Bridging the Gap: A Systematic Approach to Address Skills Shortages and Develop a Future-Ready Workforce
Oct 17, 2025
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Is there a Skills Crisis?
Recent job reports have made the labor market sound like it is an employer's market. We even have the newest LinkedIn trend: "job hugging." A quick turnaround from “quiet quitting” and “job hopping” we were seeing just a few years ago. While the employer's market might suggest that hiring managers can choose from the most qualified candidates, we are simultaneously experiencing a growing skills shortage.
This skills shortage is affecting almost every layer of the labor market and can lead to a loss in market share, delays in achieving strategic goals, and financial burdens.
A recent survey from Wiley of HR managers across the US showed an increase in the difficulty of filling roles due to a lack of candidates with critical skills, rising from 55% in 2023 to 69% in 2025.
Small businesses are being hit as well, with the US Chamber of Commerce reporting that 34% are experiencing long-term vacancies and 47% are having trouble finding qualified candidates with the necessary skill sets.
In hard skills, we can see shortages in tech skills related to data analytics and communication, as well as deficiencies in project management skills. The World Economic Forum also stresses that, beyond hard skills, there is a shortage of analytical thinking skills, particularly in critical thinking and problem-solving.
What Can Business Leaders Do to Ensure They Have the Talent Ready to Meet Demands?
So, what can business owners and HR professionals do to begin bridging this gap in workforce skills? A skills-gap analysis and well-planned interventions will provide leaders with the tools, information, and path forward to address this issue.
What exactly is a skills gap analysis? It is the process an employer can use to gauge their current workforce capabilities against what they need to meet operational objectives and meet the expectations of their mission.
In my work, I have seen how skipping this step or not performing a well-executed skills gap analysis leads to larger consequences down the line, including wasted payroll dollars and lost competitive advantage.
But how are we supposed to perform a comprehensive skills gap analysis that helps us plan for work today and in the future?
Preparing for a Skills Gap Analysis
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I want to set some expectations. Understanding what a skill-gap analysis can and can't do, plus the time requirements, is critical in determining how to leverage this tool.
A skills gap analysis cannot tell the future. However, a skills gap analysis can help you "future-proof" your teams by giving them the skills to meet unforeseen challenges.
A skills gap analysis can be time-consuming, but the benefits can be well worth the investment. Your workforce is the single most expensive and critical part of your organization in delivering the mission and meeting organizational goals. Ensuring you are investing wisely will pay dividends.
A Flexible, Data-Driven Framework
I have created here a generalized framework on how a comprehensive skills gap analysis can be performed. This framework helps ensure the analysis will be topical, data-driven, and flexible.
The analysis starts by pinpointing the focus and scope to ensure time is spent wisely. Next, collecting and analyzing the data will provide the in-depth information needed to determine where workforce skills are lacking, what the current skills landscape is, and the gap between the two. Design interventions will determine the best course of action to bridge the gap and bring our workforce competencies up to speed. Finally, measuring those skill performances will assess how successful the intervention was and guide future needs as work and markets continuously evolve.
The goal here is not a one-and-done, but rather an evolving process that allows your organization to proactively meet needs and develop a strong workforce capable of meeting current and future demands.
Define the Goal: Discover Focus and Scope
We want to spend our time and energy on areas of the business that have urgent needs or the potential to provide the most significant return on investment.
First, ensure there are well-defined goals and strategic plans for the business as a whole. Review the business objectives, their current state of completion, and the corresponding KPIs to begin determining the focus.
Next, look at the scope. This can be at the individual level, the team level, and the organizational level. More often than not, we will be looking at a single position, such as a digital media manager or a logistics clerk, or a team, such as an HR team or a long-term care nursing unit.
Pulling It Together: Data Collection
Here lies the "meat" of the analysis. An analysis will only be as strong as the data used to make it: strong data, strong analysis, strong outcomes.
Start by determining the critical skills needed. Consider how current organizational changes, such as the adoption of new technology or industry-wide shifts, could be impacting your business.
