What is a skills audit? 

A “skills audit” is an assessment designed to evaluate each employee’s aptitudes, qualifications, and skill sets. Businesses audit tangible assets like inventory and cash flow, but it can also be wise to measure your team members’ skills, expertise, and talents. These audits ensure that each employee possesses the know-how required for their position, that talents are not being overlooked, and that your organization is free of skills gaps. As such, a skills audit can be a valuable tool in guiding human resource decisions and future recruitment endeavours.

What are the benefits of a skills audit? 

The skills audit process is complex, requiring thoughtful planning, design, and execution. Here are some things a skills audit can accomplish:

• Putting the right people in the right roles: Determining the skills required for each role and identifying who possesses these skills can help you ensure that each team member has the right career fit. This can increase employee engagement and retention, helping ensure that each position is filled by the ideal candidate.
• Capitalizing on unrealized potential: By identifying your employees’ skills, you may discover that they possess untapped abilities that can benefit your organization. This ensures that each individual’s talents are recognized and put to good use, potentially increasing your company’s competitiveness and boosting employee satisfaction and retention.
• Identifying training opportunities: A skills audit can take the guesswork out of training initiatives. By pinpointing the skills that are lacking, you can focus your employee training and development programs on closing actual skills gaps, saving valuable time and resources.
• Enhancing internal promotability: Promoting from within has several advantages. It’s more cost-effective than opting for an outside hire, and the employee is already familiar with the operations and culture of the organization. Furthermore, internal talent mobility usually boosts employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction. By thoroughly understanding the skills required for each role and an employee’s talents and knowledge, team leaders can work with team members more effectively to chart their desired career paths.
• Guiding recruitment efforts: Once you’ve identified skills gaps, you can revisit your recruitment strategy. Perhaps you need to tweak your advertised job requirements, revamp your interview questions, or make another change to your hiring process.
• Preparing for the future: As technology, consumer demand, and your company’s products change, roles within your organization may change, too. It can be necessary to ensure that your company can quickly identify and address skills gaps as they arise. This advanced preparation can also help you plan for upcoming retirements and other personnel changes.

When is the right time to conduct a skills audit? 

It is important to note that an organization can conduct a skills audit at any time. You do not need to wait for problems to arise before doing so. That being said, there are often clear signs that the time for a skills audit is nigh. Here are just a few:

• Your company is underperforming. Perhaps your employees lack the knowledge or aptitudes required for their positions. Many roles may have changed over time, and your organization’s employee training and development efforts have failed to keep up. A skills audit can help you pinpoint the problem and address it.
• Your organization is restructuring. When an organization introduces significant operational changes, it can be important to conduct a skills audit. This can ensure that your team is placed in the roles that best match their abilities and knowledge, better ensuring a smooth transition, employee retention, and your company’s future success.
• Your company is embarking on a new project. Before filling the roles required to complete this initiative, it can be wise to perform a skills audit to ensure that your team possesses the requisite abilities and that each team member is placed in the right role. This will enable you to train your existing team members or acquire new hires before the project is underway. This can be about marrying business objectives with hiring objectives.
• You face recruitment needs. Whether your organization needs to fill one role or several, a skills audit can help your Human Resources Department identify the skill sets and aptitudes required for said roles. This can aid in identifying current employees who are well suited for a new position or lead to a more appropriate new hire. It’s important to be recruiting smarter, not harder.

What steps make up the skills audit process?

If you’ve decided that your organization can benefit from engaging in a skills audit, you are likely wondering how to begin. Thankfully, conducting this audit involves simply following a few actionable steps:

1. Set goals. Before embarking on any major initiative, it is necessary to identify your goals. Goal setting guides your process and allows you to measure its success. Ensure that everyone involved in conducting or developing this audit understands its objectives.
2. Identify requirements for each position. Addressing one department at a time, examine each job description for requisite skills. Consult with team leaders to ensure that you aren’t missing any requirements. It is important to also ask the employee in said role if there are any skills, knowledge, or qualifications that should be added. You may also discover that some duties are no longer part of the position, making some skills redundant.
3. Explore future needs. Maintaining your company’s competitive edge usually requires you to anticipate changes to current positions as well as future roles that may arise. Be sure to include future skills in your audit’s design.
4. Develop your audit. Next, you will need to determine which assessment tools you will employ. These can include interviews, surveys and self-assessments designed to reveal what skills each employee utilizes in their role, how they use those skills, and what skills require further development. You also want them to reveal other skills and aptitudes they possess that are not leveraged in their current position.
5. Initiate your audit. It is time to put your plan into action. Have your employees complete any surveys or self-assessments you have developed. If you’ve incorporated interviews into your design, conduct them. You may also want to have an employee’s direct supervisor complete surveys or assessments on employees as well to gain a different perspective.
6. Analyze the results. Now, you will need to organize the data collected and examine the results. These discoveries will guide your next step. You may wish to develop a skills gap analysis template. This template creates a visual representation of your organization’s current skills gaps. By presenting complex data in an easy-to-use way, you can ensure that team leaders and stakeholders can easily digest the data and readily identify areas requiring improvement. In turn, your organization can set priorities and identify solutions with ease.
7. Develop a plan and act. This is your chance to rectify the problems that your skills audit has identified. Whether you opt for upskilling training initiatives, the shuffling of positions, or seeking new hires, now is the time to develop a plan with doable steps, a set timeline, and a method to measure this endeavour’s success.

If your organization has never conducted a skills audit, you may be surprised at how useful it may prove to be. By following a few easy steps, you can maximize your team’s potential, ensure that your company is prepared for the future, and nurture a happy and engaged workforce.