a strong acknowledgement that reskilling is the best way to close the capability gap.

Corporate leaders are looking to Learning & Development teams to solve the challenge. This is the mandate L&D has waited on for years!

The new era of ‘Future Skills’ is at the top of many CEOs’ agendas as companies look to build ‘Skills for Today, Tomorrow and Beyond’.

One of the strategies starting to gain traction for closing the skills gap is skills or capability academies.

Josh Bersin says:

‘An academy is not “a bunch of courses, it’s a place to go.” A place to learn. A place to share. A place for experts to contribute. And a place to advance the state of knowledge.’

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So, how do we design and deploy academies?

Companies desire an expert-driven, interactive and well-rounded solution that connects employees to experts and peers. Capability academies do this best by supporting small cohorts and incorporating live events, tasks, knowledge-based resources, teamwork, mentors, and content in a strategically designed experience. 

Kineo has been helping organisations develop skills since we began almost 20 years ago. And, while content is always part of a solution, we agree and endorse that content alone will rarely deliver on the promise of developing a new skill.  

We know that learners need strategically designed experiences to develop new skills and behaviour.  

Kineo recently helped BP design and develop an international award-winning skills academy for leadership safety. The programme, LiO, builds capability in BP's operations and maintenance leadership community aimed at creating a ‘One Operations’ culture across the organisation.  

The successful programme, recognised by Brandon Hall, drove the operational leadership behaviours they needed and built a well-connected community using a range of different delivery mechanisms. 



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Developing innovation skills at ING

In another programme, Developing Innovation Skills at ING, we helped to design a digital-first, blended solution that was scalable and cost-effective and successfully built and nurtured innovation skills across the organisation. 

Through our work with clients like ING and BP developing skills-based programmes we’ve identified some foundational best practices that are key to accelerating skills development.  

ING, faced with an acceleration in technological innovation in banking, saw the ramping up of innovation at the bank as mission critical. As a result, they developed an innovation methodology called PACE, to enable the rapid launch of new products and services.  

ING had to ensure the PACE methodology became embedded in the company culture, but adoption was being hampered by hard-to-scale classroom training.  

Building an academy model helped them to scale the training through a more cost-effective solution that delivered tangible results.  



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Embrace a results-driven community

One of the functions of your academy should be to bring people together to share and collaborate and learn from one another. This should be based on the skills and behaviour needed for long-term success as learners go through the learning journey. This exposes learners to diverse perspectives. It also facilitates the sharing of best practices across functions and business areas on how to best achieve performance results.  

​​Communities also help develop cultural competency and empathy for people from different backgrounds by addressing real-world problems and needs. 

Formal learning and even practice can only take skills development so far.  

Intuitively, we know that our most profound learning experiences come through interactions with colleagues – challenging one another, failing and reflecting together or simply having a friendly ear to vent and confide. 

A healthy and active community is critical to threading a skill into the fabric of an organisation and once that happens, it’s through collaboration and sharing of experiences that employees add nuance and depth to a skill. 



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Encourage practice and application

Skill and behaviour development are only possible through practice and application. You use it, or you lose it. Practice can take on many forms including through simulations, on-the-job assignments, self-guided activities, events or mentored practice.  

Sales is a good example of a topic that can be practised through a digital simulation. Most companies have a lot of data on the challenges a salesperson can expect to encounter during the sales process. This information can be used to develop authentic scenarios that will accelerate the development of sales skills.  

Time management can also be a good topic for a self-guided activity. A learning experience might include a weekly review of the learner’s calendar against a rubric of best practices to help them identify opportunities to make more effective use of their time.  

Active learning approaches such as assigning project-based work can make learning more engaging for learners and fundamentally increase the rate at which skills are gained.  

Complex skills like operating new robotic equipment or solving complex problems are best practised in safe environments where it is okay to fail and try again as you improve. These environments might be simulated, or might be hosted in lab environments or on the job under the watchful eye of a Manager, coach or trainer. 




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Champion exceptional mentoring and coaching

Developing both manager and leader visibility and accountability within an academy is another critical success factor.  

We’ve all heard the saying, “what gets measured gets done.” The same principle can be applied to skills development.  

The skills and behaviours your leaders encourage, reward and even demonstrate, will develop more quickly within your organisation. It’s not enough to send out emails or even hold all-company meetings evangelising the importance of a skills programme.  

Manager and leader participation must be designed into the structure of the learning journey.  

Examples might include one or more of the following:  

  • Video stories from leaders about how they applied a specific skill to achieve something. 
  • Observation checklists for Managers to complete and review with their employees. 
  • Celebrations that include company leadership at key milestones. 
  • Badges and recognition that identify skill “Masters” including leadership. 
  • An “App” for Managers and leaders to “catch an employee” demonstrating a skill in action. 
  • Integrating the new skills and behaviours into annual or quarterly performance reviews. 

To close the skills gap, organisations need to approach these initiatives like a well-designed change programme versus a traditional training programme. And, like a change programme, leadership support is a critical ingredient.  



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Energise team members on the importance of data

Data will provide the insights you need to be successful.  

You can’t ask for the resources for a skills initiative without being prepared to report against progress and impact.  

4 key data elements we recommend focusing on: 

1. Time to competence: The first and probably most important data element is time to competence. This is typically measured as the elapsed time between the programme start and the successful demonstration of the skill. Depending on the design of the programme this could be a Manager observing the skills and documenting it via a checklist, a final project or successfully navigating an online simulation. 

2. Time to completion: Probably the most straightforward, but no less valuable is the elapsed time between the programme start and completion. Most organisations still put a value on having visibility on the percentage of a target audience that goes through a programme.  

3. Success stories: While not hard data, a good practice is to regularly canvas the organisation for examples of a skill being used in productive ways. This puts real-world context around the skill and fortifies the cultural change that will sustain the skill.  

4. Programme level data: A skills academy isn’t a one-time experience. A skills academy will be a sustained experience and as such should be continuously improved. Data can and should be a significant input to that process. Helpful data includes question-level responses, time spent on resource elements, learner engagement, the device used to access, pre/post assessments, confidence barometers and more.  

By following these principles, you can design a skills academy that is focused on results and produces the outcomes that you want.  



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Is closing the skills gap on your radar for 2023?

In conclusion, companies today facing a skills gap are increasingly using skills academies to reskill and upskill their teams and as an effective way to develop new skills and behaviours. Skills academies can be designed to support small cohorts or be organisation wide, connect employees to experts and peers, and incorporate a blend of live events, tasks, knowledge-based resources, teamwork and content in a strategically designed learning experience. 

We’ve helped many organisations design skills-based programmes, deploying our learning design best practice and focus on outcomes to accelerate skills development. With the right model in place, you can close the skills gap, develop a culture of learning, and achieve long-term success.



We’re here to help, whether you need to simply bounce ideas around with an expert or are looking for a strategic design and development partner.  

Get in touch with us today and let’s discuss next steps.