Lean on well-sourced data. There are several online platforms where you can access competency models, sometimes for free, that outline the key skill levels needed to excel in specific fields and jobs. Don't forget to revisit your mission and business goals to ensure you are seeking the proper skill levels for the job you're trying to get done. Remember, your business is unique!
Here are some key questions you can ask while gathering information on critical skills:
How do we compare to other organizations in our industry?
What advancements, tasks, or projects have been delayed?
Leverage industry-specific knowledge that exists in your organization. Ask employees:
Where do you feel you need training for the future of your job?
What are the biggest challenges in performing your work currently?
Do you know of developing trends that relate to your work?
Next, begin taking inventory of the skills and their levels that already exist in your workforce. In most cases, you can keep it simple: what is the skill you are reviewing, what is the desired level of the skill, and where does your workforce currently rank?
For example, your digital marketing team should have medium-high proficiency in programmatic tech to meet your business goal of increasing online sales. Still, you find they are closer to a medium-low proficiency—no need to complicate matters.
In fact, many HRIS and talent management systems will have these templates available. Just ensure the template you are using creates a searchable database, and consider leveraging both qualitative and quantitative data sources. Here are some common places to gather multiple streams of data:
Find the Gaps: Analyze the Data
By now, you should have three things to compare and determine where interventions should be focused:
Areas of improvement
Desired skill levels
Current skill inventory
Compare needed skills with the skill inventory to identify the gap(s). If you are looking to increase AI usage in your organization, this may be a good place to leverage it to help you sift through data and identify patterns and gaps.
Using your newly identified skills shortage, you can return to your business objectives and KPIs to determine which gaps are urgent, short-term, or long-term goals to address.
To pull it together in an example: You are the Executive Director for a non-profit, and your fundraising campaigns are not meeting goals and falling behind previous years' numbers. After surveying competitors and competency models, you find that record-keeping and organization are the top skills needed to maintain long-term donors. Your fundraisers excel at storytelling and interpersonal skills, but according to the skill inventory, they are low in organization and digital communication. This is a mixed goal: there is an immediate need to keep the parts of the business that rely on donations running, and there is a long-term need to upskill current employees.
Make a Plan: Designing Interventions
There are four most common intervention techniques used by most organizations to address skills gaps.
Training and Development: This includes upskilling primarily and some reskilling. It is often considered to have the best return on investment because it also offers benefits like employee satisfaction, engagement, and succession planning. Additionally, since the labor market may not always have the skills you need readily available, pursuing further education may yield better long-term results
Job Redesign: This is typically utilized when the responsibilities from one or more positions are no longer serving the organization in the same capacity. Alternatively, this can also occur when you have an employee with a unique combination of skills that can serve the organization in many ways, making a tailored position the most sensible option.
Talent Acquisition: Acknowledging that it would be most cost-effective and timely to hire externally to meet organizational demands can be beneficial.
Contingent Workers or Consultants: This is most viable when your organization has a specific, short-term need, such as new software implementation or machine installation.
Most organizations will use a combination of intervention methods to meet urgent needs while satisfying short and long-term goals.
Bring It Home: Measuring Success and Building Momentum
Depending on your intervention method, there can be several ways to measure success:
Key Performance Indicators and Return on Investment: By measuring desired KPIs and ROI of targeted business aspects, you can determine how and where interventions were successful and where further augmentation is needed.
HR Key Metrics: These are another great way to ensure your programs and interventions are successful. A few examples include revenue per FTE, employee turnover, new hire performance, and internal mobility.
Training effectiveness evaluations: These evaluations include post-training quizzes, employee interviews, surveys, and performance evaluations, and are designed to ensure your training programs are imparting the information and having the impact expected.
Let's Get Started
A skills-gap analysis can be an excellent way for any business to gain a competitive advantage and build a future-ready workforce. Remember, addressing workforce needs and competitive advantage is a continuous improvement rather than a one-time remediation.
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