Why you need to perform a skills audit of your workforce today

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Recent surveys indicate that 90% of the UK workforce requires upskilling before 2030. More surprising is that only 20% of CEOs say they have made significant progress in establishing a suitable upskilling programme to address future needs.

Also confronted by a skills shortage, exacerbated by the pandemic, an exodus of foreign talent and a shortage of tech talent, organisations are rethinking their workforce planning strategy by looking within – starting with an internal skills audit. This will help you get a macro look at the skills you currently have on-hand and help you chart out the types of skills, roles and people you’ll be able to train or upskill to better prepare your organisation for the future.

Where to start? Here’s an overview of how you can implement a skills audit of your workforce:

Step 1: Leverage your Human Resources Management Systems (HRMS)

Most HRMS have a skills capture feature – if updated regularly with new joiners and appraisals – can help you build a skills repository of your existing staff. Consider auditing the accuracy of the database by selecting employees from each of your job families and job roles and compare the skills captured within the HRMS with individuals’ line managers.

Step 2: Integrate with Professional Networks

Consider integrating your HRMS with professional networks so employees can easily and conveniently link their LinkedIn profile. This will help provide a faster and more accurate overview of the core skills you have available in your business.

Step 3: Curate and Distribute a Skills Survey

Skills surveys can help paint a richer picture of available skills (e.g., technical skills, language skills, etc.) and help identify your employees’ interest and shape the type of initiatives you’ll put in place to enable upskilling and training opportunities.

Step 4: Understand your Employee Traits, Not Just Skills

In many ways, soft skills can be more vital to hard skills, as research has shown that hard skills are becoming obsolete faster. Focussing on traits, such as entrepreneurship, innovation and curiosity, will help you identify, position and uplift ‘agile’ employees with the potential to help you gain a competitive advantage.

Step 5: Create an Internal Marketplace

Consider building a portal accessible to all your talent where they can view permanent, project, short-gig and mentoring opportunities. This will foster and promote internal mobility – helping you deploy, motivate, develop, upskill, train and retain employees across your organisation.

For more tips on how to perform an internal skills audit to future-proof your organisation and strengthen your workforce planning, download our ‘6 Step Guide to Strategic Workforce Planning’ whitepaper.