How To Do A Skills Gap Analysis To Improve The Success Of Your Team

Identifying The Skills Gaps In Your Team: Skills Gap Analysis

Career change

If you notice deteriorating motivation within your team or start to hear negative feedback about certain people or teams then hear those alarms bells ringing. You may have some skills gaps in your team that are causing problems or frustrations.

A skills gap analysis could quickly help you put measures in to resolve the problem.

In the creative industries, a gap in an agency’s high performing teams can create potentially expensive problems: quickly. There are many facets to a creative business, each as important as the next, and when one part of the team or business is weak it jeopardises the whole.

Poor planning will not deliver strategic thought for the client. Poor account management will sour a client relationship. Poor brand insight from the account planners will not deliver a solid creative brief that inspires creatives, and that in turn will deliver poor creative output. Poor production will cause missed deadlines and lose existing clients.

All of these lead to a demotivated agency or business. And on a department level, a weakness in the team will drive negativity and a lack of respect for management decisions.

How to run a skills gap analysis

Certainly, managers in the creative industries have an even greater need than most to perform regular and ongoing skills gap analyses based on regular competency benchmarking of the staff. This helps identify falling standards. Without this, it’s quite simple; managers cannot develop a high performing team, let alone maintain one. And often the importance of the need is only highlighted when a problem that exists has already gone too far.

As you know, running a skills gap analysis means you identify a) the existing skill levels and b) the necessary skill levels in your team; any differences comprise the gap or gaps.

Firstly, you need to assess the exact skills required for each job in your team, so you get an accurate competency profile on every one. Existing staffers can provide the information you need, along with your supervision that is based on their actual performance.

Then, using those competency assessments, the next step is to determine what you need to do to move your team from the a) to the b) mentioned above.

Key points for identifying what skills your team needs

·         What skills do you need and want?

·         What skills do you already have?

·         How serious are the differences between those two levels?

·         What exactly do you need to do to close the gap or gaps?

What to do when the skills gaps are identified

First of all, managers first need to know how to develop the individual(s) – that takes self-development. Then it’s important to review the skills, strengths and weaknesses involved, and seek to enhance the strengths while reducing the responsibilities that require the weak skills.

Development is affected by an individual's attitude, aptitude, ability and external influences (e.g. home life.)  This means that managers need strong observation and empathetic skills which they can use and then take their own self development as a frame of reference to help the individual grow.

How a good recruitment agency will help you

Expert recruitment agencies can be brought in to support this process. Initially they will begin by consulting with you on what a great team looks like. Next, they will offer to interview staff independently and individually to get an overview of motivational levels and thoughts around the management view on investment in staff development. That’s when you know what the team think about the management’s attitude to self development ... and you find out what they think your weaknesses are.

Involving your recruitment agency in a close, open partnership with you, will ensure that there is a watchful eye on staff turnover, and at the suspicion of an increase (which could signify the start of the rot) can help alert all parties concerned to get going with a remedial policy. Involving your recruitment agency too late or at a more remote level, means they can only work reactively rather than pro-actively, which is hardly effective when you need to nip emerging skills gaps in the bud.

However it must be said that identifying the gaps can be very difficult for recruitment agencies unless they have an appropriately close and trusting relationship with you. All too often, the late involvement of the recruitment agency merely results in their being asked to recruit replacements – a bit like a sticky plaster being applied to an amputated arm.

Close, honest co-operation and everyone’s watchful eyes focused on potential gaps in your team ... that’s what it takes to guard against the harmful effect those expensive gaps can otherwise create.

 

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23/04/2018
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