In today’s rapidly evolving industries, staying competitive means more than just finding the right talent to fill your open job positions. This constant challenge demands continuous reinvestment in your employees’ skills.

As remote work, AI, automation, and other emergent tech paradigms continue to transform our offices and workflows. Certain “old school” skills may even be reaching the end of their shelf life, opening the door for focused and effective skill-based training, an essential priority for many companies that can immediately increase productivity, innovation, and employee satisfaction.

Focusing on skill-building initiatives not only leads to sharper skills and better outcomes but also helps your team feel a sense of ownership in your company. An employee, for example, may feel a greater sense of loyalty to a company that has recently sent them to an engaging workshop, helped them pay for a certificate program, or responded proactively to a request for additional training.

Skill-Building Matters, Here’s Why

Designing timely and necessary skill-building initiatives can drive the vehicle moving your company forward. Benefits include:

  1. Organizational agility. Companies that prioritize skill-building are naturally better equipped to deal with industry shifts, technological advancements, and even day-to-day staffing challenges. A highly skilled and confident worker can adapt to new workflows or jump in to help other departments more efficiently.
  1. Engaged employees. As your team members build more skills, they can take on additional responsibilities or compete for promotions. This increases their value to your operation while also making them feel like a bigger part of the company, allowing them to see their own growth while also creating company-wide growth.
  1. Skills create space for innovation. A team with a diverse and well-honed skill set is a team that can identify and quickly master new and better ways of doing things. When everyone is well-equipped to contribute, it fosters an environment where fresh new ideas and creative problem-solving naturally follow.
  1. Identify and cultivate future leadership. In addition to addressing immediate skill gaps or performance issues, skill-building activities can also help you identify high-potential employees. When you send your employees to training, pay attention to both their results and the attitude with which they approach the opportunity.
  1. Benefits for your employees. Focusing on skill-building isn’t just great for your organization but also a win-win prospect that creates value and opportunity for your employees as well. For your employees, skill-building is also confidence-building.

Identifying Skill Gaps & Building Effective Training Programs

The natural first step in building skills is to identify your team’s needs. There are a few different models and philosophies when it comes to conducting a comprehensive skills gap analysis, but there are a few concepts you’ll want to keep in mind no matter how you approach the project:

  • Use direct employee feedback to learn what skills your team members currently possess and what skills they need training on. Surveys and one-on-one interviews work well.
  • Make sure to leverage your existing performance tracking protocols to help you understand gaps in your employee skill sets. If you have robust data about employee productivity, now is the time to use it.
  • Look into using a “Skill Will Matrix.” This is a popular tool for corporate skill-building projects that allows you to sort employees by two major categories–skill level and willingness to learn–which can help you design and deploy your training regimen in the most effective way possible.

Once you know what skills need to be taught, you will need to build an effective training program that addresses those exact skills. In some cases, it may be more cost-effective to hire a third-party consulting firm experienced in the type of training you require, so be sure to explore every option.

Everyone learns differently, and because every industry is unique, training programs can look quite different from one company to the next and even from department to department within the same organization. Blended approaches that mix e-learning modules with one-on-one attention are popular currently but keep in mind that some skills can require significant hands-on practice and repetition to master, while others might be easily taught through an online video.

HireScore – Your Trusted Partner for Smart Skills Analysis

If you’re ready to future-proof your team, the HireScore SkillBuilder Gap Analysis tool is a great place to start. Click here to learn more about how our cutting-edge solutions can help de-stress the process of building the perfect staff.