Auditing skills in your organization as well as the necessity to acquire new ones are essential steps for achieving your objectives, especially considering recent changes in the way of working and in the company structure.
The SKILLS AUDIT assesses employees’ skills and their potential growth, identifying any knowledge gaps and tools enabling their improvement.
At organizational level, the audit allows the mapping of strengths and weaknesses of the existing workforce with the aim of enhancing their operational capabilities.
Usually it is the HR department that carries out this kind of AUDIT, through questionnaires and interviews.
A skills audit is also useful in cases of corporate restructuring. Consider, for example, a bank that is adopting new technology that will replace counters. The skills of the counter staff will no longer be useful. In any case, the bank will still need employees with technological skills.
A skills audit may help to assess what skills already exist and whether these skills may be relevant for other business areas.
The skills audit should be intended as an ongoing process, not a one-off exercise, as organizations are constantly evolving. This tool should be used by every HR team, as it enables to align individual employees’ objectives with the corporate strategy.
What are the different types of skills audits?
There are two: one for individual competences, the other for team or function competences.
Naturally, the two audits are closely linked.
When is it necessary conduct a skills audit?
Over a period of years, on average between two and five, teams are no longer the same. Exits and new hirings lead to new competences or new needs. It is therefore ideal to conduct a skills audit when:
- a new position is created
- an employee changes function
- an employee changes role
- a new project requires special skills
- during the staff appraisal process
Staff development is an employees’ skills audit; it aims to assess whether or not an employee is meeting or exceeding company expectations.
Nowadays, with the use of new technologies, it is possible to assemble and access audit results in a highly agile way.
Why do organizations conduct skills audits?
- To know which skills the organization has at its disposal
- To identify skills gaps: more than 80% of companies recognize that they are in this situation and will continue to be in this phase in the coming years
- In forecasting future needs
- In view of structuring employee re-skilling and up-skilling initiatives
- To be more effective in recruitment
- To operate successfully in their target markets and meet customers’ needs
- To align individual and team goals
In recent years, organizations have witnessed a rapid evolution of the business environment, causing once relevant skills to become obsolete or non-essential.
A skills audit will facilitate identifying the new skills needed for different people and provide the required training to update individuals in line with market needs.
“Success lies in having precisely those skills required at that instant”.
Henry Ford
