When Stewart first came on board, his initial L&D goals centered around succession planning. The county had a high number of legacy employees who had been working in the same positions for 15-20 years, many of whom were nearing retirement age. While this level of retention was a source of pride for the organization, it also posed several concerns. To begin with, the longer a person stayed in a particular role, the more likely it was that they were the only employee capable of performing the job. In addition, within a county government organization like Kershaw, people often needed to cover a lot of bases outside of their traditional roles. That meant employees were likely to be doing very important work that no one even knew about. The fear was that, when people left, they might take all their expertise with them.

But there was a deeper concern Stewart had regarding the longevity of Kershaw’s workforce. The idea that employees remained in the same role for so long meant they were at risk of stagnation. Not only was there little career progression taking place, but the lack of development hindered opportunities for internal promotions—which were strategic in keeping key positions filled.

Pandemic reveals hidden potential and a plan for new culture of learning

When the pandemic hit in 2020, these issues were only magnified. Remote work necessitated a lot of shuffling of tasks, making it clear that employees carried additional weight outside their primary roles and —perhaps more importantly— that Kershaw was harboring a great deal of untapped talent. “We wanted to capture the talent of our employees in a meaningful way,” he explained, “so we could further develop the workforce rather than keep them in their silos.”

This meant building a new culture of learning for Kershaw County that would enable the organization not only to hire and promote new talent competitively, but also to train existing talent so they could avoid stagnation and improve internal flexibility. “We needed to give our employees the mindset that without training and personal development, it would not be easy for them to advance toward any of their aspirations,” Stewart recalls. “Retaining talent was not an issue. Developing talent is where our focus needed to lie.”

To succeed the L&D group would need to conquer several obstacles. Kershaw had no consolidated training function to address the needs of the county, nor did it have any systems to deploy and track the acquisition of employee development. There was limited visibility into employee talent across the wider organization, and strategic HR functions related to talent management were, for the most part, non-existent.

Compounding these challenges was the fact that, even when they did get a learning system off the ground, a good portion of the county’s workforce would be approaching it from non-traditional standpoints. Many never looked at a computer all day. Some did not even have an email address.

Talent-mapping clarify specific development plans and technology needs

To identify learning priorities and program needs, the County Administrator assembled a cross-disciplinary project team composed of key stakeholders from HR, Finance, IT and Communications. Stewart and this Enhance U project team set about mapping the organization’s talent. “We focused on understanding competencies, rather than traditional skills, because we knew competencies could be applicable across disciplines and roles, whereas skills have a shorter shelf life,” says Stewart. “COVID made it clear that people could do more than that for which they were being recognized, and the county wanted to make use of those competencies in the most effective way possible — for productivity and for the sake of service.”