Senior Content Marketing Specialist
April 28, 2025
•
7 Mins read
Have you ever felt like your team has a lot of motion but no progress? Everyone is busy, but the results are not visible? You’re not alone. Many organizations today are struggling with declining productivity. In many cases, the likely culprit is gaps in employee skills.
You can close skill gaps with Talstack - learn more here.
A skills gap exists when the skills an employee currently has do not align with the skills they need to perform a job effectively. This typically implies that the employee is unable to perform the role to the level of proficiency, productivity and excellence required. It’s important for organisations to identify skills gaps early in order to prevent productivity loss, implement targeted training, make smarter hiring decisions, and ensure their workforce is upskilled to meet current and future needs.
A skills gap analysis helps organizations identify skill gaps in their employee base using a structured process.
Here’s an example to help you contextualize this:
A consumer goods company was gearing up to open up new markets across several African countries. While their sales team was proficient in working with inbound requests from distributors looking to carry their products, they lacked expertise in prospecting and selling to new distributors who were not familiar with their brand.
At first, the gap wasn’t obvious. The team was confident they could make it work and were putting in long hours, but their progress in opening up new markets was slow. When the leadership team conducted a skills gap analysis, they were able to understand what was causing the inertia and signed the entire sales team for sales training on prospecting, lead generation and sales funnel management. Within six months, they had successfully established strong distribution partnerships in two markets and were ready to embark on more.
Conducting a skills gap analysis involves a structured, step-by-step process including understanding where the gaps lie, how critical they are, and what actions to take. Here's how to go about it:
Start by mapping out the essential skills (or competencies) for each role in your organization. For this step, it's ideal to collaborate with managers and department heads to get clarity on the competencies required for each role. You should consider job expectations, industry benchmarks, and emerging skills that may soon be required.
For example, if your company sells primarily to businesses, a firm understanding of how to communicate with empathy is required for your customer success employees. At the same
time, prompt engineering with AI chatbots may be a skill necessary to help them increase their productivity when they come across issues that are not part of the customer support communications playbook.
A simple chart like the one below will do the trick:
Evaluate where your employees currently stand. You can do this by employing self-assessments, manager evaluations, peer reviews, simple competency tests, or a combination of these. The goal here should be to find out not just what people think they can do, but what they’ve actually demonstrated.
Assess each of the skill gaps based on how severe they are. This helps you prioritize what needs immediate attention versus what can be addressed over time, and what the best course of action is to address each area.
For example, minor gaps can be addressed with quick training and coaching, while moderate to critical gaps may require more in-depth learning, job changes or hiring new talent.
Now it’s time to close the gaps. For each skills gap, decide whether to upskill internally, engage external training partners, assign that job function to someone else or hire new talent. You can put your final decisions in an action framework like in the table below.
For many of the skills gaps you’ll likely see, online learning provides a convenient and effective way for employees to learn in their own time and at their own pace. You can take advantage of the Talstack platform, which has highly practical pre-built courses from top experts across Africa that enable your employees to close skills gaps quickly.
With Talstack, you can create a tailored learning path focusing on the skills gaps, assign courses with a deadline for each employee and track progress — all in one place. If you’d like to see how this works, book a demo with a Talstack expert here.
For high-performing organizations, skill development isn’t a one-off task, it’s a continuous process. Once you’ve begun executing on your action plan to close skills gaps, you have to monitor progress and outcomes. It's also a best practice to reassess your team’s skills every 6 to 12 months. This ensures your workforce continues to evolve with your business’ needs.
If productivity seems to be a challenge and results don’t seem forthcoming, a skills gap analysis may be the strategic reset your organization needs. By identifying what’s missing, planning thoughtfully and acting decisively, you’re setting up your team and business for long-term success. We hope this guide helps you get started!
