Skills Gap Analysis Template to Prepare for the Future of Work

What is a skills gap analysis template? How can it help you assess and discover critical skills of your workforce? These are important questions to consider, especially with the rapid advances in technology revolutionising the work environment. Employers must determine the skills of the future for an adaptable and agile workplace.

A skill gap link refers to the difference between the skills that employers want or need and the skills their employees currently have. With a skills gap analysis, you can determine the skills that are most valuable to your business and strategise your employee development.

What is a skills gap analysis?

A skills gap analysis is an important tool for your business’s growth and success. Regardless of the size of your company or the number of employees, it’s vital to conduct a skills gap analysis to identify weaknesses within your operations.

A skills gap analysis measures the gap between the current skills your employees have and the skills required to perform their jobs. It’s also used as an evaluation tool that assesses both present and future goals on a company-wide basis.

Once you identify the skills your company needs that aren’t present, you can fill any gaps, both now and for what you may need in the future. If you determine there are weaknesses with a specific employee or department, you can implement coaching or training to ensure that the necessary skills are met or hire candidates who already possess the skills you desire.

Most valuable soft skills

Though the necessary skills may vary between companies, departments, or employees, there are many skills that are universally valuable, such as:

• Creativity: New technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are automating many administrative tasks, leaving human employees to use creative thinking to advance a company’s goals. Because of this, creativity is a vital skill for future-proof businesses.
• Persuasion: Having a great product or great concept is a start, but you still need customers to buy it. Persuasion is a valuable tool to ensure that your ideas and products are marketable.
• Collaboration: Digital transformation is creating more complex and global projects, which makes collaboration an essential tool for success. Employees must be able to work in a collaborative environment with both in-person and remote team members.
• Adaptability: Technologies are revolutionising business at a fast pace, so having adaptable employees is necessary. You need teams that can adapt and grow with the rapidly changing business environment without a significant impact on their productivity.
• Time management: Time management is a timeless tool that will be relevant regardless of what the future workplace looks like. Employees who can master time management are a vital asset to your current and future business.

Most valuable hard skills

As the workplace becomes more connected and technologically advanced, your employees will need hard skills to adjust to the changes, such as:

• Cloud computing: Cloud computing is becoming a mainstay in many companies, so more and more leaders are looking for engineers with skills in cloud computing.
• Artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence for business is growing and changing. Employees with skills in artificial intelligence are a vital asset to a business looking to make the transition or implement more AI-enabled business tools.
• AV production: Videos are dominating consumer internet traffic, and marketing leaders are in search of employees with skills in audio/visual production to elevate their marketing efforts.
• Sales leadership: Sales leadership is always an in-demand skill, regardless of how technology changes business in the future.
• Translation: The shift toward a global, collaborative workplace requires teams from many different cultural and language backgrounds to work together. Having employees fluent in two or more languages helps to break down these barriers.
• UX design: User experience is a valuable part of the overall customer experience and a key to building a loyal customer base. More and more businesses are searching for employees with a background in UX design to ensure they’re delivering the best experience possible.
• Mobile application development: The shift to mobile-first platforms created a demand for employees with mobile application development skills to create and maintain apps that deliver a seamless customer experience.
• Analytical reasoning: Businesses are collecting massive amounts of data, but it’s only useful if it can be analysed for trends and insights to inform decisions. Businesses are searching for employees who can analyse data and use it to formulate data-driven strategies.

Analysing results and closing the gap

Conducting a skills gap analysis starts with identifying the skills that are valuable to your company and what skills may be necessary for success in the future. You can gain insights from conducting a survey of team members and discussing valuable skills with human resources managers. From there, assign a numerical scale to the skills.

The next step is determining the skills your current employees possess. This can be done with tools like:

• Assessments and surveys
• Employee interviews
• Feedback from performance reviews
• Questionnaires

Once you have your list of valuable skills and the skills your current employees have, you can use a table or graph to identify the missing skills between them. To close the gap, offer training, coaching, certifications, professional events, and mentorship to nurture current employees. You may also want to hire new employees with the skills you need.

Though conducting a skills gap analysis is a laborious process, it’s essential to your business’s future. Once you identify the vital skills that are missing, you’ll be able to adjust and strategise to put your employees and company in a position to succeed.

As businesses around the world gradually reopen, we understand that returning to work safely is a main priority for employers right now. To help business owners during this time, we’ve created work.com to prepare them with essential solutions for returning to the workplace as quickly and safely as possible.

If you’re interested in skilling up your workforce to meet new business demands, check out how to create a culture of online learning with myTrailhead.