What is a Skills Gap? 

Last updated January 31, 2021.

 

A “skills gap” is a term used to refer to any situation where there is a mismatch between the skills that organizations require their employees to have, and the skills that current employees and jobseekers possess. The bigger the mismatch, the bigger the skills gap and the harder it is for organizations to find suitably skilled and trained workers to fill new roles and vacancies, either internally or externally (or both.) 

It’s one thing dealing with skills gaps when it comes to filling vacancies externally, but internal skills gaps can be especially problematic for organizations when it comes to launching new products or kickstarting new projects.

If your team doesn’t have the skills needed to pull these off, important initiatives could come to a screeching halt.

The truth is that skills gaps will always exist, though. They’re an inevitability of the pace of our modern world of work. That doesn’t mean they need to stand in the way of your organization’s progress.

By carrying out skills gap analysis, you can help your organization stay ahead of the curve and ensure that internal skills gaps are kept to a minimum and taking steps to bridge gaps and overhaul processes and structures in the long-term. 

 

What is Skills Gap Analysis?

Skills gap analysis is one of the most effective ways to identify the strengths and weaknesses within your organization’s teams, how they are performing, and where improvements can be made. It helps you paint a clear picture of where skills gaps and deficiencies exist within teams so that you can rectify them with positive action in the short- and long-term. A team that has all the right people with all the right skills for their roles will help bring your organization in line with now and the future rather than keep it firmly in the past.

By carrying out a skills gap analysis, your organization will benefit from:

• A clearer view of how it operates on different levels.
• Seeing the skills of each individual employee and how you could be using them better.
• Seeing where there is a potential skills gap that can be filled.
• Being better equipped to invest in suitable training or hiring new talent.
• Seeing where your priorities lay, and which gaps need to be filled immediately.

 

What Are the Benefits of Skills Gap Analysis?

Now that you know what a skills gap analysis is, here are some of the benefits:

Identifies Employee Weaknesses

Different employees have their own strengths and weaknesses. While all of your marketing department may have great communication skills, for example, one member of the team may be an excellent writer while another may do better with design. By performing a skills gap analysis, you’ll be able to identify who’s better at what and develop training programmes in response so that you can bring everyone more in line and up to similar skill levels. The result will be a more homogenous team that’s better equipped to tackle the challenges it faces.

Helps Professional Development

Employees that feel as if they’re lacking in a certain skill may not always speak up about it or ask for additional training. There’s also the possibility that an employee expects you to know where they need additional training, and thus they may feel as if the company is purposely not offering the training that they need. Over time, the employee feels less and less valued until they eventually start looking for a new employer that is willing to put more effort into helping them develop professionally. 

A thorough skills gap analysis will help you put together personalized development plans for your employees, showing them that you value them and care about their training and development. In the long-term, this lends a massive boost to your organizational culture, which will benefit from more motivated, engaged, happy, and productive employees who are equipped with all the skills and training that they need to excel in their roles. 

Easier to Tackle Turnover

Just like skills gaps, employee turnover is an inevitability. The more senior or skilled an employee is, the harder it is to find a suitable replacement for them. However, skills gap analysis benefits managers by making it easier to tackle turnover even at higher levels of the organization. That’s because skills gap analysis shows what skills are needed for each “level” within a team and the organization on the whole. So if a senior employee leaves the company, it will be more apparent what skills more junior employees will need in order to advance and fill the more senior position. 

 

How to Identify Skills Gaps? 

Getting started is the hardest part of conducting skills gap analysis. The very first step is to take a close look at employee performance so that potential skills gaps can be identified. Skills gap analysis is a heavily data-led process, so gathering and looking at it is of crucial importance. It allows you to determine competency gaps and find root causes that can be addressed.

There are numerous ways that can be used to gather data for a skills gap analysis. Here are four different approaches that you can use to gather it for assessment purposes.

Conduct Employee Assessments

Assessments are great ways to identify skills gaps, and every method of assessing an employee will yield different pieces of data. Practical assessments, roleplays, tests, and quizzes are all potential means of putting your employees’ skills to task and finding out what they’re good and not so good at.

If you do choose to assess employees, make sure you do so based on real work scenarios to identify actual skills gaps. There is little point in performing abstract assessments that have no relation to your employees’ roles.

Map Out Your Organizational Structure

Having your organizational structure mapped out—for example, by using org charts—it is easier to visualize your organization’s workforce and see where certain roles are under-resourced or see which departments are missing specialists, for instance. It can also help you identify employees who may be overdue a promotion or who are yet to undertake a training course.

Using org chart software such as Organimi makes it easier to map out your workforce, too. It can be integrated into current systems for data importing and kept automatically updated as people join and leave, move between departments, or become more skilled.

Look to Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help managers identify how an employee contributes to the organization. They also help with career progression, rewards and benefits, compensation, and retention, among other things. All in all, they are accurate indicators of workplace performance and overall competency for a job role.

Carry Out Frontline Observations

Data and numbers alone don’t tell the whole story or paint the full picture.

By spending time on the frontline of your organization, you get first-hand experience of what is happening in your organization’s work environment(s). This makes it a lot easier to identify obvious skills gaps and gather data that can be used for skills gap analysis later on down the line. Observing employees is the perfect opportunity to see how certain factors influence an employee’s work and their performance.

 

Plan First, Act Later

Before embarking upon data gathering for skills gap analysis, be sure to plan properly.

You and other involved parties need to decide on what it is you’re looking for, which employees need to be spoken to or observed, and what your organization’s goals for the analysis (and future goals in general) are.

Ask yourself questions like “Where is the organization going?” and “What skill sets are necessary for our employees?”, for example. It also helps to consider the future and potential work trends that may be on the horizon. Which jobs could potentially be automated or staffed remotely? Are there any roles that don’t currently exist but that you may need in the future?

There are multiple resources you may want to consider to find an answer to these questions, such as 100 Jobs of the Future.

If you do decide to carry out skills gap analysis, be sure to consider Organimi and think about how you could use it to your advantage. Our cloud-based SaaS platform is easily deployable in companies large and small and can be customized to a high degree to allow for seamless use with or alongside your company’s existing tools, processes, and workflows.

Want to see how you can make Organimi work for you? Sign up for a free trial today and begin charting your success.