Into the future with the right skills: skills framework in Covestro communications

In order to meet the requirements of a changing communications landscape, the communications department of the Leverkusen-based chemical company Covestro has developed a comprehensive skills framework and further development program. The aim is to optimally prepare the entire department for future challenges and at the same time promote existing individual strengths. The project team led by Lena Weith, Liesa Weiße, Sven Stocker and Markus Kleine-Beck reports from the engine room:

Your idea is called “Shape your development” – sounds sexy, but what’s behind it?

We are a global company with around 80 communicators in over a dozen countries. The demands on each and every individual are constantly increasing, the environment is becoming ever more complex and developments such as AI are transforming the profession – but the skills required to continue doing a good job are often only discussed at an individual level. We felt this was not enough to prepare us well for the future. We therefore wanted to offer each individual and the entire department guidance and the opportunity to face the future with joint further development.

How do you do it?

We have developed a comprehensive skills framework. It contains four core competencies of the communicator of the future that everyone will need to master. We call them “future skills”: consulting skills, data, AI and stakeholder-focused communication planning. At the same time, this framework maps existing skills that are important for the individual’s role. This should enable everyone to carry out a skills gap analysis in discussion with their line manager and then use this as a basis for further training.

To promote the acquisition of these skills, we have curated online offerings on these future skills: We offer keynote speeches and knowledge sharing with internal and external experts. We have also launched a project marketplace to enable agile and cross-team project staffing. In the best case scenario, someone learns something new through centrally offered lectures and in an ongoing project outside of their normal tasks – based on their own skills gap analysis.

What do you need it for?

The current developments in the field of communication and the demands on each individual have already been mentioned above. We also have a low turnover rate in our team worldwide. This means that the opportunities for job changes and therefore further development are limited. As tasks and responsibilities are firmly distributed, gaps for taking on new topics rarely arise organically.

An internal employee survey in our department also reflected the critical view of the area of “Professional Development”. All of this made it clear that there was a need for action. At the same time, a limited budget – whether for projects or external training – meant that we had to find creative approaches to meet the need for development.

How did you develop this approach?

The whole approach was developed on the initiative of the Corporate Communications team. There was no top-down specification; instead, the four of us had similar ideas on the topic and then started to structure them together in a project. At the beginning, we outlined formats such as the project marketplace and joint training opportunities. While we read studies and surveys on the status and future of communication and talked to the HR department about the pitfalls of implementation, the need for the skills framework and skills gap analysis crystallized. We presented the idea itself and its progress several times to the communications leadership team, discussed it with all team leaders and the head of department and took feedback on board.

Within a good six months, in which we four members of the project team pushed the topic forward alongside our actual jobs, everything was ready and approved. The training courses then came almost automatically: We set up the first five so-called “upskilling sessions” on data, consulting skills and the development of communication strategies with the help of existing agency partners. For AI, we have two dedicated experts in the department who have launched hackathons, discovery labs, the joint development of a prompt library and much more.

It has now been running for a few months – do you dare to make an interim assessment?

As a project team, we are completely satisfied! After around six months, we can see initial successes, but of course also potential for improvement. The training opportunities such as keynote speeches and AI sessions are very popular and have received positive feedback. On average, almost 40 people took part – that’s half the global team, which is also spread across time zones from the USA to Japan. The project marketplace has also had a kick start: ten projects have already been launched and some have already been completed. And it’s not just projects that end up there that nobody actually wants to do – on the contrary: the further development of our corporate narrative has been filled via the marketplace, as has the optimization of our communication controlling. However, some projects have also remained unfilled.

Budget also remains a challenge, although training courses for all employees together are much more cost-efficient than individual training courses for each person. The skills framework is also not yet being used consistently in development meetings. We are monitoring all of this and will soon be holding discussions with colleagues and team leaders to see how and what we can improve.