Powerfully Manage Skills Gaps

Skills management -- ensuring that your company’s workforce is equipped with the right skills not only to successfully meet current demands and challenges, but also to meet those in the future -- is an important strategic function of HR.
What are the best ways to keep on top of skills, making certain that you have the right people in the right positions, and that your needs are covered?

9 Strategies for Managing Skills Gaps

1. Evaluate

• Work with the functional departments to determine what skills are missing and whether new skills are needed or existing skill improvements need to be addressed.
• If the skills are new, determine if they can be developed internally, or if they must be acquired by hiring new staff.
• If the skills have lapsed, determine the cause of the lapse. Are the changes related directly to the skills, or are they environmental?

2. Test

• Implement skills testing to determine benchmarks for current skill levels and expertise compared to where you need to be.
• Identify employees who have the potential to develop new skills.

3. Train &Develop

• Keep on top of emerging opportunities and make sure your training and development programs are up to date.
• Look at where key training begins within an employees’ career path. Training that takes place once an employee reaches a certain milestone (such as moving into a management position) might be more effective before he or she is actually at the next level.

4. Practice Smart Hiring

• Evaluate your search practices to be sure you are using the best methods to reach the people with the skills you need.
• Train your interviewers to effectively evaluate candidates with targeted questions that speak directly to specific skill sets.
• Make sure your compensation packages and benefits are attractive to your best candidates.

5. Learn from your people

• Evaluate top performers who effectively demonstrate the skills you are seeking.
• Identify key differentiators that account for their success. Look for other employees who exhibit those traits.

6. Learn from friendly competitors and other outside organizations.

• What are they doing successfully?
• What are they doing unsuccessfully?

7. Empower your people

• Incorporate development planning into the performance review process through clear discussion and ongoing communication about roles, expectations, and opportunities. Encourage employees to set goals and take an active role in creating their own development plans.
• Reward learning by tying it to recognition and compensation.

8. Create effective workflows

• Coordinate competency and authority so that the right people are responsible for tasks and carry them out effectively.
• People with the proper skills also need to have the proper authority to do the job.

The final step (#9) is Repeat. Managing skills gaps is an ongoing process. Periodically review each of these strategies to make sure you are up-to-date and on target.

Sources: Trainingmag.com, eskill.com, hbr.org, successfactors.com

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