Have you identified a talent skills gap within your workforce? Are you adopting a 360-degree approach to address it? Do you have innovative strategies for employee skill set enhancement?
You may take your time to mull over the questions. In the meantime, see what a global talent management leader had to share during a webinar. A speaker at our Parichay ‒ Ask the Expert session, Gautam Duggal decoded the challenges of a skills gap and provided strategies to address the same. He also revealed four key indicators organizations can use to identify the existence of talent skills gaps. Here’s a summarized version of them:
1. High Turnover
A common indicator of the skills gap is an increase in your employee turnover rate. This happens for two main reasons: your employees either lack the skills to meet your expectations or feel unhappy about not seeing a clear career path for them. Therefore, they would look out for greener pastures.
“What I do see happening very well across different industries is that everybody has gotten into this mode of ‘let's keep a continuous learning culture’. Let's not make learning an event that happens once or twice in a year. Let's keep talking about learning.”
Gautam Duggal, Director, Global Talent Management and Learning, Mastercard
2. Open Positions
Are you finding it challenging to find a suitable candidate (internal or external) for a role that's been open for a long time? Then you're probably looking for a hard-to-find skillset. You also need to check if there is an incorrect skill mapping for the position. If so, ensure that your employees have the opportunity to acquire those skills. However, a good way to get started is by looking at the skill assessment and performance metrics to identify internal gaps.
3. Customer Dissatisfaction
It is important to adopt an outside-in perspective when trying to figure out the gaps in your organization. Are customers enjoying your product experience? Will they switch if given an option? Their opinion about your product and service can reveal the gaps, if any. Customer feedback via CSAT surveys will tell you if you need to invest in training and upskilling.
4. Small Budgets
Everybody wants great things to happen! Is your organization ready to allocate more funds to learning interventions? If yes, does it match the plan you made at the beginning of the year? If not, it indicates a deterioration of interest in such initiatives. Small budgets may not always work in your favor since many initiatives are likely to remain in the works. When it comes to talent initiatives, seriousness and consistency matter a lot.
Do you want to hear it directly from the expert?
Watch the Webinar Recording
