How to close your skills gaps in 7 simple steps

The first step here is to acknowledge the macro picture of what is causing the current skills gap crisis. First is the exponential rate of change we are experiencing, combined with the changing demographic of our workforce. “There are a lot of people going into retirement, which means there's a lot of knowledge. And expertise that's about to leave the workplace, which means now there's a gap that needs to be filled.”

Finally, throw in changing technology, such as the need to hire or train employees with generative AI skills: “There aren't enough people with those skills. And so it's quite expensive and competitive to find them outside. Then the people internally who you have with those skills, they're in such high demand, they can walk and walk until they find an organisation that's going to support their growth ambitions”, explains Nelson.

If you are experiencing an internal skills gap, the first place you’re going to feel it is in your business performance in terms of missed targets and continuous underperformance, says Nelson. Importantly, this may get misdiagnosed as being due to market factors or organisational structures or missing technology. 

Nelson says that while some of that might be true, “What we often see organisations overlook is, do you have the skills to be able to deliver your strategy and achieve those goals? What you might think is a business performance problem actually at its root might be a skills gap.”

When it comes to hard skills, Nelson shares three key skill areas that have emerged as most important during recent leader surveys: data analysis, project management and AI machine learning. He says that the bulk of the skills that need to be built will be within AI machine learning and project management which are “widely understood as a critical skill for executing and delivering across the organisation.”

When it comes to softer skills, Nelson says that critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and communication skills (both oral and written) are most in demand at the minute. But don’t rush to find training courses, says Nelson. Instead try an ‘ecosystem approach’ of using elements such as simulations, stretch assignments, mentoring and coaching to grow these skills.

The reality is that change is constant and that we are going to witness exponential change at a very rapid rate. Nelson explains that by using soft skills like problem-solving, decision-making, time management, storytelling and creativity. “Developing creative skills helps you deal with ambiguity. In an ever-changing world, what you have a lot of is ambiguity,” says Nelson.

Nelson points to research that shows sometimes people’s level of resilience is affected by their tolerance to ambiguity: “And one of the ways to develop that tolerance for ambiguity is through creativity because being creative is often being able to deal with things that are not certain, finite or definitive.” The same goes for storytelling, which is crucial in both sales and customer stories: “Everyone needs to tell a story.” 

The next step should be to leverage both job market and labour market data with large language models to be able to benchmark and see what skills are required for someone based on each job within the organisation and the tasks they do as part of that job, says Nelson. From here, you’ll need the accurate proficiency level needed. A great way to measure this is with 360° feedback.

“The reason why 360° feedback is so powerful here is that the best people to evidence whether you have a skill or not are the people who see you do your work on a day-to-day basis. They’ll be able to share if you are applying a skill and applying it in the relevant context”, says Nelson. You can then combine this with productivity data and performance. This he says will tell you where this person is with skill and proficiency.

Once you have prioritised the skills gaps that are likely to make the biggest impact on your organisation, the first thing to change is what your ‘North Star’ is for measuring skill development and growth. For example, content completed or time spent learning will not tell you whether you’re building the skills the organisation needs to deliver its strategy. A meaningful metric here is the actual skills developed.

It’s not about creating 100 courses, it’s about mapping skills to job roles and ensuring those courses contribute to your skills developed metric, Nelson explains. By changing this ‘North Star’, it makes it easier to get organisational buy-in than metrics like time spent learning as it means something to your employees and leaders. This is what Nelson sees as the first stepping stone of developing a skill-first approach to L&D.

Gaining engagement and participation is always a crucial but challenging part of any upskilling effort. For this, Nelson says you need to clarify the value for your employees: “Don’t tell them there’s a new GDPR course and hope they’re going to get excited by that. You need to explain what’s in it for them, how it’s going to help them  do their job better and what the risk is for them if they don’t do that.”

The second step here Nelson explains is to use success stories such as early adopters of new L&D programmes that you’ve offered. These are people who have engaged, have seen success out of it because they’ve applied what they’ve learned and they’re feeling good about it. Similarly, Nelson recommends taking the friction out of accessing this learning. Go through the journey they do and see if resources are tagged and organised in a meaningful way and that they are being enrolled in relevant content.

Finally, Nelson says that technology has an essential role in bringing this all together: “You need the benefits of this data feeding from one system to the other. It’s essential to be able to bring that scattered learning together, connect it to skills gaps and really measure growth in your organisation all under one roof.”

Want to gain more proven ways to find and prioritise your skills gaps? Join us for our upcoming webinar with HowNow: How to solve your internal skills crisis on Thursday October 10th. Save your space here.