Skill Mapping: Identifying and Bridging Skill Gaps in Your Team

Introduction

Today’s business environment is characterized by high levels of competitiveness, and therefore, the quality of people that you hire is critical in determining the success of your firm. The skill mapping approach is already being applied in many organizations in an effort to find out whether the current teams are composed of the right skills that will help solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems.

63% of leaders believed that upskilling is the most voiced solution to the skills gap issue in organizations followed by 43%, who stated that they will retrain their employees in another set of skills to meet the requirements of new career paths completely different from their previous roles.

Competent skill mapping beyond assisting in the discovery of skills deficit is different from other approaches of mapping skills; it gives a clear pattern of how the human resource can be fashioned to fit into the organization’s needs.

Skill Mapping and Skill Deficit

When the workforce on which business relies can be a decisive factor for success and failure, it is crucial to raise the question of the capability of employees and bring up methods for increasing it.

Skill Mapping is the process of determining all the required competencies for a particular position in a certain organization as well as comparing the results with the employee’s competencies. This is useful in developing a blueprint of the organization with regards to the skills discrepancy in the workforce. It is only when staffing specialists know where skills are missing or where too many exist. They can plan on how to offer training and development that will match the business goals.

Skill Deficit, on the other hand, refers to the discrepancy that exists between the skills an employee currently possesses and those required for job performance. One of the reasons for identifying deficiencies in skills is that; they indicate areas where training should take place. It is then that they will be able to discharge their duties effectively while maintaining the company’s goals and objectives, in addition to coping effectively with changes in the sector. This is also informed on the understanding of the deficiencies in skills.

Nowadays or in the near future, organizations are said to face a skills gap as pointed out by McKinsey. About 87% of them stated that they now have the lack of skills and 13% of them claimed they are to have the lack of skills in the near future. To address the skill mapping and skill gaps for organizational requirements as a professional, it becomes important to understand the patterns of management. They provide confidence that the workforce as an organizational capital is capable of holding the present and future demands and contingencies. Proper skill mapping is useful in enhancing the skills of the employees and their motivation accompanied by better levels of job satisfaction owing to the company’s detailed career paths. This in a way pushes up efficiency, creativity, and market competitiveness at the organizational level.

Identifying skill gaps in workplace 

While assessing skills at the workplace, it is very important that the management identifies some of the skills that their employees lack before proceeding to train them as a form of development.

One could find it easier to remember the skill gaps by viewing them as a discrepancy between the skills needed for a particular job and those that exist in an existing workforce. As an example, you can see it happening if developers in a tech organization are not good enough when using given programming languages in coming up with new projects.

How to Identify Skill Gaps:

• Skill Assessment Tools: One could also conduct polls or quality checks, as well as use the right software, to see how the workers’ performance matches up to the presented competencies.
  Example: SurveyMonkey, Lattice, etc.
• Competency Assessments: These are examinations that evaluate an employee’s ability to efficiently carry out specific tasks within an organization, helping in the identification of the degree of training needed.
  Example: Job Simulation Exercises, Certification Exams, and Behavioral Interviews
• Employee Feedback: Closing Apprenticeship meetings are useful in predicting the ways which the employees believe can be most beneficial to the organization as well as the areas that the employees believe they are still deficient in and which would enable them to best serve the organization.
  Example: Apprenticeship Closing Meetings, Feedback Surveys, and Focus Groups
• Performance Reviews: This is to mean that when reviewing, the common problems that are highlighted by the respective assessment forms relate to repeat performance of the common problems and disregard of skill, which are known determinants of the performance of the employees.
  Example: Annual Performance Appraisals, Quarterly Check-Ins, and Competency-Based Reviews

Skills Gap Assessment Process:

• Step 1: Key things to uncover: Identify general competencies expected from candidates for a certain position based on a job analysis and an organization’s strategic map.
• Step 2: Current Skills Match: The existing skills with the current needs of the employee should be assessed through tests and data about performance.
• Step 3: Skills Analysis v/s Desired Performance: Identify those skills that are currently possessed v/s those skills that can make one perform to the optimum level.
• Step 4: Assess the gaps: In this, you have to be able to recognize which gaps are significant in order to decide on their order of learning or proficiency priority.

