The prevailing uncertainty around Brexit has no doubt exacerbated their concerns.
The silver lining in the report was that many employers are willing to invest in recruitment to plug skills gaps in the coming year. But how can they ensure this investment delivers?
Conducting a skills audit is a good start. A skills audit is a valuable and efficient way to:
a) Identify opportunities to develop current employees’ skills in light of any shortage – many organisations will reward their top performing people with promotions, but neglect to address the gap in skills required to do their advanced role.
b) Understand which skills are needed and who is best placed to recruit for them.
While some studies have found there is a low desire to move jobs in the current economic climate, others have found that more employees are looking to move on – perhaps in search of a more interesting role. Whichever the case, providing more opportunities to develop your employees’ skills is usually a good way to both retain and get the best out of your people. It’s also much more cost efficient than replacing staff, and their loyalty is likely to strengthen your employer brand, making it much easier to attract new recruits to fill those essential gaps.
So where do you start?
Which skills do employees need to do their jobs well, for your organisation’s values to be demonstrated, and for you to achieve your current business goals? These may be different from when your staff were first employed.
Give consideration to both hard and soft skills; the latter can often be far more valuable – see our previous blog on the importance of soft skills.
Once you understand your up-to-date skills needs, you are in a better position to ascertain whether your existing employees are suitably skilled.
In our opinion, one-to-one interviews between line managers and employees are a more effective way of assessing for skills gaps than generic surveys. Simulated tasks such as mock presentations and questionnaires, or personality tests, can also be helpful. It is important to work closely with your HR department and lean on their expertise in this area.
This step will help you identify gaps where internal or external training could be of help and also help you spot any ‘untapped talent’ within your organisation i.e. additional skills which you can leverage for organisational success e.g. coaching or leadership skills.
Following an initial audit, reviewing employees’ skills should form an essential part of your ongoing appraisal process.
It’s vital to document your results, and numbers are far less subjective than general impressions or summaries and, thus, bias.
Rating the importance of certain skills for each role and the level of proficiency required from 1-5 (1 being poor, 5 being excellent, for example) can provide a good benchmark for measuring your actual skills against your desired ones.
There are lots of digital tools to facilitate this kind of analysis, but it can also be done through a simple spreadsheet.
With both quantitative and qualitative data to hand, you can decide on the best course of action to address your skills gaps, whether it be internal job shadowing or mentoring, external training courses and events, or recruitment.
Of course, the skills requirements by the organisation must be balanced with the personal development needs of your employees for any programme to work. Be sure also to provide feedback to employees to ensure they take ownership of any training or development requirements they need.
When it comes to assessing your existing skills and helping you spot development potential, a good recruitment partner can provide much impartiality. Likewise, when it comes to replacing or recruiting a new employee, they can help ensure you get it right by carrying out a more thorough skills assessment prior to shortlisting.
At Sitka, we spend time getting to understand our clients’ skills-base to understand the people and skills they need to drive success. Without this knowledge, it would be exceptionally more challenging to source candidates with the necessary qualities.
Whilst it requires an investment of time, performing a skills audit is unquestionably worthwhile and will help you get your organisation ready for whatever challenges Brexit and the future brings.
To talk to us further about filling a skills gap, please get in touch.
Ita took the time to understand my objectives and needs as a candidate also – something unusual for a recruitment agency.
Information was provided quickly, in full and was very clear. Ita also took the time to follow-up post interviews to understand how things went and confirm next steps/timeframes. She has also gone the extra mile of checking in with me since starting in my new role.
Ita approached every stage of the recruitment process in a professional, honest and open manner. It was clear she was committed to finding the right candidate for her client
Having now worked with Sitka for a number of years, they have a real understanding of the type of people we employ and that the ‘fit’ is as important as having the right skills for the role. Sitka provide an excellent service and make you feel you are their only customer. They are quite unique and such a pleasure to work with.
The recruitment process was very straight forward and communication and updates were very regular. Sitka staff are very professional and have an excellent customer focus. They were extremely focussed on what WCR needed and gave us a great calibre of candidates. Sitka will be my first point of call when I’m next recruiting.
Karen was extremely helpful throughout the entire process, providing interview tips, personal help, and preparation before my interview. I felt that Karen genuinely wanted me to do well and get the job that I wanted.
The process was thorough and very individual – time was spent finding out about the culture and style of the organisation and the exec team. Sitka worked with the candidates well to find the best fit for both employer and candidate. There was a sense of strong relationship building to ensure that this happened.
I was thrilled when I was offered my new job, which I felt was down to Sitka’s support and proactivity. Karen kept in contact and made sure I was happy in my new role. This personal and professional service is second to none. I would highly recommend!