Organizations must prioritize professional development and identify skill gaps in their workforce
A skill gap exists when the talents and skills of your employees do not match the requirements or needs of the job at hand. In other words, there is a "gap" between the skills your team has and the skills they need. This can be very costly for business, especially if your business is competing in a fast-changing field like technology. With jobs changing rapidly due to these fast technological changes, it is time for organizations to consider these skills gaps and start upskilling/reskilling the workforce to remain relevant and competitive in the future.
Asking your business the right questions is essential to correctly measure performance and discover skill gaps. Consider the essential What and Why questions, which aid in determining the results of your data. Has your company intentionally overlooked crucial skill sets in favour of selecting candidates with specific experience? Consider the discrepancy between performance and potential inside your organization to get a simplified idea of the skill gap. It is a good approach to acquire answers to questions regarding your team's productivity, such as what it can now offer, how effectively it meets goals, and what it needs to perform at its best.
Corporate employee development combined with pertinent and interesting eLearning programmes is the ideal solution to reduce or close the skill gaps. Organizations that choose not to engage in professional development may have a harder time hiring and maintaining employees compared to more innovative competitors. Learning and Development (L&D) experts can provide the organizational workforce with a variety of such eLearning programmes by utilizing learning tools like an LMS. Skill gaps exist in every company, here are some ways that your company can make sure to oversee them:
The difficulty of identifying skill gaps
Radical technological disruption directly translates into a quickly evolving skill set, particularly in fields of information technology and where automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will predominate. It is challenging to predict and evaluate the kinds of talents needed to fill the gaps, which makes it more challenging to find and keep exceptional people who can expertly apply themselves to such innovative technologies. Furthermore, companies frequently struggle to recruit applicants with the necessary skills and qualified certification.
Employees, particularly Millennials, are more inclined to choose a company that is prepared to invest in their skill development in order to increase their possibilities of career advancement. Therefore, companies must provide chances for learning and development to their current and prospective employees in order to identify and measure skills gaps. If it is technological disruption that has caused a skill gap, it will also help enterprises fill it by providing innovative learning technology solutions, particularly the Learning Management System (LMS).
Establishing learning pathways
A skills audit will likely reveal a variety of unique talents and competencies throughout the company. Given the different degrees of experience and competence among the personnel, this is hardly surprising. Some people will need to upgrade their skills, while others could need to entirely reskill. You cannot rely solely on a single training programme to close gaps throughout the company given their complexity and urgency. Individual learning plans and paths created and provided by an LMS are what you require. These pathways enable personal growth that is suited to the needs of the employment role, tasks, and future career path of the individual engaged. You can customize the learning you need to do by using the LMS to track your progress.
Making things more accessible
Supporting employees to get the information they require when they require it is a crucial step toward success. Too often, training takes place behind closed doors. However, digitizing content and using an LMS to curate and distribute it across devices makes information and knowledge more accessible and empowers people to take control of their learning. An online learning system allows learners to have access to the material not only when they want but where they want. An LMS supports each employee's unique learning and development needs by giving them the materials they need when they need them.
Facilitating improved performance
An LMS is a helpful tool for tracking and evaluating progress in addition to enabling these training interventions and tactics. It can track how frequently material is accessed as well as when and how it is used, allowing L&D to modify their learning resources and strategies as necessary.
It provides periodical evaluations and checks on the retention and application of knowledge. People are informed of learning opportunities for retraining and upskilling thanks to its personalized recommendation and notification capabilities. Employees are assisted in staying on their learning pathways by a series of automatically generated reminders, and learners are encouraged by a system of digital badges that recognizes KPIs, performance, and achievement. Digital certification with built-in expiration dates promotes compliance and emphasizes the importance of maintaining skills.
How an LMS is useful to close skill gaps
With an LMS’s robust access to information, L&D can easily assess skill levels by evaluating knowledge retention and using performance-based assessment functions to determine current skill levels.
Prioritized and specialized learning interventions can be created after identifying the gaps and allowing for constant review and evaluation of knowledge retention and applications. The analysis of these reports paves the way for a personalized learning experience. From the perspective of an enterprise, it means less costly and disruptive training and it keeps employees performing.
The skill gap is real and growing, but we have the means to eradicate skill gaps with a Learning Management System. Learning and development platforms can be used not only to fill existing skill gaps but also to ensure that future gaps do not occur. The benefit of this is that people get the training they need to upskill or reskill and feel more empowered. Retaining and developing employees is a huge benefit to your business, it will help you perform better and remain competitive. Utilizing learning platforms like Captivo’s LMS can provide companies with various tools to reduce skill gaps.
