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All of the things that create a competitive edge for a company stem from its talent. From product innovations to reputation your employees touch everything that makes your company successful, so a skills shortage is not something any of us should take lightly. While there are places to contribute externally to this challenge, your first line of defense is to look internally to fill the skills gap.

Because the market said so

Just because we all have the same challenge when we face the skills gap doesn’t mean we will all solve it the same way. Take this opportunity to be innovative and raise your own skills and avoid blaming the market for your talent shortages. You could build an array of tools to help skills test existing employees to find their baseline and provide training to bring them to the next level. If you invest in your existing workforce’s success they will be far more excited about investing in your organization's overall success.

Upgrade the skills of your current employees

The reality is with increasing digitalization we will all have to work continuously to gain new skills to keep pace with the economy and its needs. The benefits of using your internal candidate pool to fill higher skilled or new positions far exceed just the cost savings it can be. It can build morale, it can reduce risk as you are engaging with a known entity (already know the style of the employee, what performance to expect, etc.), your employees will feel more valued, and they will feel like you are truly interested in their career path and development. You’re probably wondering why you would equip your employees with necessary skills and knowledge to leave your company, but I’d challenge that you’re viewing this opportunity from the wrong perspective. Training employees in a way that could make them more marketable outside of your organization is an investment for you and the employee and as long as you can offer an environment that meets their needs, they aren’t going to leave your organization just because they can. In the same way, it’s less of a risk for an organization to grow their internal skills it’s less risky for employees too. To them, you are a known entity also and they’ve learned your products and culture, it can really be a win-win for all parties involved if handled well. It’s also worth noting that employee success stories are not a bad thing. You can leverage success stories in your branding and recruitment marketing as well!

Where to start

Work with your current hiring managers to identify potential talent for those roles where the market tells us there is a skills gap and identify the skills training and/or education needed to get that employee up to speed. In some cases, an organization looks externally for so long in this environment where we’ve accepted that the skills gap is a challenge that they end up having to drop the requirements of the position to an entry-level role because of the lack of experienced candidates available/interested in the opportunity. By the time you go through that process as an organization, you could’ve already “raised up” existing performance in your organization and backfilled their more entry-level role. It can have a devastating effect on morale if you overlook existing employees for new opportunities.

Your hiring managers and supervisors are a critical key to the success of raising your own skills in this competitive market facing skills shortages so don’t forget to equip them with the right tools. Hiring managers and supervisors need to become experts at performance coaching and how to leverage skills training to fill gaps within your organization. They need access to tools for measuring and testing skills and information about your organizations changing needs so they can be the best value-add possible.

The employee development of your existing employees is the one thing your competitors don’t have because they don’t have YOUR talent. Leverage this for everyone’s benefit!