A skills gap analysis is a framework for evaluating the disparity between the competencies of your employees and those required for their respective positions. This process is also called a needs assessment, efficiency tracker, or variance analysis. It is typically performed when your business consistently misses targets/goals, makes strategic changes, adopts new technology, and instances when there is a high employee turnover. A template streamlines the analysis and offers a readily available tool for businesses and organizations to gain insight into what their workforce needs to improve and develop an action plan for success. Often, the analysis will be used by the HR department and departmental managers.
We have provided a template to meet your business’s or organization’s skills gap analysis. It allows you to record the employee details, nature of skills, current and desired proficiency, the skill improvement action plan details, and how to monitor progress.
Free Skill Gap Analysis Template
What This Template Has To Offer
The template provides you with a dashboard experience designed in Excel to give a real-time overview of your analysis and action plan. It has columns for skill category, specific skills, current and desired proficiency, action plan, start date, due date, priority, status, and notes. Each column has filters and dropdown menus to choose different options. We have used color codes to set priorities for each category, to identify and filter the prioritized tasks easily, and to execute your action plan. These features have been added for your convenience.
How To Use The Template
This template allows you to perform a comprehensive skills gap analysis. Here is a breakdown of how you can fill this template.
Documentation details
The template begins with placeholders for the employee name, company name, and assessment date. These are details necessary for record-keeping and tracking the chronology of events.
Nature of skill
Each skill should be identified by category and specific type as directed by the template. The skill category is the discipline, for example, communication or software development. The specific skill is the exact ability; for example, public speaking, active listening, customer support, etc. Classification of skills helps you formulate training materials or recruit employees to address specific skill shortcomings in the organization.
Proficiency
This template prompts you to indicate the current and desired proficiency of the employee. Proficiency can be defined using various terms to indicate the level of capability. These include the following from lowest to highest order – novice/beginner, competent, intermediate, proficient, and expert. The disparity between the current and desired proficiency illustrates the skill gap. Use the drop-down list to select the proficiency levels.
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Action plan
In the next section, you need to document an action for improving the skill gap identified in previous sections. The action plan is recorded as an objective the employee needs to fulfill, for example, attain a certification in a particular field, recruit, attend specified training, enroll in a program, or participate in scheduled activities. The following sections let you record the timeframe for implementing the action plan by recording the start and end dates. The timeframe can be as long as a few weeks to months, depending on the complexity of the skills. It is needed for scheduling purposes.
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Tracking and monitoring items
You need to track and monitor your action plan once implemented. Hence, the template offers tools for this purpose by prompting you to record each skill’s priority and action plan’s status. The skills can be prioritized as high, low, or medium. The status can be planned, not started, in progress, on hold, in revision, and completed. This information lets you know which action plans should be focused on at a particular time and how far along they are from completion. For these two aspects, priority and status, use the drop-down lists to select the appropriate prioritization levels and progress updates. Since the List options are color-coded, it becomes easier to determine these vital details and track and monitor them.
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Notes
The last component is the notes section. Use this entry to record key notes about each skill and action plan. You can document anything from what the action plan will entail to issues identified during implementation.
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The configurations sheet
This sheet is used to modify Excel’s List functionality. We have provided different entries for each list of the column categories. However, you can modify these selection options in this configuration sheet’s list ranges. For example, in the priority list range, you can add extremely high as a priority level. Once modified, the new entries automatically appear on the drop-down list in the appropriate cells in the main sheet and can be selected as options. Therefore, in the above example, ‘extremely high’ in the drop-down list.
This template is offered in MS Excel, Google Sheets, OpenDocument spreadsheet (.ods), and Excel spreadsheet template (.xltx). You can use the in-built features of spreadsheets to enhance the functionality of this template.
Additional Information
You can utilize well-known or creative ways to address skill gaps. Note that proficiency can be measured variable between skills; some can be assessed quantitatively and others qualitatively. Common interventions include training and developing existing employees. However, this can be costly as it requires resource input.
Alternatively, a job redesign can be done where tasks and responsibilities are rearranged to match each assigned employee’s strengths. However, it also requires significant resources to upskill or reskill your workforce.
Thirdly, skill gaps can be addressed through recruitment. After identifying areas in the workforce that need improvement, the hiring selection criteria can be modified. This ensures the selected candidates already have the competencies lacking in the current workforce. This could save time and resources for training. If the skills are needed urgently, you can temporarily outsource labour from freelancers or contractors.
However, remember that you must first undertake a skill gap analysis using our template before implementing solutions to address your organization’s skill deficiency.
