Your employees are the backbone of your company. Without them, you cannot scale to greater heights. However, there will always be a gap in your team’s skill sets that could increase your chance of failing to achieve your organizational goals. Therefore, it would be wise to prioritize bridging that gap. Here are a few tips on identifying skill gaps in your office.
Observe your employees first-hand
Sometimes, the numbers you see in analytics and reports don’t accurately reflect the real situation on the ground. One of the best and easiest ways to identify skills gap is through observations. You will discover common issues among co-workers if you hang around your team and look beyond the obvious.
Now is the best time to leave the confines of your office and mingle with the common folk to see how numerous factors come into play and how the skill gaps developed in the first place.
Assess your employees
Another simple yet effective way to pick out any skill gaps in your business is through assessments. You could give your team members a test or a simple quiz to see whether everyone is on the same page. However, the methods mentioned above might induce anxiety and risk being ineffective.
An excellent alternative would be to design role-playing activities that allow you to see how your employees would react in a certain situation. It would be wise to base your assessments on actual work scenarios your employees can relate to obtain an accurate picture of existing skill gaps.
Provide feedback and constructive criticism
Feedback is crucial to the personal growth and development of your employees. There is a new appraisal system called 360-degree reviews, where employees receive feedback and criticism from their peers.
Sometimes, the feedback could also come from clients and other third parties external to the company. It would be wise to invest in quality software such as 360 feedback software by Primalogik that is easy to use. Your feedback system should be strictly developmental and not aimed at putting anyone down.
Use KPIs
KPI is an acronym for Key Performance Indicators. As the name suggests, these parameters determine how much an employee contributes to your establishment. They also indicate how competent an employee is and can affect compensation, career progression, and retention. If your team members struggle at work, your KPIs will accurately reveal gaps and help you develop appropriate interventions to remedy the problem.
Benchmark top performers
In every organization, there are bound to be individuals that exceed expectations and perform exceptionally well to your satisfaction. An excellent way to identify gaps in your team’s skill set is to measure the performance of other employees against top performers you consider the best in your organization, also known as benchmarking. Your analysis will help you form a template to guide other employees on the soft skills they should possess at work.
Final remarks
Now that you have successfully identified all the gaps in your workplace, you can work towards developing interventions to address all the issues. It would also be wise to ensure all the information you gather is based on hard facts and credible skills gap analysis.