The challenge

Gainwell is a leading provider of cloud technology solutions vital to the administration and operations of health and human services programs. It has about 11,000 employees, and engages with about 3 million providers annually, involving about 56 million Medicaid members.

Gainwell needs to move people from project to project fairly quickly as it gets new contracts with states or private companies.

It wants to improve both recruiting and retention, so better internal mobility and a skills-driven culture is a must.

It needs to know who in its workforce knows what, who can do what work, and who has what capabilities. This led to the implementation of SkyHive’s Human Capital Operating System (TM).

The action taken

In early 2022, Gainwell began addressing the talent challenges spelled out above. The company had 1,250 open roles, according to Julie Moore, Principal, Talent & Development.

It implemented the SkyHive Human Capital Operating System to learn the skills of the entire Gainwell workforce, and examine the skills needed in each role. From there, Gainwell can see the skills each employee needs to learn to bridge the gap between what they know and what they need to know to progress in their careers.

The implementation involved:

Integration: Gainwell integrated SkyHive with its HR system, SuccessFactors. Skill intelligence can be used alongside system of record data within this SuccessFactors HR system.

Leadership buy-in: Gainwell first held a training session to encourage company leaders to build out their career paths. Then it held and recorded a similar session for the rest of the employee population.

Ensuring employee adoption: The launch was in March 2022. Internally, Gainwell called the innovative skills inventory system “G>Force.” Gainwell encouraged employees to get the most out of G>Force, and in July the company launched the training, career pathing, and mentoring modules. This means employees indicate their desired career path. From there, employees can find mentors, courses, projects, and new internal jobs all based on the skills they want and need to add.

In August of 2022, Moore’s team sponsored Career Growth month. It had a lineup of different types of sessions showcasing its career development tools, including G>Force. For example, it partnered with SkyHive to help develop a session for Career Growth month in which it focused on some high-priority roles where it’s hoping to develop internal talent. It demonstrated, for example, how a call-center agent could create a career path to a business analyst role.

The learnings

Typically, when you ask someone how many skills they have, the average person can come up with about 11.

Gainwell found that on average, the 10,600 employees who completed a profile averaged 22 skills per profile. Those 22 skills include many that Gainwell employees didn’t realize they possessed, in some cases because skills employees use can be second nature.

The AI technology helped prompt employees with skills they are likely to have, based on their past roles and experiences, as well as when and where they had that experience.

The outcome

Now, Gainwell:

• Can identify internal employees to fill open positions and promote from within

• Is improving recruiting and retention by providing a culture of growth and opportunity

• Uses employees’ expertise on critical projects; it now knows who has skills such as AWS or Agile

Gainwell’s goal was to have 80 percent of employees complete a skills profile listing at least 10 skills. By the end of 2022, 83 percent of Gainwell had a skills profile. (The skills profiles were put to use. An initial 645 courses were completed as employees worked toward their career paths.)