As your company grows, your skills for executing your strategic plans will evolve. A skills gap analysis can help you identify the specific areas where your team may need additional training or development. By conducting a skills gap analysis, businesses can identify areas where their employees may require additional training or development, and implement a plan to address those needs. Doing so will help to ensure that your employees have the skills they need to be successful in their roles and contribute to your business’s long-term success.
This guide will walk you through the process of conducting a skills gap analysis, from identifying the goals of the analysis to collecting and analyzing data. By the end, you’ll have a clear plan for addressing gaps in your team’s skills.
In this Article:
What is a skills gap analysis?
Skills gap analysis identifies the difference between employees’ skills and the skills required to perform their job tasks. This type of analysis can help organizations close the gaps between employee skill sets and job requirements, improving organizational performance.
Skills gap analysis is a valuable tool for organizations that want to improve their performance by ensuring their employees have the skills to perform their jobs effectively.
What are the components of a skills gap analysis?
It typically involves the following components:
- Job task analysis: The first step is to identify each position’s specific tasks.
- Skills assessment: Once you have identified the job tasks, assess the skills that employees currently possess and compare them to the skills required to perform those tasks.
- Skills gap identification: Skills gap analysis can be conducted using various methods, including surveys, interviews, and focus groups.
- Strategy development: Once you have identified the skills gaps, organizations can develop strategies to close those gaps.
What are examples of skills gaps?
Skills Gaps is the term used to identify the difference in skills between what an employer requires, and what an employee currently possesses. Some examples of skills gaps include:
- A lack of technical skills among employees
- A lack of soft skills among employees
- A lack of managerial skills among employees
- A lack of organizational skills among employees
- A lack of communication skills among employees
- A lack of interpersonal skills among employees
How to conduct a skills gap analysis: a step-by-step guide
There are six steps to conducting a skills gap analysis:
- Identify the specific job tasks that each position in your organization requires.
- Assess the skills your employees currently possess and compare them to the skills required to perform those tasks.
- Use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to identify skills gaps between employee skill sets and job requirements.
- Develop strategies to close the identified skills gaps, such as providing training and development opportunities for employees or hiring employees who already possess the required skills.
- Monitor your organization’s performance over time to ensure that the Skills Gap Analysis process successfully improves organizational performance.
- The final step is to implement the chosen strategies and evaluate their effectiveness.
Once you have conducted a skills gap analysis, you can use the information you have gathered to develop strategies for closing the identified gaps. Some common strategies include providing employee training and development opportunities, hiring employees who already possess the required skills, and outsourcing work to contractors or other organizations.
How to do a skills gap analysis?
To analyze the existing skills gaps, there are 2 methods of skill analysis: qualitative methods & quantitative methods. The simplest approach comprises the qualitative approach, focusing more loosely on organizational development processes.
- Qualitative methods: Skills gap analysis can be conducted using a variety of qualitative methods, including surveys, interviews, and focus groups. This type of analysis is useful for identifying the root causes of skills gaps and for developing strategies to close those gaps.
- Quantitative methods: The quantitative skills gap analysis approach focuses on measuring employees’ competence levels across all examined topics. This type of analysis can identify the specific skills employees need to improve and help organizations develop targeted training and development programs.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, so it is essential to choose the method that best fits your organization’s needs.
When should you conduct a skills gap analysis?
You should conduct skills gap analysis regularly, as job requirements and employee skills can change. You can also conduct it whenever there is a need to improve performance or organizational changes. For example, suppose your organization is introducing new technology or processes. In that case, it may be necessary to conduct a skills gap analysis to ensure that your employees have the skills to use the latest technology or processes effectively.
If your organization is experiencing high turnover or performance issues, a skills gap analysis can help you identify any skills gaps that may contribute to those problems.
Why should you conduct a skills gap analysis?
As said before, a skills gap analysis identifies the difference between the skills required to complete a task, project, or goal and the skills that an organization or individual currently possesses. Use skills gap analysis at the organizational level to identify training and development needs and at the individual level to determine career progression paths. The reasons to conduct a skills gap analysis are:
To get an overview of the entire organization
At a high level, you can consider every department by identifying what group does not possess the required resources to achieve the organizational goals and ensuring that you properly manage it. It’s also going to help you get reorganized by examining individual employees and their roles in a particular team or department and identifying what skill sets each employee needs training in or bringing in someone to cover gaps.
To increase productivity
If you provide your existing employees with the required skills and knowledge they need, you can increase your productivity in no time. Plus, you’ll benefit from content employees who need professional development services and will have career gaps filled promptly.
To optimize your long-term recruitment strategy
No more reactive hiring when new requirements arise! A skills gap analysis will help you predict what skills gaps will occur. You, therefore, need a recruitment strategy for these vacancies to remain filled.
To measure the current skills of your workforce
Although this is a time-consuming task, it’s worth taking the time to understand where each of your employees currently stands. This will help you identify potential skills gaps and benchmark your team against others in your industry. Doing so can help you assess whether your team has the skills to meet current and future demands.
To put your findings into action
If there are skill gaps, you plan how they will be solved. You can achieve this through training and hiring. Increasing the skills of your employees is essential in a competitive market.
To determine critical skills needed for the future
Every business needs to use new technology to increase productivity to be competitive. The rapid nature of recent technological advancements makes finding skilled workers extremely difficult. Use skills gap research to pinpoint where skills gaps can be identified and determine the skills needed for your career to be achieved.
To find out where the gaps are
By doing a skill gap analysis, you’ll be sure you know which gaps exist in your business and how they differ from how they should evolve. Identify specific issues about employee skills that your organization may encounter.
How to do a successful skills gap analysis?
Conducting this type of analysis can help you identify the specific issues about employee skills that your organization may encounter. Doing so lets you know which gaps exist in your business and how they differ from how they should evolve. To complete a successful skills gap analysis, follow the steps below:
1. Start small (with one department or division in your organization)
After finding your skills gap in your company, pick the best business unit with obvious challenges to solve. Do this to gain business support to support skill development in a larger sense.
2. Communicate your findings to employees and define learning pathways
You need to understand that employees can sometimes be resentful at acquiring new skills or training for their new jobs. But the motivation behind them is the key to the change process. The most successful skill development projects emphasize the individual aspect of a process, providing staff choices and a way to showcase their talents.
3. Identify future skills needed in your company and industry
Knowing the trends and opportunities that are currently happening at the moment helps to establish your career target. Various types of software for identifying skills are available to give you standardized models of skill requirements in industries and functions. This should help you start by illustrating a suitable target skill. Finally, frontline managers and talent development experts probably know what skills they can’t find in a job candidate.
4. Measure employees’ existing skills
Knowing a specific skill will enable you to define how far to use that skill in the future. The most effective approach will be to run organizational diagnostics of your present skills using the most advanced application available.
A word from SublimePeople
Conducting a skills gap analysis is the first step to addressing any skill deficiencies in your workforce. By taking the time to assess where your employees’ skills fall short, you can put together a plan for closing those gaps. And don’t forget – if you need help to conduct this analysis or implement a training program, we’re here for you!
