Too often, people are an afterthought in the planning process. Just as you gauge your capabilities and needs for things like equipment, suppliers, facilities, and finances, you should consider whether you have the right people on board to meet your business objectives. In fact, there’s nothing more important. A “people puzzle” gap analysis is a great way to see what you’re missing.
A “people puzzle” gap analysis tells you where the areas of opportunity and deficiency are in terms of people and culture. It identifies the competencies and skills you need for future growth and compares it to those of your current employees. It is also the best way to get to the root causes of symptoms like chronic open positions and high turnover. The problems are easy to see, but it’s frequently hard to understand why they’re happening. A gap analysis is the first step to discovering whether you have talent or culture issues that will sabotage your goals.
What You Can Do with the Data
The information provided by a gap analysis serves as the foundation for your people strategy. With it, you can make more informed staffing decisions, aligning them with near-term and long-term goals—and budget accordingly. The analysis is equally valuable in times of growth to guide you with hiring and training, and at times you need to downsize to help you pare payroll with minimal impact. It also helps you grow talent from within for succession planning.
The data helps you ensure workforce readiness for employees at all levels. It gives you the ability to address skills gaps before they become significant problems, and provide training and development to help people prepare for upcoming skills needs or transition to new work opportunities or responsibilities.
How the Process Works
Performing a “people puzzle” gap analysis isn’t a daunting task. It involves five steps. The resulting report, which can be qualitative, quantitative or both, enables you to create specific action plans to close the talent-related gaps and move forward confidently to your goals.
Step #1—Formulating Your Objectives
The first step in performing a gap analysis is formulating clear and quantifiable objectives so that you can measure the gaps between current and desired future states. Your objectives can be short- or long-term, or both. For example, you may have a major new client or product line on the horizon or plans to transition to new technology in the near future. Your objective might be to understand what new positions or competencies will be needed and over what time period. Or you may want to take a broader look at how the economy, competition or legislation may affect how you attract and retain the talent you need. Be as specific as you can when defining what you need to know from the analysis.
Step #2—Evaluating Your Current State
This is the “where are we?” part of the gap analysis. Whether your focus is organization-wide or related to a single area of your business, begin your current-state evaluation with introspection. As you look honestly at where you are today, be as specific as you can, emphasizing weaknesses over strengths. In this process, you will list all of the factors that relate to each objective you are analyzing.
Your evaluation may involve such things as: profiling existing positions and their skill and competency requirements; the quality and quantity of talent in the market; anticipated retirement and turnover rates and promotions; and your inventory of current employees who have the skills you need. To use an example, if you want to become more competitive, your current-state analysis might include evaluating your current employment brand and retention rates, both of which impact market competitiveness.
Step #3—Defining Your Desired Future State
The future state is the ideal condition you’d like your company to be in as it relates to your people and culture and a specific objective. It answers the question, “Where do you want to go?” Using the current state example above, if your objective is to become more competitive in the market, your future-state analysis might include descriptions about what a positive culture looks like for your organization in terms of things like values and flexibility, or diversity.
Or, maybe you will have created an employment brand that wins 95 percent of candidates over the competition. Maybe you’ve achieved “best company” status. Perhaps your turnover rate is near zero. Your ideal future could include productivity and engagement rates that are the highest in your industry or region. This is the time to be expansive and positive, but realistic, in defining what’s possible for your organization.
Step #4—Bridging the Gap
Now is the time to identify and describe the gaps between your current and future states—without yet jumping to remedies, which come in step five. For each objective, you’ll record a simple “yes” or “no” to indicate whether there is a gap or not between your current and desired future states. Then you will list all of the elements that make up each gap. If your objective is to be more competitive and you see a gap in your current and ideal future retention rates, you would record a “yes” that there is a gap and describe it as “a 10 percent difference,” for example.
Step #5—Factors and Remedies
In analyzing the gap data, the biggest question is not how far you are from your future target, but understanding why the gap in performance exists. So, begin by identifying the relevant factors you see as responsible for each of the gaps. Then, list all of the possible actions you need to take to remedy these factors and reach your objectives. Again, related to a competitiveness objective, a causative factor in low retention could be that your workplace flexibility policies aren’t accommodating employee needs and desires. Remedies to increase your competitiveness might be allowing telecommuting, job sharing, or paid time off.
The End Result
All of the information from your “people puzzle” gap analysis is put into a comprehensive, clearly written, and actionable roadmap that links your talent strategy to your business strategy. It tells you where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there. The gap analysis process—from setting objectives through compiling the report—helps maximize your resources and, by addressing both causes and actions related to the gaps you find, helps ensure that you reach your objectives for the future success of your company.