Marie Creasey
Digital Customer Experience Manager
Cranfield Online
For a business to grow and succeed, its workforce must possess the right combination of skills and knowledge to do the work required now and in the future.
Conducting a skills gap analysis can help to identify where an organisation currently stands against where it needs to get to, identifying any missing, inadequate or underutilised skills so plans can be made to fill the gaps.
What is a skills gap analysis?
A skills gap is the difference between the skills and knowledge an organisation wants or needs in the short and long term, and what its employees can currently offer.
A skills gap analysis is a method of determining where the discrepancies lie between these current and future states so that plans may be made to address any gaps in skills and knowledge through upskilling, reskilling, job redesign, or recruitment.
How do you know if your business has a skills gap?
There are many factors that may contribute to an emerging or growing skills gap in an organisation. These include:
- A change in business strategy
- High employee turnover
- Adoption of new technologies
- Insufficient focus on ‘soft’ skills like critical thinking, complex problem solving and creativity
- Inadequate formal training
If your organisation is missing targets and struggling to reach its goals, or experiencing any one of the above, then it may be time to conduct a skills gap analysis to see where improvements could be made.
Scroll down for our tips on how to conduct a skills gap analysis in your organisation...
Skills gap analysis: The benefits
Conducting a skills gap analysis and acting on the findings may put organisations at significant advantage over their competitors by enabling them to maximise productivity in the present while simultaneously preparing the ground for future innovation. A strong focus on the future can also improve organisational resilience in the face of increasingly uncertain and volatile markets.
Other benefits of conducting a skills gap analysis include:
- Better insight into employees’ strengths and weaknesses, allowing learning and development initiatives to be more strategic, targeted to individuals and to the needs of the business as a whole.
- Improved person-job fit – the compatibility between an individual’s skills, knowledge and capabilities and the tasks they perform at work – leading to improved employee morale, motivation and commitment as a result of staff feeling that their skills are being used and developed to benefit the business.
- More effective recruitment based around preparing the ground for the future as well as meeting the needs of the present.
Skills gap analysis: A How-To guide
There are four basic stages to conducting a skills gap analysis. These are:
Step one: Identify desirable skills
What skills will your organisation need, now and in the future? Consider your mission, values and future goals, as well as trends within your industry and the wider world of work, and any regulatory changes that may be on the horizon. Don’t forget to ask your team what skills they think the business is missing.
Step two: Prioritise
To what extent are these identified skills crucial to organisational success, or simply desirable?
Step three: Skills mapping
What skills and knowledge does the business currently have access to, and at what levels? Consult existing skills data, conduct skills assessments and surveys, and interview team members to discover their strengths and the skills they most enjoy using at work.
Step four: Analysis and intervention planning
By bringing together all the information gathered above, organisations will begin to see where the gaps are and can then devise a strategy to fill those gaps, whether through upskilling and reskilling of individuals and teams, job redesign, or hiring externally.
Bridging the skills gap through training and development
One of the most popular methods of plugging an organisational skills gap is by investing in learning and development programmes for existing employees and/or teams.
Upskilling and reskilling existing employees can be a cost-effective way of building the skills your organisation needs while, at the same time, improving employee engagement and boosting morale.
Learning and development programmes developed strategically to target identified skills gaps enable organisations to get the most impact from their training budget spend, while reassuring employees that they are valued by the business and seen as integral to its future success.
Target skills gaps with online stackable courses
Cranfield’s portfolio of flexible online stackable courses provides organisations with access to bite-sized modules of self-paced learning that can be used to upskill and right-skill individuals and groups alike.
Learning and development teams can purchase single modules or build bespoke learning pathways as needed. There’s no commitment to one single option for all employees, and learners can choose to supplement the courses they are asked to complete by the business with additional programmes in subjects that interest them, with the option of achieving a range of micro-credentials. These include postgraduate awards, diplomas, certificates, and an MSc in Business and Management.
The likes of Cranfield’s online stackable courses enable learning and development interventions to be spread across an organisation’s entire employee population, rather than limited to senior leadership or identified ‘high potential’ employees.
In this way, organisations build high-performing, committed, whole-organisation teams that are ready, willing and able to face the future that’s on the horizon – whatever it may bring.
