How to Conduct a Skills Gap Analysis
Addressing new and emerging skills gaps in your business requires a strategic approach to assessing current competencies and predicting future needs.
That’s where a skills gap analysis comes in. With a framework for finding and filling skills gaps, you can direct and prioritize your training programs.
Check out this guide for your step-by-step approach to skills planning.
STEP ONE: Determine the Focus
First, identify the scope of your analysis:
Individual: A role-specific analysis focuses on an
employee’s skills to determine whether they have the skills
needed for their current or future role.
Team or project-based: A broader analysis evaluates
whether a group has the collective skills to achieve a task
or goal, or to meet an upcoming challenge.
Organization: After first assessing your entire organization’s
skills inventory, compare your current capabilities against
the broader business objectives and future strategic goals.
Using this approach, you’ll identify any gaps that could
impact performance.
STEP TWO: Establish the Required Skills
Next, you want to know what skills and competencies your
people need to perform.
Drawing on internal and external sources of information
can help determine current skills requirements and the
ones your organization will need to remain competitive
in the future.
This information can be drawn from several different
sources, including:
• Job descriptions and previous skills gap analyses
• Performance reviews
• Manager input
• Competency frameworks
• Externally published skills taxonomies
• Company strategy and goals
• Industry trends and reports
“All of our employees create a development plan within Bridge. What I really like about Bridge is that it’s easy to connect these development plans and these skills that people want to work on to our whole library of more than 200 courses”
— Tom de Haas, Learning & Development Manager, Adwise
STEP THREE: Analyze Your Organization’s Current Skills Data
When you know what skills you’re evaluating, you’ll need
to gather evidence to show how employees, teams, and/or
your entire business stacks up against them. This will reveal
your skills gaps.
You can find this information from a number of sources.
For example:
• Reviewing L&D assessments
• Staging interviews with employees to discuss the
required skills
• Conducting self-assessment surveys
• Holding workshops with a skill-gauging component
• Collecting skill feedback from managers and peers
We are capturing skill data through development plans, skill communities and profiles. Now we’re using that data to see where our people want to grow and what we as a company need to grow and doing a gap analysis. So people know that if I’m growing, no matter what type of growth that is, it actually impacts the organization.
— Dalice Cossey, Culture and Engagement Specialist at Hato Hone St John
STEP FOUR: Fill Skills Gaps
After identifying skills gaps, you’ll need a strategy to fill
them. A good starting point is prioritizing skills gaps based
on current and future business goals and demand.
Your strategy for filling skills gaps might include:
• Training and development programs
• Mentorship and coaching
• Internal mobility
“I love using Bridge. It’s a great tool that helps both experienced leaders and those new to skills development by providing an easy interface and an easy tool to use. It’s not just about managing the tool, it’s about managing the talent that the tool represents.”
— Stephen Davis, VP of Talent Development, ArchKey
Filling out a Skills Gaps Analysis Framework, Step-by-Step
1) Role and Skill Identification: List each role you want to analyze, then identify the skills associated with that role.
2) Skills Assessment: Gather proficiency ratings (1 = low, 5 = high) for each skill, using multiple data sources to ensure a more accurate measurement.
3) Skills Gap Identification: Analyze current skills assessment data and compare it to your organization’s needs and required skills. This process will reveal skills gaps and highlight areas to prioritize for training and development. Scale: 1 = low, 5 = high.
4) Action Planning: Detail the next steps you’ll take to address any skills gaps.
Supercharge Your Skills Strategies
Download your skills gap analysis template for your step-by-step approach to skills planning, and learn how to:
- Identify current and future needs
- Evaluate employee skillsets
- Implement actionable upskilling strategies
Stay Ahead of Skills Gaps With Bridge LMS
Assessing employee skills isn’t a one-time activity, and incorporating skills gap
analyses into your talent strategy leads to long-term success.
Bridge LMS can automate this template for your organization, making it easier to
build skills without a lot of administrative overhead. With access to a database
of over 32,000 skills from Lightcast, a leader in labor market data, you can
quickly identify the skills your employees should have based on their job titles
and find where gaps exist.