“We just can’t find the right fit!” is a common refrain among too many organizations; SHRM reports that 77% of surveyed companies had difficulty recruiting for full-time positions over the last 12 months. This is a troubling statistic for workers because unemployment in the United States keeps rising.
The answer is this: There isn’t actually a talent shortage. There’s an engagement and development problem causing the skill gap in organizations.
The good news? There’s a lot you can do to correct this issue while developing employees and finding the right talent for the right roles in your organization.
Key Takeaways
- The skills gap is often an engagement and development issue, not a true talent shortage.
- Organizations frequently treat symptoms instead of root causes by over-prioritizing hiring.
- Disengagement leads to skill stagnation, making existing talent seem underqualified.
- Data-driven assessments and Individualized Development Plans (IDPs) are key to closing gaps.
- Long-term success depends on developing both technical and soft skills through continuous growth.
What is the “Skills Gap” (and Why Is It Misunderstood)?
Traditionally, a skills gap is a mismatch between job requirements and candidate capabilities. The job isn’t clicking, the responsibilities are a poor match, or the talent can’t deliver on what they promised—and this can happen with both hard and soft skills
Common responses include increased recruiting, higher compensation, or expanded candidate pools. The problem is that these approaches treat symptoms instead of root causes. Why is there a skills gap in your workforce? How can you figure out what exact skills need to be developed?
First, look at engagement (and lack thereof!). Engagement in the US is at a ten-year low at 31%. When employees are disengaged, they don’t invest in their work, their teams, or the organization as a whole.
Disengaged employees stop growing, and their skill sets deteriorate, resulting in outdated, underutilized skills.
That’s because skills don’t just happen. They have to be actively developed and expanded through application.
Development is the Missing Link
So how do you build those skills in your employees? You have to understand their current skill sets to get a baseline, then create Individualized Development Plans (IDPs) to take them to the next level.
First, use a validated assessment tool to accurately measure your team’s skills with definable data. Then, use the assessment results to launch continuous, intentional skill-building aligned with their roles and career goals.
This solves your skill gap problem in a few ways. Assessment tools can help build internal talent without relying on external hiring, keep employee skills relevant in a rapidly changing workforce, and improve engagement through a demonstrable investment in employees—especially since research found that 80% of employees report that learning and development opportunities would help them feel more engaged on the job, and 94% of employees said they would stay in their current role longer if they received investment in their professional development.
Instead of buying talent through a costly recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding process, you can develop talent in-house and create a more dedicated workforce.
How Can You Close the Skill Gap Now?
There’s a lot of buzz around developing hard skills like AI automation, but the most important skills you can be developing in your team right now are soft skills. Technical skills may get the job, but soft skills sustain performance.
Hard skills can be taught, monitored, and developed, and for a long time, people thought soft skills were somehow innate and couldn’t be learned. That’s not true! You just need the right tool and the right data to understand your starting point and your development potential.
With a trusted assessment tool and data-backed Individualized Development Plans, getting specific for employee skill development will provide the investment that workers need to engage and encourage them to invest their talents back into their work and the organization.
The skills gap in the workplace is actually the opportunity for development that your team needs. Once you adopt the right mindset and assessment tools, you’ll create a workforce that’s engaged, advanced, and ready to invest their talents in your team.
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