Many organizations go through a period when they need additional skills in the company to meet their goals. If your company lacks specific skill sets, it can negatively impact the capabilities and growth of your business. It could be a technical skill needing an upgrade of employee capacity or a soft skill that a few days training can alleviate.
Filling such skills doesn’t need to be a massive undertaking, making you feel like you need to brace yourself for a substantial financial investment. There are resourceful ways you can enable your organizational capacity without breaking the bank.
Find out some of the best ways to fill skill gaps in your company or work teams below.
Analyze Current Skills
Before embarking on any capacity enhancement, you must ascertain the existing skills gaps. You can only know the prevailing gaps by analyzing the current skills your employees have and comparing them with the organizational needs. To start, assess the current skillset situation.
There may be particular people on your team with skills you are unaware of or those who harbor an interest in learning new skills. Have open conversations with your team to understand what talent you have on hand.
You may discover that all you need is some hands-on experience for employees to practice acquired knowledge. Alternatively, nurture talent, and you soon enhance your capacity. It is always easier to develop employees in areas they are interested in instead of introducing unfamiliar subjects.
Offer Training Programs
Offering training programs to your team is essential for encouraging self-development. The likelihood that your team has skill enhancement aspirations is high, going by the rising skills gap in the market, accelerated by COVID-19.
You do not have to bear the total cost of the training. You can adapt approaches like collaborating with a training institution by partnering with a college to offer a particular certification at subsidized rates for your team.
Another way of offering training is creating a development program within your company by pairing employees with mentors who can help lower-level team members grow. You will have to put some time into the coaching approach, but it is a worthwhile investment as results pay off. You will have a more productive and efficient team.
Offer Education Reimbursements
If offering training isn’t feasible, you can offer financial reimbursements for team members who take the initiative to obtain extra schooling on their own. This approach encourages teams to develop their capacity to benefit your organization. Employees also take the courses seriously because they have to make an initial investment.
Many staff probably want to train but cannot afford the fees. To steer your team towards self-development, cover the total cost of their education, especially if it directly applies to the work they do for your company. However, offering even a percentage may still be enough incentive for your employees to educate themselves.
Hire Freelance and Temp Employees
Sometimes you are faced with a situation where you need an expert to fill a skill gap. You may have adopted new technology, or your staff suddenly need to leave. You do not have the luxury of time to train existing employees to handle the task. In such a situation, consider hiring temps to fill the gap.
Filling gaps with experts on a particular skill or niche topic can help to improve processes and your company’s capabilities. Hire temporary staff to use as needed on projects where you lack talent until you can develop your full-time staff capacity.
If you’re implementing a new system or revamping it, a part-time and remote software developer comes in handy to support the process. Be sure you hire someone who understands your business and industry, as there are a lot of freelance employees available who fit specific niches. You can estimate the time it will take for the project and contract the experts for that period.
Give Opportunities to Grow
Providing an environment with growth opportunities is a sure way of enabling team members to reach their full potential. You can challenge teams who perform menial/repetitive tasks to undertake more strategic roles and assess their capabilities. In the process, you may discover a hidden talent, so do not shy off from providing your team an opportunity to prove themselves.
Many people learn on the go and need immersion in the work environment to understand and apply new skill sets. Many organizations have a pool of overlooked workers who can do better given the opportunity. Groups like younger/older employees, foreign-born teams, etc., often prove resourceful for an organization.
Giving your team opportunities to grow shows them that you believe in them and want to see them excel. Such a show of confidence in employees motivates them to work harder and succeed in new ventures.
Fill Your Skills Gap and Succeed
Filling the skills gap in your company is not always easy. You have to weigh the options of building your internal capacity or outsourcing. Do a cost-benefit analysis of the two options and select what serves your organization best at the moment.
If the need is short-term, you will benefit better from outsourcing. Develop your internal capacity if you foresee your company utilizing a particular skill for longer. Make the right decisions and thrive in your business.