Approaches used in Skill and Strength Analysis/Profiling/Auditing

Many of the measures put into practice during the achievement of the skills gap bear much impact in recognizing such gaps in the aspect of learning. Here are some effective tools and techniques:

• Skill Assessment Software: These platforms provide the detailing of all the probable and possible, specific, mandatory, and preferred conditions of both the job and the employee. They facilitate an assessment of performance by showing the organization how far they have gone, and the gap between the actual and expected performance; this leads to the establishment of a developmental program for the employee. For example, Auzmor Learn, similar to other LMS platforms, it has options for skill assessment, with recommendations on what exactly has to be learned and suggestions on how the skill is being developed over a period of time.
• 360-Degree Feedback Tools: The aim of this approach is to seek opinions from other people in an organization. They could be fellow workers, the subordinates or the supervisors. Together with further qualitative appraisal, including shortcomings and possibilities that may go unnoticed, such an approach makes it possible to give a more accurate estimation of the employee’s effectiveness.
  
• Benchmarking Against Industry Standards: Benchmarking in the present process entails comparison of the existing skills in identified talent within the organization to that of existing benchmarks within the industry, helping in establishing the competency level of the firm. This can be done with the help of tools such as Competency Framework which defines the competencies necessary in some positions of the given sector. With benchmarking you are able to see areas that require you to perform certain activities which you may not be doing in order to be on par with competitors and the industry.

With such tools and techniques, the required skills gaps can be effectively identified which open the way to training programs and effective workforce planning. This proactive approach helps ensure the employee has the skills that will help the organization to succeed meeting the new requirements that are characteristic of the industry.

Bridging Leadership Skills Deficiencies

To effectively bridge the skill gaps identified through skill mapping, organizations must implement targeted strategies. Let’s learn some of these approaches:

• Training Programs: Offer specific on site and web supported training activities in order to reduce the identified gap in knowledge and skills.
  
• Educating and Developing: Foster learners’ independence in terms of orienting them to the right direction and level of participation expected of them, soliciting ideas from them, suggesting conferences that one should attend and generally supporting the trainees’ activities.
• Team Development: Promote increased usage of more group works and project-related exercises throughout while at the same time, improving and expanding on the structured and proper peer mentoring programs in all the areas.
  
• Competency Mapping: This involves locating the requisite skills for specific roles and training employees accordingly. It helps in inventory training and the right match of the ability of the employees with the goals and objectives of the organization.

Benefits of Effective Skill Mapping and Bridging Skill Gaps

When skill mapping is done effectively, or when there are efforts to bridge skill gaps, it creates following opportunities:

• Organizational Efficiency: Addressing the gaps in the skills of employees results in improving the efficiency of the organization. Performance is enhanced among employees solving various tasks, leading to the decrease in rate of mistakes and overall improvement of efficiency. This efficient process promotes better flow of the operation of the organization and goal attainment among the various bodies.
  
• Employee Engagement: Through enhancing and eliminating deficits in skills, such efforts facilitate the employees’ job satisfaction as well as their performance level. Each time there is rendering for decisions such as training and development, the employees take it as a core aspect of their competencies and as such they are valued. Therefore, an improvement of job satisfaction at the same time that the turnover is reduced is obtained by making the environment more friendly at the workplace.
  
• Competitiveness: Organizations should ensure that they keep on standardizing its processes in a way that frequently seeks to establish skill deficiencies so that it can sustain its competitive advantage. This means that the company that has a well skilled human resource is in a better place to create, penetrate the market and even outdo professionals in market competition. Taking such steps of strategic planning and action helps to deliver long-term results of HRM for organizational growth.

Conclusion

By identifying strengths and areas of improvement using not just skill mapping but also following up with different development programs that aim at rectifying those areas, associations get to experience such benefits like improved productivity, high levels of employee satisfaction as well as achieving or maintaining a competitive edge over their competition.

Contemporary workforce management faces primary concerns in skill gap reduction and skill mapping. In this regard, employing these techniques will ensure that workers and their teams possess the right competencies. Therefore, organizations should use these strategies to ensure their staff and teams have the right abilities.

Skill mapping not only contributes to individual development but also increases organizational effectiveness and employees’ satisfaction, as well as helps organizations remain relevant in conditions of constant changes on the market. With the ideal qualification as high-quality talent reserves for the long term combined with continuous training and development as well as competency upgrade, the organizations do not only meet the existing demand for skilled employees but also future ones.