As The World Economic Forum identified in this research, by 2025 97 million new jobs
will emerge, while 85 million jobs will disappear
due to the technological evolution of the job market.
For organizations across all industries, this means that certain jobs will disappear due
to automation, while others will change in terms of their core tasks and responsibilities.
This is where upskilling and reskilling become relevant.
As we mentioned in the previous bite, the easiest way to help your workforce stay relevant
is through a good upskilling strategy.
Oh, and by the way: if you missed the video, you can find it here.
Before you get to this, however, it’s important to know which skills and knowledge are currently
missing in your workforce and which skills are essential for your organization’s performance.
Conducting a skills-gap analysis, will also
Give insights into your entire workforce and highlight where the biggest gaps are.
Make individual learning and development more efficient and personalized.
Help you with your strategic workforce planning and recruitment efforts.
But then, where to start?
How do you implement an effective skills-gap analysis into your workforce?
Today we will identify 3 essential steps for an effective skills-gap analysis!
As always, before we start, and if you haven’t done so yet, like this video and smash that
subscribe button and notifications bell!
*MUSIC*
Hi, my name is Neelie, and I am the Digital HR specialist here at AIHR.
In today’s bite, we’ll go over the 3 steps to conduct a skills-gap analysis.
And if you need help putting it all into practice, in the description below, you can find a step-by-step
guide to the skills-gap analysis.
So let’s get started.
1. Scope and diagnostics
This first stage is about scoping the challenge.
In the case of a skills-gap analysis, this means identifying the needed skills.
In order to identify the skills that the organization needs now – and in the future – you need
to ask and answer certain questions first.
For instance:
What is the organization’s mission?
What are the organization’s business goals?
What critical skills are needed to be able to perform
the mission and meet the business goals?
The way to identify whether or not a skill is critical, is simple: If an employee lacks
a certain skill, but still completes a task satisfactorily, the skill is noncritical.
If it’s the other way around, you need to consider it a critical skill.
With regards to future skills that are needed in your organization and industry, you need
to know, among other things:
What jobs within your organization or industry are likely to be partially or entirely automated?
What skills are currently on the rise in your industry?
What kind of jobs, including new ones, will your company need more of?
2. Data collection and analysis
The second step is data collection and analysis.
This is fundamental in order to:
analyze what tasks are being done now, rate how important these tasks are,
inquire about the skills required to do the work properly.
In the case of a skills-gap analysis, data collection and analysis activities can include:
Developing job profiles and identifying the critical skills needed for each job role.
Conducting an inventory of your employees’ current skills.
Identifying your employees’ competencies and skill levels.
A talent management system, for instance, functions as a searchable database
that gathers all the information from your employees’ performance evaluations
and competency assessments.
And can be a useful tool for gathering information on each employee's skill level.
3. Designing interventions
This stage is about creating an intervention that fits the needs of the organization.
In our case, that means that once you’ve found out where the skill gaps are in your
organization, you can create a strategy to best fill these gaps.
A pretty common example is that of employees who lack soft digital skills - such as customer-centricity
and passion for learning, or who lack the skills to operate with tools and automation.
Once you’ve identified the gaps, there are different ways to bridge them.
In our previous episode, we’ve identified 5 of them:
Through targeted Learning & Development programs, Job rotation,
Job enrichment, Peer coaching & mentoring,
Involving external experts.
In a time where organizations are increasingly looking to prepare their people for the future,
it’s important to know what skills and competencies your workforce currently possesses.
A skills-gap analysis can be a good tool to use for this.
When conducted well, it can give you valuable insights into your entire workforce, help
you with strategic workforce planning and improve your recruitment efforts.
An effective skills gap analysis will also enable you to optimize your Learning & Development
programs to reskill your people where needed.
So, that’s it for today.
If you don’t want to miss any of these episodes, remember to subscribe to the channel and comment
on what topic you would like to see a video next!
See you!