5 Simple Steps to Perform a Skills Gap Analysis 

Introduction  

Where does your present staff stand in terms of expertise? Do they know what they need to know and have the skills they need to do a good job? Did you do a skills gap analysis for them?   

You’re performing better than most if you feel confident in your team’s strength in this area. As many as 92% of corporate leaders believe that  workers  lack the necessary skills.  

Indeed, this presents a difficulty. However, here’s the thing: despite how convenient it is to lay blame elsewhere, this is ultimately your problem to solve. To ensure the success of your business, you must provide the resources and encourage your staff needs to reach their full potential.  

How should you get started? A skills gap analysis should be conducted to get the much-needed focus and direction.  

All about skills gap analysis  

The talents that businesses seek and their employees’ skills need to align. That disparity between the desired skills and existing skills is precisely what forms the “skills gap.”  

A skills gap analysis is one way for managers and business owners to identify areas in which their employees lack the necessary abilities. In this approach, they can proactively course correct while also establishing a better team and organization.  

For better understanding, let’s look at an example: An organisation is getting ready to launch a massive undertaking involving the entire company. Let’s assume this undertaking is a new product for which they will need all hands-on deck.  

In order to build teams and assign workloads, they will first need to determine which employees need to be upskilled and in which technologies. So, they will have to opt for a company-wide skill gap analysis. This will also help them avoid any hurdles or slowdowns further down the line.  

5 Simple Steps to Perform a Skills Gap Analysis

1. Decide on a target

When your goal is as nebulous as “determine what talents, our organization needs to prosper,” conducting a skills gap analysis can help you determine concrete goals.  

Let’s look again at the earlier example, to see how we can do this. By conducting a skill gap analysis, the company will identify the precise competencies required to build the new product.  

There are various stages at which a skills gap analysis can be conducted, including:  

• Individual: Evaluating a person’s current abilities against the capabilities required to perform a particular job role 
• Team: Comparing the necessary talents a team should possess to the team’s current skillset 
• Organization: Comparing the competencies needed by the entire organization with those of the current workforce 

2. Pinpoint necessary talents 

The second step is to determine what abilities you need to have “under your belt,” if you will. This is your chance to write down everything that would be crucial for that particular job role for the tech workforce

3. Compared to current abilities 

Remember that your objective was to find the skills gaps between what you have and what you need. This step is a direct result of that. Are any abilities that this person or team doesn’t already have on your list of must-haves?  

You can use a range of formal and informal techniques to better understand your employee’s or team’s present skill level if you’re having trouble determining exactly what information and abilities you already possess, including:  

• team and employee surveys  
• Individual conversations  
• comments from supervisors and performance reviews  
• Drive high efficiency with Training Needs Assessments at Yaksha 

5. Set those vital abilities as a priority

You may discover that you are lacking several of the necessary abilities after completing a skills gap analysis. What follows then? 

It’s time to set priorities in the corporate sector by rating those talents from most critical to least important. 

It’s crucial to establish some repeatable criteria you can use to objectively assess the immediate significance of those skills because, admittedly, this can be tough (we get it—all of those skills appear important for your success!). 

You might take the following into account when determining how urgent that skill gap is:  

• How much money does that skill’s absence cost? 
• How many hours does that lack of ability waste? 
• How many issues is the absence of that ability causing? 

5. Come up with a strategy to close the gap 

It is one thing to be aware that a disparity exists, but this awareness will only help you if you also develop a strategy to fill the gap. If certain upskilling is necessary, what steps will you take to make it happen?  

You have access to a vast number of strategies that could help you fill in such gaps, such as the following:  

• Hiring  
• Mentorship  
• Training and development